Is Possessor Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot
Yes, 6.5 out of 10. It's cold and cerebral, with violence in bursts that are very hard to look at.
🐱THE SCARE SIGNAL
SCARE SCORE
6.5 /10
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
DREAD LEVEL
High
Expect to feel a little detached from your own head for a day or two.
DOG
Dog: fine
fine, no dog dies.
Ruling: Watch it in daylight with a strong stomach, because the violence is explicit and the premise is worse.
Possessor runs one hour and forty-three minutes. Its heroine is a corporate assassin who works by climbing into other people's bodies, and she has trouble remembering to climb back out as herself.
The premise, briefly
An assassin uses a brain implant to take over other people's bodies and make them carry out her hits, and her grip on her own identity keeps slipping.
How much do you want to know?
🐱
The verdict above is spoiler-free. Everything below, including the ending, stays hidden until you pick a depth.
🐱CUT TO THE CHASE
How it ends
Colin Tate takes control, kills Vos's husband Michael with a meat cleaver, and is stabbed in the throat by her son Ira, whom Vos then shoots dead through Tate. She returns to her own body to learn Girder was controlling Ira, leaving her free of attachments, as Girder wanted.
The scene you're dreading
The family scene near the end: Tate holds Vos's husband at gunpoint, kills him with a meat cleaver, gets stabbed in the throat by Ira, and Ira is then shot. It is the cruelest stretch of the movie.
The dog
No dog dies in Possessor.
Possessor is cold, explicit body horror with few jump scares, and knowing the plot does not soften the family scene.
THE SHORT VERSION IS HIDDEN
How it ends, the scene you're dreading, what happens to the dog, and the bottom line. About twenty seconds to read.
What actually happens
Commuting by skull
Tasya Vos takes over other people's bodies to carry out her assassinations. An implant in the host's brain lets her consciousness move in, and she gets back to her own body by making the host kill himself or herself when the job is done. On the first hit shown, she breaks protocol, struggles to control the host's gun, and gets the host shot by the police instead. Back home she deals with neurological symptoms and a fading sense of who she is. She can't separate her work from her husband Michael and her son Ira, and she rehearses being her normal self the same way she rehearses her hosts. Violent thoughts follow her into the bedroom and into her son's bedtime.
Her handler, retired assassin Girder, disapproves of Vos wanting to stay close to her family and thinks she would be a better killer with no attachments. In a debriefing meant to reconnect her to her real self, Vos sorts through objects tied to her memories and stops on a butterfly she pinned and framed as a child, saying she feels guilty for killing it. Despite being tired and fragile, she takes a major job: killing the wealthy CEO John Parse and his daughter Ava by taking over Ava's fiancé, Colin Tate. Her symptoms get worse inside Tate's life, and she hides this from Girder. The hit only half works, because Ava dies and Parse doesn't.
A host with objections
Vos tries to finish by making Tate shoot himself and again can't pull it off. During a dissociative break, Tate stabs himself in the head, which wrecks the implant and does serious internal damage to Vos's real body. She finds she can't leave Tate or overpower him. Tate comes back to himself, in shock and disoriented, and runs from the scene, seeing fragments of Vos's life in his head. He takes refuge with his friend Reeta, and during another episode he kills her. Eddie, a coworker of Tate's who is really a plant from Vos's agency, arrives to help Vos regain control and finish the suicide. It fails, and Tate kills Eddie as well. Tate wins a psychic struggle with Vos and gains access to her memories of her husband, child and home.
Colin Tate, uninvited guest
This is the scene to brace for, and it comes near the end. Tate goes to Vos's house and points a gun at Michael and demands an explanation for what she did to him. Vos shows up in Tate's head and goads him into murder. Michael manages to knock the gun away, Tate kills him with a meat cleaver, then puts the gun in his own mouth and asks to be pulled out, implying that Vos was in control. A moment later Ira stabs Tate in the throat, echoing the stabbing from the opening sequence. In Tate's final moments Vos has him shoot Ira dead. Ira turns out to have been a host as well.
The ending, explained
Vos is back in her own body and finds that Girder was the one controlling Ira. With her son and husband both gone, she has no human attachments left, which is exactly what Girder wanted for her. In a final debriefing, Vos goes through her belongings again. She studies the butterfly and recognizes it, but shows no guilt about killing it this time, and Girder praises her.
The post-credits ruling
Nobody has confirmed whether there is a scene after the credits.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: fine, no dog dies.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is Possessor scary?
Yes. Possessor is a 6.5 out of 10 with a high dread level. It is cold, cerebral body horror with explicit violence and few jump scares.
How does Possessor end?
Tate kills Vos's husband Michael, Ira stabs Tate, and Vos shoots Ira through Tate. She returns to her own body and learns Girder was controlling Ira, and she ends up with no attachments left.
Does the dog die in Possessor?
No dog dies in Possessor.
Is there a post-credits scene in Possessor?
Nobody has confirmed whether Possessor has a scene after the credits.
Who is controlling Ira in Possessor?
Girder, Vos's handler. Once Ira is shot, Vos returns to her own body and learns that Girder had taken over her son, which leaves her without any family.
BLURRED FOR YOUR PROTECTION
The whole plot of Possessor is hidden, ending included. It stays that way until you ask.
You don't need to spend one hour and forty-three minutes inside strangers' heads to know how Possessor ends. Install Scaredy Cat and horror gets blurred before you see it.
