What actually happens
Divorce, with a lookalike teacher
Mark, a spy, comes back to West Berlin from a mission and learns that Anna, his wife, has a lover and wants to separate. He gives Anna the apartment, and she gets custody of Bob, their young son. Mark goes on a long drinking spree, and when he returns, Bob is alone and unkempt, so Mark decides to be Bob's main caregiver and pressures Anna by phone to end the affair. She leaves during the night, supposedly going to her friend Margie's place. Mark meets Bob's teacher, Helen, who looks exactly like Anna apart from lighter hair and green eyes. He visits Anna's lover, Heinrich, and confronts him about the affair, and Heinrich beats him down. Back home, Mark and Anna argue, Mark hits Anna repeatedly, and she leaves.
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An electric knife joins the marriage counseling
Mark hires a detective to follow Anna, then presses her about the marriage. This is the scene people dread most, and it comes just after the fight: Anna answers by cutting her own neck with an electric knife. Mark treats the wound and then deliberately cuts his own arm with the same knife. The detective follows Anna to a derelict apartment, calls Mark with the address, and goes in posing as a safety inspector. In the bathroom he finds a bizarre creature, and Anna kills him. Mark keeps the address from Heinrich. Helen, who has been helping Mark with Bob, mentions that Bob has sleep terrors, and after putting him to bed she and Mark have sex.
Faith is staying in the apartment
Anna kills Zimmermann, who was both the detective's boss and his lover, after he finds the creature and the detective's body. Heinrich leaves footage for Mark of Anna making a ballet student hold a painful pose to test her willpower, in which she talks about a conflict between Faith and Chance. Anna tells Mark she is looking after her Faith in the apartment, which she says she miscarried in the subway in a violent episode while he was away. Mark then gives Heinrich her address. Anna shows Heinrich the creature and the dismembered bodies and stabs him. Heinrich escapes and arranges to meet Mark at a bar. Mark finds the body parts at the apartment, though Anna and the creature have left. At the bar he kills Heinrich in the toilet and stages it as an accident, burns down Anna's apartment and rides home on Heinrich's motorbike. Anna has taken Zimmermann's car and has killed Margie after Margie saw the creature. Mark finds Anna with the creature at Margie's place. Heinrich's mother kills herself with pills.
A second Mark with excellent eyes
Two former associates pressure Mark to rejoin their mission, and he refuses. He later sees them heading to Margie's place with a police officer. To give Anna time to escape in Zimmermann's car, he makes a taxi driver crash into the police car. Margie's body falls out of the trunk, and Mark ends up badly hurt in a shootout and a motorbike crash as he flees. He climbs the stairs of a building until he collapses, and Anna finds him with the creature, which has become a copy of Mark with green eyes. Mark raises his gun to shoot it, and a burst of police gunfire from below hits both Mark and Anna.
The ending, explained
After one last kiss, Anna shoots herself with Mark's gun, and Mark leaps to his death. The doppelgänger goes up the stairs and makes a woman open fire on the police so that it can slip away. Meanwhile Helen is babysitting Bob when the doorbell rings. Bob begs her not to answer, but she walks toward the door anyway, and Bob rushes into the bathroom, where he drowns himself in the tub. Sirens, planes and explosions sound outside. Mark's doppelgänger presses his hands against the glass of the door, and Helen stares straight ahead with her green eyes shining.
The post-credits ruling
There is no post-credits scene. You can leave when the credits start.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: not fine, and we're sorry.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is Possession scary?
Yes, Possession is a 7 out of 10. It has no jump scares. The fear is a marriage collapsing, some graphic violence, and a creature that arrives in the middle and is never explained.
How does Possession end?
Police gunfire hits Mark and Anna, and then Anna shoots herself while Mark jumps to his death. A doppelgänger of Mark escapes, and Bob drowns himself while Helen waits at the door with green eyes.
Does the dog die in Possession?
Yes, a dog is dead in Possession.
Is there a post-credits scene in Possession?
No. Possession has no post-credits scene, so you can leave when the credits start.
Why does Helen look like Anna in Possession?
Possession never explains it. Helen, Bob's teacher, looks identical to Anna apart from lighter hair and green eyes, and in the last scene her green eyes shine while Mark's doppelgänger stands at her door.
