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Possessor Leads Pack of Horror Movies You Can Now Stream

Written by JOHN W. ALLMAN

This was originally published in the RFT’s sister paper Creative Loafing.

Possessor: Uncut 4 stars, 103 minutes, Blu-Ray and streaming

Brandon ronenberg’s acclaimed cult director avid ronenberg’s son second film, and first since , is an uber violent descent into high tech madness that likely will surprise fans with its emo tional depth.

Possessor, which is now avail able uncut,” meaning all the gory goodness is intact, is a cyberpunk masterpiece about a corporate spy assassin, Tasya os ndrea iseborough , who is adept at us ing top secret technology to liter ally inhabit the body and mind of anyone her employer chooses. This cool trick isn’t without some very real conse uences, namely the risk that os might lose her sense of identity and possibly her life if she stays inside another per son for too long. t’s not surprising in the least that young ronenberg chooses to e plore comple medical and sci entific e periments as well as the fallout from people who play God. Such ideas are at the core of some of his father’s best work.

But, dare say, Brandon has the potential to e ceed his father’s legacy. Possessor is a high concept tightwire act done right. t’s thrill ing, devastating and bloody as hell.

See no evil, speak no evil, smell no evil. Such is life for the wonderfully odd characters in Girl with No Mouth. | INDIECAN ENTERTAINMENT

Anything for Jackson 4 stars, 97 minutes, Shudder

ne of the best festival films from is now available e clusively on the Shudder streaming plat form, and fans should not miss out. Anything for Jackson is thrill ing and subversive, a wonderfully askew take on the traditional sa tanic cult fare that dominated movie screens in the s and early s. t’s also packed with dread, legitimate scares and some of the most original ghost charac ters that we’ve seen in years.

Girl with No Mouth 3.5 stars, 97 minutes, streaming

The third film from Turkish di rector an vrenol, Girl with No Mouth, is a marked deviation from his previous work, Baskin and Housewife, but his distinct style and penchant for shocking bursts of violence remains intact. f not for that violence, Girl with No Mouth is the kind of fantasy fairy tale that would seem cus tom designed to educate children about the right ualities to imbue acceptance, loyalty and belief in oneself.

Set years after an incident at The orporation, the surviving residents of a small town grapple with debilitating birth defects that have left all children impaired. erihan lif Sevin was born without a mouth, and she covers the harsh scar tissue where her lips should be with a scarf.

When her father is killed by her uncle, who works for The orpo ration, erihan escapes and finds refuge with three other children, aptain eni han kbaba , u suf g r ivelek and orsuk aan lpdayi , who were born without eyes, a nose and ears, re spectively. magine Peter Pan if the Lost Boys were all dealing with physical de formities, yet they never stopped to complain or cry unfair. They just accepted what had happened and tried to make the best of it.

Girl with No Mouth is wonder fully bi arre and surprisingly heartfelt, and it provides further proof that vrenol is one of the most inventive and original direc tors working today.

Parallel 3 stars, 104 minutes, streaming

’ve said it before, but it bears re peating Time travel is one of the most difficult film genres when it comes to sticking the landing be cause there’s just so much pres sure on a filmmaker to be dis ciplined and precise enough to follow their own established rules. There’s a reason why years af ter Back to the Future, people still point to that film as being one of the gold standards for time travel done right.

Parallel, the latest from direc tor saac ban, deals more spe cifically with alternate, parallel universes, but it still falls within the same framework. n ban’s movie, four techy friends and app developers discover a magical mir ror that serves as a portal to a mir ror world that is similar, but not e actly so, to our own reality.

While enjoyed Parallel, and appreciated that ban chose to e plore some new ethical issues outside of the basic crib the lot tery numbers and become a mil lionaire” e ploits that usually form the core of such movies, still wanted more, especially in the too neat and tidy third act. Parallel does get major props for consider ing the ramifications of what might happen if you literally swapped a person from one reality to another without their knowledge. f ban had focused more on such lofty hypotheticals and less on creating distinct villains and protagonists, Parallel might have been an instant cult classic. s it is, though, it’s definitely worth your time to rent and enjoy.

Black Pumpkin 1 star, 91 minutes, streaming

While imitation may be a form of flattery, ’m curious where in tellectual theft falls on the scale when it comes to a first time di rector basically taking another artist’s work and repurposing it as their own.

Writer director yan cGonagle doesn’t so much steal the entire con struct of ichael ougherty’s classic Trick ‘r Treat, as he just bla

Leena (Georgia King) discovers a portal to an alt-dimension in Parallel. | VERTICAL ENTERTAINMENT

tantly copies large chunks of Dougherty’s movie, right down to its iconic, evil imp, Sam. In Black Pumpkin, McGonagle gives viewers his own iteration, called Bloody Bobby, who terrorizes different groups of children and adults and exacts gory vengeance when they fail to follow the rules of Halloween.

Sound familiar? It should.

McGonagle’s movie even includes an extended sequence with a young boy who ignores all the warnings about checking his candy before eating, which completely rips off an identical scene from Trick ‘r Treat.

The Devil’s Heist 0 stars, 79 minutes, DVD and streaming

Imagine if you got your friends together and decided to make a movie about a trio of inept bank robbers who decide to literally steal from the devil by robbing the bank where Old Scratch keeps all his money?

It probably wouldn’t matter whether any of those friends could, you know, actually act. And it probably wouldn’t matter that your special effects budget was limited to a pair of fake horns and some black greasepaint to make the devil’s eyes appear sunken in his skull. But it should matter, especially when you’re charging $13 for a DVD, $8 for a digital purchase or $2 to rent.

In fact, there should be hell to pay if you knowingly release a movie that never should have been seen outside of an at-home viewing party for the cast and crew.

Also available as of December 8:

Pink Floyd: Delicate Sound of Thunder Turn down the lights, dig out your magic mushrooms and revel in this cinematic concert experience by one of the best bands of all time, now available to stream.

Arthur & Merlin: Knights of Camelot The umpteenth telling of King Arthur’s adventures, which gets a boost from Richard Brake (Game of Thrones) as Merlin, is now available to stream or buy on DVD.

Hawaii Five-O: The Complete

Series The CBS procedural machine produced this tepid remake of your father’s favorite show from the ’70s, and now you can buy the entire series on a deluxe, 60-disc set just in time for the holidays.

Collateral 4K Ultra-HD Tom Cruise and Michael Mann, in glorious 4K? Get your copy now.

Raining in the Mountain This 1979 Asian cinema classic gets a proper Blu-Ray release from Film Movement. n

John W. Allman has spent more than 25 years as a professional journalist and writer, but he’s loved movies his entire life. Good movies, awful movies, movies that are so gloriously bad you can’t help but champion them. Since 2009, he has cultivated a review column and now a website dedicated to the genre films that often get overlooked and interviews with cult cinema favorites like George A. Romero, Bruce Campbell and Dee Wallace. Contact him at Blood Violence and Babes.com, on Facebook @BloodViolenceBabes or on Twitter @BVB_reviews.