POSSESSOR review (7/10)… drags occasionally, but very creepy and creative

The premise of POSSESSOR is pretty simple, and it’s a pretty nice hook. It’s about an assassin (Andrea Riseborough) who does her job by being implanted into the mind of someone else and essentially having that person commit the murder and then commit suicide. The assassin pops back out of the mind, and no one has any idea that what happened was even an assassination and not just a random murder carried out by someone who has simply snapped. The person possessed has their consciousness completely suppressed.

Pretty cool! But this process takes a toll on Riseborough, whose own psyche has sustained damage. Is it guilt? Is it numbness? Is it the process itself that takes a physical toll on her brain? Is she just a socio-path? When we see her spent time with her somewhat estranged family, nothing seems right or comfortable. Yet when she’s doing her job, nothing seems right there either.

The assignment that takes over most of the movie is to inhabit a young man (Christopher Abbott), who is engaged to the daughter of a tech tycoon of some sort (Sean Bean). She is to use this man to kill the tycoon, the daughter and then himself.

The movie has “fun” with the notion of Risborough inhabiting a man, and also shows us the trickiness of trying to convincingly be a man she does not…