The Possession

Don’t have a lot of strong opinions about this. It’s a low-budget, PG-13 creep fest that adeptly maneuvers through all of the well-worn clichés of a “child possessed” movie. Efforts to make it unique by making it the “Jewish Exorcism” are successful, in that it’s a slightly different spin on the familiar tale. There are no embarrassingly bad moments, but nothing trail-blazingly original, either. (I laughed several times when the demonic girl screamed, "Don't touch my box, daddy! No one touches my box but ME!") Religious stuff tends to be really scary to some. God, the devil, demons, and spirits remind people about their mortality, which is innately terrifying. But in terms of a movie plot, the spiritual hullabaloo can always be resolved by the simple reading of some book or incantation. Story-wise it’s kind of anticlimactic but cinematically there’s always plenty of set dressing askew and child vomit to be mopped up.