The Cronenberg family business
With trippy new horror Possessor, Brandon Cronenberg is following in his famous father’s footsteps — while forging his own petrifying path
STUCK FOR INSPIRATION this Hallowe’en? Go see Possessor. Brandon Cronenberg’s startling new horror features a mask so frightening, and so instantly iconic, it makes Leatherface’s look like a bratwurst balaclava. “I kept that prop from the set,” the director laughs down from the phone from Toronto. “And I’m wearing it right now as I talk to you…”
Exploring parasitical technology and featuring eye-frying practical FX, it’s as if Cronenberg’s picked up where his father, body-horror royalty David Cronenberg, left off with his last great weird-out, 1999’s existenz. (Even Jennifer Jason Leigh is cast in both.) We have to ask: is dad a creative influence? “Yeah, in the sense that he literally created me,” he laughs. “I have a good relationship with my father, but it’s not like we sit around talking about body horror. People on the outside are always going to make comparisons, but my films are an honest expression of my own obsessions.”
In fact, Possessor’s influences are far more eclectic: the 40-year-old credits Sidney Lumet’s The Offence, Troma mad-scientist horror Nightmare Weekend and Dario Argento’s Opera as touchstones. The latter especially: Possessor’s unflinching violence, courtesy of British FX maestro Dan Martin, will test the nerves of the most hardened gorehound. “But it had to be explicit,” Cronenberg argues. “The violence is so important: it’s a visceral reflection of [lead character] Voss’ trauma.” Eight years after his directorial debut Antiviral, Cronenberg’s mind-fuck follow-up doesn’t so much get under the skin as drill through the bone and worm its way into your skull. Exactly, in fact, like its antagonist, Tasya Voss. Played by an icy Andrea Riseborough, Possessor follows her hitwomanfor-hire as she hijacks her targets via brain implant, takes over their body and uses them as hosts to carry out assassinations for a shadowy corporation. When a routine hit goes south, Voss finds herself trapped inside the body of a data-miner (Christopher Abbott) who refuses to surrender his identity. Cue a war of the psyches that plays like an ultraviolent
The Manchurian Candidate, or Face/off remade as ‘Brain/off’.
“After hearing about Elon Musk’s experiments with brain implants in pigs, I think we’re closer to an era of mind-control than we think,” says Cronenberg. Cerebral, deadpan with a dry, dark wit, the director is every bit his father’s son in conversation, but he’s quick to point out that the shoot itself was far from a nightmare. “It’s a misconception that filming horror is scary or dangerous,” he says. “The shoot was a light, warm, wonderful blur. When you’re pouring lube into an undulating flesh tube late at night, you can’t help but laugh at how ridiculously fun horror can be.”
As for what’s next, Cronenberg has two self-penned films primed for production (“I’m still deciding between Infinity Pool, a Ballardian tourist resort satire, or a space horror called Dragon”), but for the time being, submit your soul to Possessor and one of horror’s most exciting new voices. To paraphrase the tag of a certain Cronenberg classic: expect your nerves to be frayed, be very frayed…