Possession (film)

Possession is a 1981 French/West German horror film starring Isabelle Adjani (Adele Hugo in The Story of Adele H.) and Sam Neill (Captain Vasily Borodin in The Hunt for Red October, The Piano). Andrzej Żuławski directs. It's the story of a marriage gone horribly, horribly wrong. There is an awful lot of screaming.

trailer:

"I'm the maker of my own evil."

Moria gives it 1 sad star, opening its review with this:

This bizarre oddity was a film that nobody knew what to make of it when it came out but one that has steadily been gaining ground as a weird headspace cult classic ever since. Exactly what it is about could be anybody’s guess. It is filled with bizarre events that are delivered at a pitch of histrionic melodramatics.

Slant Magazine gives it 4 out of 4 stars and says,

Divisiveness and duplicity are at the heart of Żuławski's notorious cult film, and Possession's dramatic structure is almost as schizoid as its protagonists, married couple Mark (Sam Neill) and Anna (Isabelle Adjani), whose relationship inexplicably comes apart

1000 Misspent Hours calls it "two hours’ worth of an incoherent and often ludicrous mess". 366 Weird Movies says, "This movie is long on style and short on decipherable substance, suitable for the LSD crowd, though with it’s schizophrenic script and cinematography, Possession on top of a dose of LSD would be redundant." Michał Oleszczyk's review at RogerEbert.com says, "It's all like a fast-forwarded Ingmar Bergman film on bad acid; "Scenes from a Marriage" as played in a home-made abattoir." Rotten Tomatoes has an 81% critics score.