I consider that there are three recent films that have managed to renew, to a greater or lesser extent, the subgenres in which they are inscribed. The first of these is Afflicted, an independent film that marked the debut of Derek Lee and Clif Prowse (directors and screenwriters of the event) and which offered us an original, modern and urban look at a vampire genre accustomed to suffering all kinds of experiments and excesses. The second title is Wer, the superb film by William Brent Bell (The Devl Inside) that has managed to mix, with resounding effectiveness – and with a commendable final result – the darkest thriller with a traditionally much more static genre such as that of lycanthropes or werewolves.
And finally we come to The Possession of Michael King, the film that concerns us today and whose greatest merits include that of being a sample of demonic possession cinema that tries to distance itself – and succeeds to a great extent – from the omnipresent inclusion of the great totem of the genre: The Exorcist by William Friedkin.
Now that I take a couple of seconds to think it over, I suppose the term “renovate” is too ambitious and exaggerated, but I am convinced that, at least, these three titles have meant, at the very least, a breath of fresh air to their respective subgenres. In addition, all three films share a common trait: they can all be included in the sometimes reviled sub-genre of mockumentary or found footage.
After the tragic death of his pregnant wife, Michael King embarks on a new audiovisual project that will consist of recording himself unmasking a whole series of mediums, exorcists and necromancers who live in the business of death and the afterlife. But the project has terrible consequences for Michael: a dark demon will end up being lord and master of his own actions.
Michael is a grown man, a convinced atheist and who, evidently, has not gotten over the death of his wife. His obsession with exposing the lies and deceptions of a whole fauna of mediums, exorcists and surrogates who feed on the naivety and vulnerability of their “clients”, is probably a manifestation of the self-proclaimed atheism that the protagonist of the film boasts. But it seems evident that there is something else… Michael is probably desperately looking for the opportunity to get back together with his wife and unborn daughter, and that underworld of false visionaries and dark representatives of the afterlife that he loathes and despises in equal parts, is perhaps, in reality, his only hope of achieving it.
This same obsession pushes Michael to throw himself headlong and kamikaze-like into a maelstrom of false seances, fetishism of the beyond the grave and licking hallucinogenic toads. Michael’s predisposition to the universe of the occult and death, together with the extravagant journey he undertakes in the production of the documentary, lead to the beginning of a transformation with terrible consequences. Michael will be possessed by a millenary demon that will endanger his own life and that of his closest relatives.
And it is in this transformation, in this possession suffered by the protagonist, that the film by David Jung tries to distance itself, to rebel, with all its strength, against the influence of Friedkin’s The Exorcist. In The Possession of Michael King there are no teenage girls wearing white nightgowns, no vomiting, no outbursts in Latin, no hospital visits, no priests with problems of faith or conscience, no levitating beds… Instead, we experience Michael’s possession as if it were the evolution of a degenerative disease. Degradation. Exhaustion. Darkness. Violence. Voices in his head that incite him to destroy everything that is good in his life. And all of this is served by Jung without great boasts of special effects, making fantastic use of the resources provided by found footage and without constantly resorting to the clichés of the genre. To the formula we add a couple or three perfectly planned and executed scares, the black humor of the first half of the film, and the commendable work of Shane Johnson, the actor who brings Michael King to life; and the end result is a winning horse you should bet on. Too bad that right at the end, in the last sequence of the film (in which Michael’s final destiny is decided), the very long shadow of The Exorcist appears again.
The satanic genre has always had its place within the horror filmography with its peak in the 70’s but, it is true, that recently it has been reborn with countless films about possessions, births, cults and other satanic entertainment (The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Requiem, The Haunting in Connecticut, The Possession of Emma Evans, etc.).
David Jung has chosen for his debut this hairy subject mixing it with a bit of Found Footage and Mockumentary. The result, at first glance, is a solid, well-produced and well put together product that will scare the viewer.
Michael King is a documentary filmmaker who believes in neither good nor evil. After the sudden death of his wife, he embarks on a project to search for and prove or disprove the existence of the supernatural. He will use himself as a propitiatory guinea pig for experiments by demonologists, witches and other practitioners of the occult. he will discover that evil will soon dwell within him and he does not intend to leave so easily.
