The Possession (2012) on Netflix
Clyde and his ex-wife Stephanie share custody of their daughters Em and Hannah, who spend weekends with him. At a yard sale Em buys an antique box and becomes obsessed with it.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb5.9/1066,398 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes39%
Trailer
Plot summary
Clyde and Stephanie have just finished a divorce, and their daughters, ten-year-old Em and teenage Hannah, live with their mother and visit their father on weekends. Driving past a yard sale, Clyde stops, and Em comes away with a carved wooden box. At a window Em sees a woman lying bandaged in bed, and the woman, catching sight of the box, screams. At Clyde's home the box proves impossible to open, but that night Em hears whispering from inside, finds the hidden lock, and lifts the lid. Inside lie a tooth, a dead moth, a small wooden figure and a ring, which she puts on. She becomes solitary and possessive over the box, and when a classmate takes it she attacks him, bringing Clyde and Stephanie to a meeting at the school.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Possession (2012)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The then-owner of the supposed dybbuk box discussed in the article on which the film was based offered to send it to producer Sam Raimi, who was interested yet reluctant. Raimi laughingly told an Entertainment Weekly interviewer, “I didn't want anything to do with it. I'm scared of the thing.”
- Director Ole Bornedal said some really weird things happened: an unlit neon light he stood under suddenly exploded, and five days after they wrapped the movie all the props burned, the storage house in Vancouver burning to the ground with the fire department not knowing the cause.
- A 2019 article in Skeptical Inquirer concluded that the supposed dybbuk box “is not a Jewish wine cabinet from Spain but instead a minibar from New York”, its seller having created the story “from whole cloth” as a fictional backstory to sell an ordinary and incomplete minibar.
