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| Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill in Possession |
As if the story of a woman possessed by ... something weren't enough, Andrzej Zulawski tells it with such feverish restlessness that Possession exhausts the audience well before its frenzied climax. Two men can't have a conversation without at least one of them bobbing and weaving or swiveling in a desk chair. Yet somehow this most hyperactive of horror movies makes its impact, putting its leads, Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill, through hell. To what point other than touching a viewer's every nerve? The Berlin setting, smack up against the Wall, suggests a political subtext reflected in the apocalyptic ending, and the dialogue is riddled with references to God and Faith and Chance, but I tend to think that in this case the mannerism is the message.