The
Possession Of Michael King (2014/Anchor Bay/Starz! DVD)
Picture:
B- Sound: B Extras: D Film: C-
If
you invite it in, it will never let go.
Another
entry in the Found Footage Possession sub-genre of current horror,
comes The Possession Of Michael King - which is also the
directorial debut of David Jung.
After
his beloved wife Samantha (Cara Pifko) dies after receiving poor
advice from a psychic, atheist Michael (Shane Johnson) decides to
focus on the supernatural for his next film as a way to disprove the
existence of God and the Devil. He chooses to achieve this by
visiting various people and having them perform various spells and
rituals on him. He begins with Beverly (Dale Dickey), the psychic
that was partially at fault for Samantha's death and from there ends
up in various different scenarios, all of which involve the
supernatural. However, even as Michael does this in the hopes of
reaffirming his own atheism, he ends up becoming the focus of several
dark, supernatural forces that are intent on exerting their influence
on him. Soon, he's trying to kill his young daughter and being
generally creepy (along with disjointed body movement just like The
Grudge.)
For
the film, Jung drew inspiration from the character of Jack
Nicholson's Jack Torrance from the 1980 Kubrick classic The
Shining. He noticed that The Shining and similar movies
that dealt with demonic possession did not tell the story from the
viewpoint of the possessed person, and thought that it would be
interesting to shift the film's view point to the possessed person
which was also achieved in the superior and recent Sony film Grace:
The Possession (which I recently reviewed and is elsewhere on
this site) - only this time it's a male and not a female perspective.
Unlike
Grace: The Possession though, this film isn't
constantly in POV but is a mixture of traditional and found footage
filmmaking. One annoying aspect to the film that I didn't like was
that it kept flashing back to peaceful times with his wife and
daughter in home movie format. And the ending makes little to no
sense. Some of the cinematography and special effects aren't terribly
conceived and it has some interesting ideas though. By no means a
cult classic, this film is worthy of a one time rental.
Sound
and Picture are of a high standard for DVD but missing the quality
that Blu-ray disc has to offer, though it has also been issued in
that format. The film is presented in standard definition with an
anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1. A lossy Dolby Digital
5.1 track accompanies along with English and Spanish subtitles.
No
extras on the disc whatsoever but our version of the DVD comes with a
cool 3-D Lenticular case featuring the film's exceptional poster art.
-
James Harland Lockhart V
https://www.facebook.com/jamesharlandlockhartv
