Possessor / YMMV - TV Tropes

Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Who drew the gun that resulted in Holly's Suicide by Cop: Tasya or Holly herself?
- As mentioned below in Les Yay, there's a possibility Tasya might be bisexual considering she has no qualms with having sex with Ava while in Colin's body. Of course, she could also just be doing it to get her job done however she can.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Happens in the Uncut version. After Vos possesses Tate's body, she goes to his menial job at Zoothroo, which involves spying on random people's homes through their webcams and cataloguing their curtains. One of the webcams she connects to reveals a couple about to copulate, complete with gratuitous full-frontal female and male nudity as if straight out of actual porn. This scene has no revelance to the main plot and it's never referred to for the rest of the movie.
Complete Monster: Girder is the handler of body-jumping assassin Tasya Vos. A former killer herself who abandoned all humanity to maximize her effectiveness, Girder comes to the conclusion Tasya would be most effective without any human connection. Having killed and ordered the deaths of many in horrible ways, with the victims aware of the possession up until the moment of death, Girder arranges for several deaths during Tasya's latest assignment. Possessing Tasya's young son Ira, Girder arranges for the death of Tasya's husband before having her kill Ira as well. Ending the film with Tasya emotionally broken, Girder proceeds to express calm satisfaction she has broken her assignment into the perfect monster.
Harsher in Hindsight: All the jokes of Sean Bean actually surviving the movie become less funny when you actually watch the movie and see his character get his face so horrifically mutilated, it might've actually been kinder to kill him off.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Colin's crazed hypothetical rant on whether a worm taking over your wife's brain would mean that any of her actions and ideas would actually belong to the worm (In his words, "Are you really married to her...or to the worm?") becomes amusing considering the popularity of the "Would you still love me if I was a worm?" meme.
Ho Yay: There are a couple of moments that are not 101% heterosexual:
- Tasya seems to have no problems having sex with Ava while in Colin's body.
- Also while in Colin's body, there is a scene where Tasya repeatedly says "Darling," to practice speaking to family. Cut to HQ, with Tasya lying on a bed, hooked up to the transfer equipment, and Girder sitting beside her and intently listening to Tasya saying "darling."
Jerkass Woobie: Colin is a drug dealer who's secretly cheating on his fiancé, but at the end of the day, he is a thoroughly terrified man whose body is taken over by an unknown entity and is forced to kill his father-in-law, fiancé, and friends. He tries his best to take back control over his body, but even when he does, he's screwed.
Memetic Mutation: Many people have joked about this being one of very few movies in which Sean Bean survives to the very end. Ironic given how he is the assassination target and gets attacked so brutally that it is easy to assume that he did die until it is said that he survived.
Nausea Fuel: Calling the violence in this movie disgusting is an enormous understatement. Brandon more than lives up to his father's name in that department.
Nightmare Fuel:
- The opening scene, in which Vos!Holly graphically stabs a man to death in front of a huge crowd before committing Suicide by Cop. Even more terrifying when you realize Holly might still be very aware of her surroundings despite the lack of control.
- Any of the delirious visions Tasya receives while in another person's body.
- The sequence of Colin assassinating John and Ava Parse is disgustingly horrific.
- The deaths of Vos' husband and son. And no, Ira's age does not spare him from a violent death (unless you're watching the edited version).
- The understated but nonetheless chilling ending in which Girder has successfully isolated Vos from any form of connection, molding her into the perfect killer. And how do we know this? Vos goes over her anecdote regarding the butterfly she killed, only this time she doesn't admit to showing remorse like she did the first time... Roll credits.
One-Scene Wonder: Gabrielle Graham as Holly Bergman. She’s only in the first ten minutes of the movie, yet she absolutely steals it, gruesomely setting up the movie’s atmosphere, tone, and world. Critics even called her a highlight of the entire movie.
Paranoia Fuel: A shadowy organization can plant a chip in your brain and use it to control your body, forcing you to kill someone near you and then kill yourself. No one is ever the wiser.
Signature Scene: Almost all positive reviews of the movie highlight the opening scene, especially for Gabrielle Graham’s chilling performance and for giving more squeamish viewers a hell of warning before proceeding.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: This is a relentlessly bleak film with a Villain Protagonist and horrible violence, so it's to be expected. There's not even a glimmer of hope anywhere in the plot, as even if Colin can somehow break free from Vos, he's still screwed.
What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The opening scene has an African-American woman being forced against her will by a white woman to brutally murder someone before she's forced to turn her gun on police officers who promptly shoot her dead. The fact this movie was released in 2020, in which several controversial incidents of Police Brutality against African Americans occurred, made the potential allegorical resemblance seem less coincidental.
The Woobie:
- Vos' husband Michael is by all accounts an ordinary guy who misses her because of how much time she spends "traveling" for work. He does nothing to deserve the brutal and undignified manner in which he's killed at the end. What makes it worse is that he's completely unaware that the man who hacks him to death with a cleaver is being controlled by his own wife.
- Her son Ira has it just as bad, if not arguably worse. On top of not knowing of his mother's true nature as an assassin growing further detached from reality and human sympathy, his father is brutally murdered and he himself is taken over by Girder to finish off Collin, resulting in his own violent death via a particularly gruesome headshot.

YMMV / Possessor

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