Possum (2018)
Directed by Matthew Holness
A disgraced children's puppeteer returns to his childhood home and is forced to confront his wicked stepfather and the secrets that have tortured him his entire life.
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4 films that influenced Possum
What critics say influenced Possum
Flashes of Eraserhead and Don’t Look Now can be found in Possum’s rhythms and themes of trauma, and it’s absolutely meant as a compliment to say it’s like what you might get if Nicolas Roeg made The Babadook.
Possum reminds me a bit of The Babadook in the way it uses fantastical creatures to masquerade as totems of psychological trauma.
Echoes of The Babadook are evident in Possum’s set-up, hinging on a fraught two-person family and a children’s book/creation that causes terror and mayhem.
Holness has created a new modern horror figure for our time that could stand alongside recent scaremongers such as The Babadook.
It’s such a weird, depressing, Nouveau-Dickensian nightmare that teeters on the borders of David Lynch and Mike Leigh’s Naked.
FAST FACT: Matthew Holness praises modern horror directors like James Wan (“The Conjuring”) but found inspiration for “Possum” from German Expressionist horror films.
As the morose, withdrawn Philip, returning to his childhood home after an unspecified disgrace, Harris turns in his most extreme and demanding performance since he had the luckless task of incarnating a serial killer possessed by a Doors-crazy demon named "Jungler" in Scott Derrickson's Deliver Us From Evil (2014).