Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 psychological horror-drama is a visceral, unsettling exploration of what happens when love, trust, and identity disintegrate under the weight of human frailty and existential despair. It is the cinematic equivalent of staring into an abyss and realizing that—dear God—the abyss actually stares back.
Possession examines a universal human experience—the unraveling of a romantic partnership. Mark (Sam Neill) and Anna (Isabelle Adjani—this movie did nothing to tarnish the cinema crush I’ve had on her since childhood) are a married couple whose relationship has reached its breaking point. Mark, a spy—I guess?—returning from a mysterious mission, finds his wife emotionally and physically distant, her behavior growing increasingly erratic. What begins as a straightforward, though painful, narrative of infidelity escalates into a kaleidoscopic descent into surrealism, body horror, and psychological fragmentation. It begins with a divorce and ends with doppelgängers, tentacled monsters, and overtones of the apocalypse.
Żuławski’s somehow able to externalize the inner chaos of a failing marriage. The breakdown of communication between Mark and Anna is depicted through dialogue, silence, their erratic physicality, the oppressive spaces they inhabit, and the grotesque manifestations of their inner turmoil. Żuławski’s lens transforms their crumbling relationship into a battleground, where raw emotion erupts into violence, hysteria, and surrealism.
Let’s look at the infamous subway scene, where Anna suffers what can only be described as a seizure of the soul. Writhing, screaming, and smashing groceries against the walls of an empty tunnel, Adjani delivers a performance that defies categorization. Is this a mental breakdown? A spiritual exorcism? Or something even more primal? Żuławski offers no easy answers, and that’s precisely the point. The scene is not meant to be understood. Rather, I contend that it is most simply meant to be felt.
This is where Possession distinguishes itself from conventional narratives of marital disintegration. Żuławski uses the language of cinema itself—movement, color, framing, and sound—to communicate the incommunicable.
Possession is set against the backdrop of Cold War-era West Berlin, and boy howdy, the Berlin Wall looms large, both literally and metaphorically, serving as a constant reminder of division between East and West, between Mark and Anna, and within themselves. The city’s desolation mirrors the emotional desolation of our characters, while its history of surveillance and paranoia underscores the themes of mistrust and alienation.
This theme of division is further explored through the film’s use of doppelgängers. Anna’s lover is a tentacled monstrosity that she nurtures and eventually transforms into a replica of Mark. Meanwhile, Mark finds solace in Helen, a schoolteacher who is Anna’s physical double but possesses an angelic temperament—a stark contrast to Anna’s unraveling psyche. These doubles are projections of the characters’ desires and failures, their idealized selves and darkest fears.
The film itself makes no claim to any singular identity. Is it a psychological drama, a horror movie, or something entirely unclassifiable? This refusal to conform to genre conventions is its most alienating and its most compelling quality.
What elevates Possession from a fascinating experiment to a masterpiece is the alchemy of its technical elements. Bruno Nuytten’s cinematography captures the emotional claustrophobia of the characters, using crazy wide-angle lenses to distort space. The camera crawls, prowls, circles, and swoops, ably aping the characters’ emotional instability.
Andrzej Korzyński’s score oscillates between discordant tension and melancholic beauty, amplifying the film’s sense of unease. The creature effects by Carlo Rambaldi—Alien and E.T.—are grotesque and otherworldly, serving as a visceral reminder of the film’s descent into the subconscious. Of course, it should have been represented in our Lovecraft series last year. Would that I had seen the film back then.
Isabelle Adjani’s portrayal of Anna is nothing short of a tour de force. She captures the character’s madness with such ferocity and vulnerability that it becomes almost unbearable to watch. Sam Neill, in one of his earliest roles, provides a counterbalance as Mark, oscillating between stoic detachment and obsessive desperation. Thanks to their performances, Possession becomes something not so much about monsters or espionage or even infidelity. It is about the horror of intimacy—the way love can morph into possession, desire into destruction. Żuławski, who wrote the screenplay during his own divorce, infuses the film with an authenticity that makes its surreal elements deeply personal. The tentacled creature that Anna nurtures is a manifestation of her pain, her rage, her unmet desires. Similarly, Mark’s doppelgänger is the embodiment of his longing for control and his inability to reconcile the contradictions within himself and his relationship.
What makes Possession so enduringly compelling is its refusal to provide closure. The film ends with annihilation—an apocalyptic crescendo of violence, betrayal, and despair. Yet, within this darkness, there is a strange kind of beauty. Żuławski doesn’t shy away from the messiness of human emotion; he revels in it, showing us that even in our most monstrous moments, we are achingly, devastatingly human.