"No."
With little to offer that is not glimpsed in the trailer, apart from a fairly perfunctory exorcism at the end, The Possession is heavy on style but light on shocks or horror. The film sits comfortably with the 'golden age' of possession/evil spirit thrillers from the 70s and early 80s - notably The Omen, The Entity and even Poltergeist - to the extent that it treads a very well-worn narrative path that offers no real surprises. Making the evil spirit part of the Jewish tradition does not change the possession-subgenre tropes that are trudged through here, and there is even a nod to Paranormal Activity's episodic structure through cut-off sound giving way to a single piano note to set up the next event. Performances are variable: Jeffrey Dean Morgan gives the father genuine grounding and gravitas; Kyra Sedgwick's take on the mother is unusually overwrought here; the younger (and ultimately possessed) sister is effective, but the older sister is painfully blank. The film ends up being more of a sombre divorce-by-numbers melodrama rather than the shock-fest that it has been marketed as, worthily constructed but not too exciting to watch.
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