The Possession Experiment (2016) Reviews

• Decent film marred by horrendous acting and uneven direction

  manuelasaez2016-10-16

  Let me start off by saying that I have never seen a more uneven film in my entire life. The movie starts off fairly competent; a girl is possessed, and we witness the events that transpire during her exorcism. The director did a great job giving the scene a nice, gritty aesthetic, with some great shots in and around the house that resembled a stylish music video. Once the first scene is set up, the nose dive in quality is so abrupt, I really have no idea how they could have ruined this movie to such a drastic degree. After the exorcism, the movie continues in a college classroom, with some of the worst acting by a professor I have ever witnessed. Gone is the music video aesthetic, as the movie now more closely resembles an amateur porn shot on an iPhone 4. There is no more stylized direction, as the movie now takes a more "found-footage" approach of poor direction, even worse acting, and some questionable dialogue that is pulled off with the skill of a community theater reject cast. The movie jumps between the "possession house" and the school/street several times throughout its run time, and I just can't fathom how the director could be this schizophrenic with his directorial decisions. It almost seems like two people directed this movie; one was talented and did all of the shots inside the "possession house", using creative vision, talent and an understanding of basic horror filmography. The other lacked any such qualities, refusing to showcase any ability or tact, and was tasked to handle any scene not in the house. It was quite jarring when you watch the film and the quality has such disparate highs and lows, and I really wish that the director took a step back and realized that he really should have aimed to have a consistent aesthetic throughout. Then there is the acting; these people cannot act. The protagonist appeared to constantly forget his lines, the side kick was a joke, and all of the adults had the acting chops of a porn film extra. It was bad. I have never seen a film where bad acting does not immediately ruin the overall experience, but unfortunately, this continues the trend. I really wish that nepotism and friendships took a backseat to actually hiring people who will help you realize your vision. Some people should not be allowed to act, ever. This movie proves this in spades. Overall, this film has me at a crossroads. On one side, I liked how the film looked inside the house. The creative vision was well realized, and even with the bad acting, it made the movie at least visually appealing. But anything outside of the house was simply horrendous. This movie jumps between being a good B movie to being a horrid D movie too often to get a real, definitive score, so I'll just give it a 5 for the sole fact that I made it all the way to the end without falling asleep. It deserves at least that much.

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• Felt like a YouTube video

  helsaygh2016-09-24

  A little spoiling here and there Movie downs 1)The movie started off with the protagonist studying (brandon). He leaves the room and meets this really high guy. They get high and OMG LOL. They're BFFs now. 2)The camera work was trash, it looked like a highschool assignment. 3)There's two scenes in particular that were especially trash, involving the mother kicking out the son with this weird look at the light like a Mexican soap opera, the other scene with the father randomly telling this kid his entire reality in one scene. The escalation wasn't there and neither was the excitement... 4)The protagonist's acting gets progressively worse. 5)We meet a medicine student who is in this kid's experiment to test his vitals and as you expected they fall in love and have sex. way too predictable. 6)The devil's intention isn't exactly stated which makes it a very blank villain. 7)They repeated the bashing head against glass thing way too many times. 8)They start a gofundme page where the reward for $10 is a livestream of this kid's experiment lone and behold it made its goal perfectly 10,000/10,000 at that exact moment they checked. 9)The ending was strange to say the least the last policeman hesitates for some reason? Ups 1)The girl's hot. 2)Genuine twist at the end

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• Pinocchio is less wooden than these actors

  CraigHollands2016-10-13

  When "The Possession Experiment" opened i was greeted with a film which appeared to have some form of production value, this was a lie, as i think most of the budget must have been spent on that one scene, that single scene gave me hope, hope that was eventually possessed by the devil himself and subsequently destroyed, the actors were wooden and their characters were two dimensional, and i felt the "twist" was underwhelming, i also don't understand what happened with the editing and cinematography as at some points i was like "wow that was shot really well" then 80-90% was poorly edited and the lighting was just awful, i am now currently in mid seance as i type out this review, conducting an experiment to be possessed myself so i can forget about what i have just watched.

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• A redundant addition to the exorcism movie genre

  antoniokowatsch2016-10-15

  The title has caught my interest but as soon as the movie started rolling I immediately regretted my decision. Granted, the first scene (the possession scene) was actually quite good but everything that follows is just the exact opposite. The acting in particular can only be described as otherworldly (and not in the positive way). The scene where the protagonist has a "serious conversation" with his mother is one of those scenes that were so bad that I literally cringed. It definitely reminded me of the acting in the movie "The Room". Other than that the movie definitely had its scary moments. But sadly they were overshadowed by the bad acting performances, I'm afraid.

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• Exorcise this film...

  stephenabell2017-03-15

  It appears to me, that at this moment in time, writers and directors are struggling to portray a decent horror story. This is another of those films that should have been much better. Once again it's a nice idea - A theology student decides to do his thesis on Exorcism, though while investigating he has the idea of getting an entity to possess him and then carry out an exorcism online. You know things are going to go wrong, though the main thing that went wrong with this movie was the acting and the directing. Though, for the opening sequence, which is a flashback with Bill Moseley as Father Mark Campbell trying to exorcise a demon from the body of a woman, it pretty good. I even settled down to enjoy the movie. Not long into the second scene where we're introduced to Brandon Jensen, it becomes evident that the atmosphere previously built up has disappeared. Worst still, it never comes back. It's as if there are two directors working on this film instead of just Scott B Hansen. All the flashback sequences are the best if they'd kept the same grimy dark atmosphere this would have been a better film. Bill Moseley is, by far, the best thing about this film (shame he's not in it too long), and he outshines all of the other actors. The actors struggle to make their characters believable, even likable, most of the time the come across as flat and uninteresting. The direction suffers from the hit-and-miss with creating and holding tension as well as managing action scenes credibly. Though I know Hansen can do it, as the flashbacks are evidence to. Not sure why the other sections of the film fail. Not worth watching unless you're into exorcism and there's nothing on telly.

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