Signature Entertainment, available now

A secret organization uses brain implant technology to inhabit other people’s bodies, ultimately driving them to commit assassinations for high-paying clients.

Arriving with a bunch of festival awards, Brandon (son of David) Cronenberg’s sci-fi thriller manages to shock in its bleakness and excess, but ultimately does it have anything to say beyond ‘don’t mess with science’?

Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough, Mandy) is a possessor – someone who is implanted into the psyche of a would-be assassin. Her current job finishes with a glitch – she can’t convince the assassin to commit suicide after the hit – and although tests by her boss Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dolores Claiborne) suggest that she has successfully detached herself, she’s not quite herself. The next job involves entering Colin Tate (Christopher Abbott, It Comes at Night), boyfriend of Ava, who in turn is daughter of wealthy businessman Sean Bean. It’s all going well until Vos starts losing control of her subject, resulting in a botched assassination attempt. And then Tate turns the tables on her.

It’s a gruesome 100 minutes, each assassination a bloodbath of repeated, frenzied stabs. It’s a grim use of sophisticated technology, and maybe that’s ultimately the point here – some things are best left alone. We don’t feel anything for Vos as her world is upended – she is an assassin after all – and our sympathies lie with her butchered family who were oblivious to her trade.

Verdict: A vicious warning  to keep out of people’s heads. If this is how the top tech of the future will be adopted, we’re all doomed. 8/10

 

Possessor is on digital platforms 27 November from Signature Entertainment