The Possessed (2009) - 0/4

For the first time since I've been reviewing films, I have left a film before it was over. The Possessed immediately strikes one as a harmless documentary in the style of "Unsolved Mysteries", with reenactments and real interviews intercut. The more one watches, however, the more one is assailed with morally objectionable material until I became too offended to watch on.

The story itself is an interesting one and I had previously read about it on the rather entertaining website www.mysteriouspeople.com. Mary Roff, a disturbed woman subject to seizures and quasi-religious mania dies in her adult years. Lurancy Vennum, an unrelated girl who was two-years-old at the time of Roff's death later begins exhibiting similar behaviour and claims to be Mary Roff. The film debates over whether it is possession or some sort of retroactive reincarnation. The title tells you what side the film falls on.

That the documentary falls on any side at all is the first of its problems. The filmmaker/interviewer is Christopher Saint-Booth, a bizarre-looking hippie who dresses like a cowboy resembling Johnny Legend circa 1985 sans coolness. He buys into all of this crap, unsurprisingly. This might not be a problem for me in a harmless haunting documentary, but this documentary is dealing with troubled people--almost all young ladies--who need help and that help is certainly not the Catholic Church nor a Crystal Healing Bed!

You see, for Saint-Booth to make his points, like a lawyer of sorts, he references related cases as if these precedents are solid proof. He references the case of Anneliese Michel as if it's a proven precedent of possession. Actually, the case of Anneliese Michel went to court and the exorcists were charged with manslaughter![1] And here's the moral crux: Saint-Booth also references the cases of some still-living people who believe they were possessed. They used to cut their arms, were obsessed with their own blood, and sometimes tore their own skin away. The fact that Lurancy Vennum also did this, Saint-Booth concludes, shows that she too was possessed. Actually, it shows they all had the same psychological issues and they were in desperate need of real treatment, not wackjob charlatans. Unfortunately, Saint-Booth encourages their manner of reasoning and that is what makes this documentary thoroughly objectionable.

He began to interview a young man who had been exorcised by his mother, a religious fanatic who clearly had seen The Exorcist way too many times, because the exorcism she videotaped showed her speaking lines from the film verbatim. That's when I turned the documentary off. This is an ignorant, irresponsible, morally bankrupt documentary from which you will learn nothing you can't read online.[2] The parallel cases are somewhat interesting, as they were recent and I'd never heard of them before; but they were sadly mishandled by an agenda-driven believer.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anneliese_Michel
2. http://www.mysteriouspeople.com/Lurancy_Vennum.htm