Blu-ray Review: Love Is A Monster For Sam Neill & Isabelle Adjani In POSSESSION

Horror cinema can come in many shapes and sizes, tackling a variety of themes and topics, using the genre to explore different aspects of the human condition. Superficially, Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession is a horror film (a creature feature, even), but in reality it’s a film about the dissolution of a marriage and how it breaks apart the couple at its centre. It’s a powerful film with very committed performances from Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani – but I can’t help but feel that it’s two competing concepts meshed together and that by the end both the relationship drama and the horror film are just a little underserved by this odd union.

Sam Neill is Mark, a spy who returns home to West Berlin only to find that his wife, Anna (Adjani), is in a new relationship – and that she wants to leave and take their son along with her. Mark’s life spirals, and he hires a private detective to follow Anna – who is now living in an apartment with a tentacled creature. And… well… I don’t want to give too much away, because a lot of what makes Possession work is the opaque nature of its storytelling – and frankly, it would all seem a little silly if I had to write it down for you to read. Suffice to say, things get more than a little weird.

Possession is an emotionally cold film and Żuławski looks to have pushed both Neill and Adjani to the limit with their performances. They’re raw and unflinching and they both get across the brutal way in which the marriage breakdown has impacted them. It’s very easy to see why Isabelle Adjani won Best Actress at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival for her turn – but Neill is equally fearless.

Bruno Nuytten’s camerawork captures a bleak West Berlin, giving Possession a frigid reality and when the plot swerves into the Cronenbergian creature feature arena in the second half, there’s still an air of reality in the film’s visual language. This is helped by Carlo Rambaldi – the Italian special effects maestro behind E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial – whose grotesque creature has an icky, real-world quality about it.

Possession is an art film with layers and layers of subtext. You don’t have to dig too deep to see how it deals with trauma, loss, fear, death and marital breakdown. It’s all in there – but it might be a little too much for those simply expecting a film about a giant man-eating octopus.

Special Features

Okay, let me once again break out my Second Sight Films superlatives…

The company has once again unleashed a ridiculous amount of top-tier extras which not only complement Possession but also add so much more to the viewing experience. By the time you’ve made your way through the extras on hand with this 2-disc set, you’ll be ready to have a PhD in Andrzej Żuławski’s Cold War horror.

This release comes with two versions of the film – Żuławski’s own preferred cut and a preposterous North American edit (which has its own commentary track). There are three additional commentaries and interviews with Żuławski and everyone from the film’s producer to its poster artist. There’s a conversation with Guillermo del Toro, making-of odds and ends, deleted scenes, a trailer and even a featurette on Possession’s Berlin locations.

If you look up the term comprehensive in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of Possession by Second Sight Films.