Why Feminist Horror Writers Are (Mostly) Unhappy About the Possession Remake

In an age defined in large part by studios with a ravenous craving for remakes, prequels, and reboots, the news that Robert Pattinson and Smile director Parker Finn have begun developing a Possession remake may not feel altogether surprising. Yet this particular remake’s announcement in July, which Finn teased again in an interview with SFX Magazine, was met with a visceral reaction from the horror community, sparking pushback from fans for whom this kind of recycling is typically more comfortable. What is it about Possession that draws such an intense reaction?

To begin with, of course, fans of the original are feeling, well, possessive. “The entire thing just rubs me the wrong way on this nebulous, existential level,” admitted film critic Chloé Harper Gold. Possession wasn’t always this beloved. A 1981 French-West German co-production helmed by Polish auteur Andrzej Żuławski, it wasn’t at all successful on its initial release, earning mixed reviews and paltry box office returns. Subsequently, though, this metaphysical quasi-art film about a couple (played by Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani) in the midst of an apocalyptic breakup has been reclaimed as a cult classic. Feminist critics in particular cite Adjani’s moving performance as Anna, a woman whose secrets and ambitions take her far beyond the bounds of gender, as well as her marriage, as hallmarks of the horror genre. And then there are the laws of Possession‘s reality — if men in this film are from Mars, women may be from Venus, but that’s before the squid enters the picture….

A Story Of Its Time

When it comes to a remake, critics and scholars have noted the original film’s unique status as a product of a particular time and place as one significant potential drawback. For one thing, the production was loaded with generation-defining talents behind the camera as well as in front of it. For example, the film’s creature was designed by Carlo Rambaldi, the special effects genius who created the head effects of Ridley Scott’s H.R. Geiger-designed xenomorph. The film’s message, too, revolves around its hyper-specific geopolitical context. In 1981, The New York Times complained that Possession, with its multinational cast and crew, made Berlin seem like “a giant camp for displaced actors.” But the film’s milieu has only added to its power over time. 

“The fact that the original was made during the Cold War with the Berlin Wall in the background, and the story is about an insurmountable divide in a relationship, I just don’t know if it will have the same impact in a remake,” remarked Ariel Powers-Schaub, horror critic and author of Millennial Nasties: Analyzing a Decade of Brutal Horror Film Violence. The film’s adroit use of the Berlin Wall was indeed a fundamental part of its highly topical political message at the time — scenes of detentes between Anna and her husband Mark, a spy recently returned from across enemy lines, are often punctuated by long shots of soldiers watching through binoculars from the crows nests, lending the already cosmic story of gendered discord new allegorical depth in a world constantly teetering on the brink of nuclear war. This detail is made particularly poignant given Żuławski’s status as an expat struggling with his displacement from his native Poland. 

source: Limelight International

The highly specific political ferment of Cold War Berlin has already proven difficult for modern horror directors to make resonant. Luca Guadagnino’s 2019 remake of another Berlin-set classic of the period, Suspiria, was criticized for muddling its message with “dead-end references … to German politics” that Manohla Dargis in The New York Times described as “futile, nonsensical … emblem[s] of meaning by (hoped for) association.” With this in mind, it would take a new political angle to justify the reconstitution of Żuławski’s potent and personal metaphor. 

A Production Of Its Time

The original Possession carries with it a similarly complex, occasionally painful production history, adding to its uniqueness as a feminist object in particular. “Isabelle Adjani’s performance… is one of the bravest, most devastating acting feats in any horror movie, and it nearly killed her,” wrote professor Johanna Isaacson, author of Stepford Daughters: Weapons for Feminists in Contemporary Horror, when approached for this article. “Filming this movie gave her PTSD, and … Żuławski’s methods of getting this performance out of her were profoundly unethical.” Adjani has subsequently described her experiences on that set as “violence” something she “could never accept again.” Her treatment was so extreme — inhospitable hours, shouting matches, and physical violence (Sam Neill told The Independent that being forced to slap his co-star was “the most distressing thing [he’d] ever done”) — the actress reportedly attempted suicide after filming was completed.

Unlike others interviewed for this article who opposed a remake, professor Isaacson indicated that it was precisely this history of violence that makes the film ripe for a potential reimagining under the right circumstances. “A remake could make for an interesting dialogue or dialectic [because] woman actors have a lot more agency now,” she argued, suggesting actresses like Mia Goth and Lupita Nyong’o as good choices to play the lead role.

source: Limelight International

Gold cited a similar set of potential challenges around respecting the delicate history of the original, highlighting its recent renewed popularity not as a film but as a social media phenomenon. “From the outside, [the remake] looks like an attempt to ride the wave of Possession’s recent ascent to meme status,” she said. “When you consider how raw and personal the film was to not only Zuławski but to Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill, a remake feels disrespectful. People take stills and clips of the film — particularly of the subway station miscarriage — and pair it with captions like, ‘Hope this email finds you well; How the email found me.’ Most of the people who share those memes have never even seen Possession. They don’t recognize and appreciate Isabelle Adjani’s masterful performance. They just see an unhinged woman having a violent mental breakdown.” 

source: Limelight International

With this in mind, Finn’s statement that he wants his remake to be “completely bonkers” and stay “true to [the original’s] absolute frenzied, manic ferocity” could be read as a potential affirmation of this anxiety. At the same time, modern audiences seem be more receptive than those who criticized the actors’ studied anti-naturalism in ’81, and even this decontextualization speaks to how uniquely compelling the original is on its terms, suggesting that a remake wouldn’t necessarily capture the work’s appeal.

Conclusion

Even among those less staunchly against a remake, some have suggested that Finn might not be the right director for the deft maneuvering such a metaphysically loaded, overtly arthouse “bonkers” project could entail. Isaacson named Coralie Fargeat, Julia Ducournau, Jane Schoenbrun, and Rose Glass as directors with feminist bona fides better suited to the task. Some were more direct in this critique: “For a narrative that’s inherently feminist, I don’t want to see a remake in the hands of a man,” wrote Avery Coffey, host of Unbound & Rewound Horror Podcast. “Having a woman or other person from a marginalized community direct the film … or finding a particular social … event that could tie in with the themes of the original” could “elevate or give new perspective to the original work,” film critic Tori Potenza agreed. “[It’s] unfortunate that studios continuously feel the need [to remake older films], especially when we see so many really unique horror films coming out of studios like Neon and A24.”

Making this gendered dynamic even more obvious, a women horror director has already recreated the most iconic scene from Possession, the subway miscarriage, earlier this year: Arkasha Stevenson’s The First Omen plays this moment, virtually unchanged, in full, drawing on several other occult horror films of the period to tell her overtly political tale of feminist rage and chauvinistic clerical hypocrisy as a stinging indictment of the post-Dobbs era. With feminist films like this one, alongside others like Coralie Fargeat’s feminist body horror film The Substance, the crew developing the Possession remake will have to work overtime to make their retelling worthy not only of the singular vision of the original, but the fierce talent already present in the feminist horror film landscape.