POSSESSION Limited Dual Edition Box Set (1981) Review
POSSESSION Limited Dual Edition Box Set (1981) Review
POSSESSION is a complete mind-fuck of a movie, a full-on assault of your senses and A FILM that just must be seen to be believed. Unconventional and unsettling POSSESSION will leave you gasping, with plenty to pontificate about after. By turns irritating, violent, uncompromising, overwrought, over-the-top, hysterical, chaotic it goes beyond mere celluloid and is as close to art as the medium gets. It is a film to be studied and scrutinised, a film that reveals more with each successive viewing. This is art house horror at its best and deserving of its growing cult reputation. It will also continue to divide opinion as it did do at its initial Cannes screening. There is no in-between here, you will either love POSSESSION or hate it.
Isabelle Adjani is outstanding, a tour-de-force as both Anna and Helen. In fact, it is difficult to recall any female actor who gives themselves so fully to a role. She deservedly won the Best Actress at that year’s Cannes Film Festival (for both this and Quartet) as well as at the French César for the same category. It is unsurprising to learn that Adjani said that it took her several years to get over playing the role. Sam Neill matches Adjani completely, as her on-screen husband Mark, and often gets overlooked in the praise lavished on this film.
So, what is it all about? Hmmm…well let us give you a plot overview, without spoiling too much, and let you have a watch and figure it out for yourselves. Mark returns from a secretive business trip away and fast learns that what he considered to be a happy marriage to his wife Anna is far from it. In fact, Anna would like a divorce. Mark’s reaction is akin to a full-on emotional breakdown. He wants to know why Anna has come to this conclusion and an exasperated Anna is unwilling to provide them aside from that confirming she has found someone else.
Mark finds out that Anna is seeing a camp, dramatic individual called Heinrich, who lives with his elderly mother. However, not all in Mark’s life is painted black. His mood perks up, and that is not all that perks up, when he meets their child Bob’s teacher Helen. You see, Helen just happens to look like his bonkers missus Anna but one hair tug later, to confirm Helen’s not wearing a wig, and Mark is all smiles and starts a relationship with Bob’s teacher.
In the meantime, Anna’s behaviour becomes increasingly more bizarre and one private investigation into her whereabouts reveals that she has been visiting a derelict building and having sexy time with a revolting looking creature. From that point on matters become more bloodied and bizarre for Mark, Anna, and Heinrich and very confusing and surreal for the viewer. But stick with it, because, if you are open to it, this is one hell of a trip.
Following his self-imposed exile from Poland director Andrzej Żuławski produced the idea for POSSESSION whilst dealing with a stressful divorce. If the situations acted out between Adjani and Neill in the movie are any reflection of that – boy, do you NEVER want to get divorced! The bitterness in Żuławski’s writing is never more apparent than in the character of the second (human) lover Heinrich (Heinz Bennent); a manifestation of all the qualities the director disliked in a person.
Żuławski doesn’t lose sight of the fact that as fractured as the central relationship is we are constantly reminded that the country Mark and Helen are living in, Germany, is too split in this case by the Berlin Wall (the film was released seven years prior to the Wall coming down). This is indicative of the many layers of which the director’s film has, reminding you that nothing here is to be taken just at face value but to be analysed and dissected too.
Special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi created the tentacled beastie/lover in a very short time and with little money at his disposal; a complete contrast to the weeks and weeks he had at his disposal, plus far more money, on Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Rambaldi’s results are quite stunning considering time and budgetary limitations and the tentacled beastie still looks good now.
The main talking point when it comes to viewing POSSESSION is the subway scene featuring Adjani. It is stunning, brilliantly acted and entirely unexpected. At the start of the scene, she appears deliriously happy, if a tad unhinged before grunting, screaming, and throwing both herself and her shopping around before…well, you will see. There is no spoon feeding here; the viewer is left to decide just what is going on till it is finally revealed in quite the grossest fashion.
Although it secured a limited theatrical run in the UK it was later banned upon its retail release as a ‘Video Nasty’, although never prosecuted, and heavily cut for its US release (down to ninety-seven minutes from its original two hours). A film this unique is difficult to pigeon-hole and subsequently it was mis-sold on its release as an out-and-out horror movie which led to its subsequent failure at the American box office.
POSSESSION may not make any sense but it damn sure grips as it runs the full gamut of emotions in a way that makes other flicks feel undercooked. It may disturb – you may consider it trash, but it is undeniably powerful stuff and deserves to be viewed, nonetheless. In a world where many films produced are safe and formulaic POSSESSION shows that cinema can also be art and provoke debate.
Andrzej Żuławski’s seminal ‘POSSESSION’ starring Isabelle Adjani & Sam Neill set for Limited Dual Edition Box Set release on 15 December 2025.
Special Features
A new Producer approved 4K restoration presented in HDR with Dolby Vision
Dual format 3-disc edition including 1 UHD and 2 Blu-rays with main feature and bonus features on both formats.
The North American Re-edit: newly restored from an archive print.
New Audio Commentary by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Alison Taylor
Audio Commentary by Director Andrzej Żuławski moderated by Daniel Bird
Audio Commentary by Frederic Tuten moderated by Daniel Bird
New Audio Commentary by Daniel Bird and Manuela Lazic (The North American Re-edit)
The Horror of Normality: Guillermo del Toro on POSSESSION
The Shadow We Carry: Kat Ellinger on POSSESSION
Repossessed: The Film’s UK and US Reception
Andrzej Żuławski: Director: archive documentary
A Divided City: The Berlin locations
The Sounds of POSSESSION: an interview with Composer Andrzej Korzynski
Our Friend in the West: an interview with Producer Christian Ferry
Basha: a featurette on poster artist Barbara ‘Basha’ Baranowska
The Other Side of The Wall: The Making of POSSESSION
Archive interview with Andrzej Żuławski.
Deleted Scenes
Theatrical Trailer
Limited Edition Contents
Rigid slipcase with Basha’s original theatrical artwork
220-page hardback book with new essays by Daniel Bird, Elena Lazic, and Alison Taylor, ‘The Creature: Preliminary Sketches’, ‘Filming POSSESSION’, ‘The Poster of POSSESSION’, pressbook feature, archive articles, and interviews and Behind the Scenes gallery
211-page original shooting script book with notes by Andrzej Żuławski and Frederic Tuten
Six collectors’ art cards
