Possum (2018) on Netflix
NR20181h 25mDramaHorrorThriller
Philip Connell, a children's puppeteer, comes back to the Norfolk house where he grew up. His uncle Maurice lives there, and Philip cannot get rid of a spider-like marionette called Possum.
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- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb5.8/1012,715 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
The puppeteer Philip Connell goes back to the house in Norfolk where he was raised, a place left in disrepair by a past fire, and lives there with his uncle Maurice. Maurice torments him with talk of the job he lost and forces him to retell the bullying he suffered as a schoolboy. Philip carries a spider-like marionette called Possum. He repeatedly tries to throw it away, and it keeps returning to him. A picture book he drew as a child shows Possum creeping up on orphaned children in their beds. Maurice asks whether Philip intends to go into a closed room in the house. News reports tell of a missing local boy, Michael, whom Philip met on the train.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Possum (2018)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- With only a week before filming, Holness and designer Hailstone decided the Possum puppet's face should be inexpressive so audiences could project their own fears onto it; Hailstone then sculpted it to resemble Harris' character in three to four hours.
- The lead role of the puppeteer Phillip was written with John Amplas, who had starred in George Romero's Martin, in mind, but the part went to Sean Harris after he responded strongly to the script.
- Holness first planned to use silent-film-style intertitles to voice the main character's thoughts, but the idea was dropped during editing because it slowed the pacing, and voice-over narration was used instead.
- The sound effects and experimental electronic music studio The Radiophonic Workshop wrote their first score purposely constructed for a feature film; it ran to 29 tracks and included unreleased alternate cues by original studio member Delia Derbyshire.
- The story's setting was moved from a stretch of the Kent coast near Whitstable to Norfolk, and Holness later learned that the Stiffkey marshes, where the crew filmed, was where the fabled Black Shuck was purported to haunt.
- Sean Harris, a method actor of Stanislavski's system, remained in character throughout the entirety of the shoot, to the point where the director felt he was working with Phillip rather than Harris.
- Alun Armstrong was cast as Phillip's uncle Maurice only after he had originally turned the part down because of scheduling conflicts with another project he was shooting in the United States.
