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Category:    Home > Reviews > Horror > Supernatural > Demons > The Possession Of Michael King (2014/Anchor Bay/Starz! DVD)

The Possession Of Michael King (2014/Anchor Bay/Starz! DVD)


Picture: B- Sound: B Extras: D Film: C-



If you invite it in, it will never let go.


Another entry in the Found Footage Possession sub-genre of current horror, comes The Possession Of Michael King - which is also the directorial debut of David Jung.


After his beloved wife Samantha (Cara Pifko) dies after receiving poor advice from a psychic, atheist Michael (Shane Johnson) decides to focus on the supernatural for his next film as a way to disprove the existence of God and the Devil. He chooses to achieve this by visiting various people and having them perform various spells and rituals on him. He begins with Beverly (Dale Dickey), the psychic that was partially at fault for Samantha's death and from there ends up in various different scenarios, all of which involve the supernatural. However, even as Michael does this in the hopes of reaffirming his own atheism, he ends up becoming the focus of several dark, supernatural forces that are intent on exerting their influence on him. Soon, he's trying to kill his young daughter and being generally creepy (along with disjointed body movement just like The Grudge.)


For the film, Jung drew inspiration from the character of Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance from the 1980 Kubrick classic The Shining. He noticed that The Shining and similar movies that dealt with demonic possession did not tell the story from the viewpoint of the possessed person, and thought that it would be interesting to shift the film's view point to the possessed person which was also achieved in the superior and recent Sony film Grace: The Possession (which I recently reviewed and is elsewhere on this site) - only this time it's a male and not a female perspective.


Unlike Grace: The Possession though, this film isn't constantly in POV but is a mixture of traditional and found footage filmmaking. One annoying aspect to the film that I didn't like was that it kept flashing back to peaceful times with his wife and daughter in home movie format. And the ending makes little to no sense. Some of the cinematography and special effects aren't terribly conceived and it has some interesting ideas though. By no means a cult classic, this film is worthy of a one time rental.


Sound and Picture are of a high standard for DVD but missing the quality that Blu-ray disc has to offer, though it has also been issued in that format. The film is presented in standard definition with an anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1. A lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 track accompanies along with English and Spanish subtitles.


No extras on the disc whatsoever but our version of the DVD comes with a cool 3-D Lenticular case featuring the film's exceptional poster art.



- James Harland Lockhart V

https://www.facebook.com/jamesharlandlockhartv



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