Sunday, February 3, 2013

The Posession

PG-13 horror movies are such a crap shoot, and most of them are just crap. The problem isn’t just with the level of gore required to get the teen-friendly rating; the problem is that most of the people making PG-13 horror movies have no idea what makes a horror movie good in the first place. They use the laziest tricks in the books – simple camera misdirection, obnoxiously loud music, editing quick enough to cause a seizure – to try and hid the fact that there’s nothing really scary happening up on the screen. Danish director Ole Bornedal is better than that. He not only knows how to build suspense -- the lifeblood of true horror – but has a sure hand in delivering the goods when it comes time to scare the audience. He is also smart enough to hire strong actors like Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick to anchor the story in the real world. Because of their performances as the parents, it’s a lot easier to believe the story of a young girl who becomes possessed by the spirits living inside a box she buys at a flea market.

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