Review: 'Possessor' is a violent and mind-twisting thriller about identity, sex and bloody murder

With his second feature, the mind-twisting and relentless thriller “Possessor,” writer-director Brandon Cronenberg shows that the razor-filled apple doesn’t fall far from the twisted tree — his father, the legendary horror director David Cronenberg.

The younger Cronenberg seems to share some of his dad’s interest in body-horror suspense, and he wraps that gory tension around a thriller that explores the madness of messing with one’s identity.

The science-fiction premise Cronenberg imagines here is a smart one, even if it sounds akin to Christopher Nolan’s “Inception.” Tasya Vox, played by Andrea Riseborough, is an assassin with a special technique: Using machinery set up by a shadowy syndicate, Tasya can insert her consciousness into another person’s body, and use that person to get close enough to the mark to kill. Cronenberg sets up the premise with an efficiently brutal example, when Tasya takes over the body of a hostess (Gabrielle Graham) to murder a bigwig, then dissolves the link to make the hostess a patsy when the cops arrive.

Even in this prologue, Cronenberg leaves clues that Tasya is getting too good at this work, and is taking risks to make it fun for her. For example, though she arranged for her hostess to use a pistol in the killing, Tasya opts to dispatch her mark with a steak knife, stabbing him gleefully and repeatedly.

After that job, Tasya protests to her boss (Jennifer Jason Leigh) that she needs time off to reconnect with her estranged husband, Michael (Rossif Sutherland, son of Donald) and their boy, Ira (Gage Graham-Arbuthnot). But the boss has a big job ahead — and she needs her best killer, Tasya, on the job.

The new mark is Jonathan Parse (Sean Bean), founder of a major tech company that’s data-mining vast amounts of the country. The person Tasya must inhabit to pull off this assassination is Colin Tate (Christopher Abbott), the put-upon boyfriend of Parse’s daughter, Ava (Tuppence Middleton). Tasya’s mission is to get inside Colin’s head, make him look like a disgruntled future son-in-law, then kill Jonathan and Ava. The glitch in the plan comes when Tasya has trouble keeping her personality separate from Colin’s, and vice versa.

Cronenberg makes the future-imperfect technology appear plausible, and thinks through the ramifications of such ego-shredding brain manipulation. He also deploys a trippy visual palette to make Tasya’s identity struggle come to vibrant, unsettling life. It’s not for the squeamish, with copious amounts of blood spilled and some raw sex scenes. (The movie is cleverly being marketed as “Possessor Uncut,” though I can’t find any evidence that the film, which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, has been exhibited in any “cut” form.)

Behind the spectacle, though, are a linked pair of sharp performances by Riseborough and Abbott, who are essentially playing the same characters, in one way or another. Their mounting confusion over who they are — Colin or Vasya or something else entirely — keeps the tension of “Possessor” like a tightrope all the way to the unsettling finale.

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‘Possessor’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, October 2, at Megaplex Valley Fair (West Valley City), Megaplex Legacy Crossing (Centerville), Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy), Megaplex at The District (The District), and Megaplex Thanksgiving Point (Lehi). Not rated, but probably R for strong sexuality, violence and gore, and language. Running time: 104 minutes.