Not too many scares to be had in 'Possessed'

Not too many scares to be had in 'Possessed'

By Tam Notosusanto

JAKARTA (JP): The film trailer says it all. A rainy night with
thunder and lightning. A youngster in bed, writhing, as he is
shaken about by unseen, demonic forces. Cryptic signs appearing
on his body. Priests shoving crosses in his face as they
furiously recite spells. There's no doubt about it, this movie
looks like a futile attempt to remake The Exorcist.

Possessed, however, does not wish to be the 21st century
version of the 1973 horror classic. The reason the two films look
similar is because they are both based on an actual incident that
took place in America in the 1950s. The difference is William
Peter Blatty fictionalized the events in a novel, which he soon
turned into the Oscar-winning screenplay that William Friedkin
directed.

The filmmakers of Possessed chose to stay true to the facts.
The movie is adapted from the book Possessed: The True Story of
an Exorcism by Thomas B. Allen. The book documents the events
surrounding the attempts by priests to free a young boy's soul
from evil spirits.

While in The Exorcist it is a 12-year-old girl (played by
Linda Blair) who is taken hostage by the devil, Possessed claims
that it was actually a boy who was in distress, and although his
real identity is never revealed, here he is identified as Robbie
Mannheim (Jonathan Malen), an 11-year-old living in St. Louis.

The first indication that something unusual is happening to
Robbie is at school, when he appears to fling some desks at a
couple of bullies. There is a similar incident at home, when his
parents are witness to some furniture acrobatics that are clearly
beyond Robbie's strength. Soon, the boy begins to yell and spit
out profanities from his bedroom.

Mr. and Mrs. Mannheim (Michael Rhoades and Shannon Lawson)
contact doctors and therapists, but nothing seems to work. They
finally call in the Reverend Eckhardt (Richard Waugh), a priest
who specializes in supernatural phenomenon. Eckhardt seems to be
getting close to the core of the problem when he is attacked and
wounded by Robbie.

The Mannheims then go to Father William Bowdern (Timothy
Dalton), a professor at the Jesuit-run St. Louis University.
Along with his colleague, Father Raymond McBride (Henry Czerny),
Bowdern agrees to try to help Robbie by conducting a series of
exorcism rituals that were once used in 17th century France.

Their superior, Archbishop Hume (Christopher Plummer), gives
them his reluctant blessing, on the condition that the priests
keep their work secret and never let the public know that the
Roman Catholic Church sanctions exorcism.

So Father Bill and company begin their confrontation with the
devil, with Robbie's soul hanging in the balance. The struggle
appears to be more than they can handle, especially when the evil
spirits dig up Bowdern's traumatic war experiences as a means to
weaken the priest.

In addition to using the same story, Possessed inevitably
employs the same theatrics that The Exorcist put to such good
use, mainly in having the possessed youngster spew obscenities,
float in the air and speak in a voice not his own. Possessed,
however, never manages to be the effectively scary movie that The
Exorcist is. But then again, maybe that's not what Possessed was
trying to achieve. This TV movie (originally shown on the cable
channel Showtime but blown up for the big screens of our local
theaters) is a reminder that this incident really took place and
was witnessed by several people. As a docudrama, it works.

The movie is new territory for director Steven E. De Souza,
who has worked on action movies for most of his career, directing
Street Fighter and cowriting the action hits 48 Hrs., Die Hard
and Beverly Hills Cop III, among other projects. Adapting the
Thomas Allen book with coscreenwriter Michael Lazarou, De Souza
confuses us with the unnecessary addition of Piper Laurie, who
appears briefly in the beginning of the movie as the boy's
eccentric great aunt who, it is suggested at first, is
responsible for Robbie's predicament. De Souza also fails to
provide a satisfying ending.

Despite these hitches, overall Possessed is an enjoyable
movie. The cast never disappoints, with Timothy Dalton, perhaps
the only non-Canadian actor here, clearly leaving behind his
James Bond days and returning to his Shakespearian roots. But the
spotlight should be directed on the promising Jonathan Malen, who
steals the show every time he appears on screen. ** (out of ****)