The Possession - Scary exorcism since The Exorcist

Review:
I went into the cinema with some expectation especially after reviewing this movie trailer just a week before the opening. For the past few months, i always had the impression that this movie is going to be the same old exorcism movie - weak, predictable, same scary moments, and i might say boring script with many influences of religion-type script involving a priest like the Rite, The Last Exorcism and Emily Rose. While movies like The Rite and The Devil Inside are a complete waste of time, there are some movie that tries to breakout from that genre like Exorcism of Emily Rose and The Last Exorcism which are slightly better but still miles behind of the brilliant The Exorcist. However after viewing the movie trailer, it shows a glimpse of promises and i decided to check it for myself. The movie is based upon true events about an antique box that kept spirits called "dybbuk" and this movie screenplay is based revolving this box. It involves a to be divorced couples - Clyde (Jeffery Dean Morgan), Stephanie Brenek (Kyra Sedgwick) and their 2 daughters - Em (Natasha Calis) and Hannah (Madison Davenport). Em stumble upon the antique box during a yard sale and began to have change in behavior such as possessive, burst of violence, rude and etc. As with similar exorcism movie, the father- Clyde notices the changes and decided to search for the root cause and this led him to suspect the haunted box. He decided to get help from a priest (this time a Jewish one) to help with the exorcism. As you can see, the script and storyline is nothing special nor complex. In fact, the movie storyline is easy to follow. So does this movie falls under the "waste of time " category? Unfortunately or rather fortunately no. It performs better than my expectation and some of the scenes are scary. The scary scenes are complimented by a very suspense background music. Scenes such as Em checking her throat, scavenging and eating raw meat from the refrigerator at night, poking the food with her fork and the scenes at the morgue are some truly scary moments. Unfortunately some of the scenes are also rather incoherent and cut off abruptly and change to another new scenes without a complete closure of the previous clip. It makes us felt that the scenes are there just for scary moments to viewers and nothing else. The acting are mediocre except for Natasha Calis playing Em whom i felt is quite good. With not much usage of any CGI nor cheap scary moments, this movie excels in being a really realistic scary exorcism movie that i felt could rival The Exorcist if they could just spare some few minutes in the editing parts for the in-between scenes.    

Verdict:

I give this a 4 out of 5 star.