Possession (The Night the Screaming Stops) poster & wallpaper

Isabelle Adjani, Margit Carstensen, Marshall Tucker Band

A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspect a man is involved. But gradually, he finds out...( read more  read more... ) more and more strange behaviors and bizaared incidents that indicate something more than a possessed love affair.

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80% liked it

2,383 ratings

R, 2 hrs. 3 min.

Directed by: Andrzej Zulawski

Release Date: January 1, 1981

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DVD Release Date: May 9, 2000

Stats: 175 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (175)

  • cacutshaw
    January 28, 2007
    cacutshaw
    Heinrich is one of the greatest movie villains of all time. Great surreal horror film.
  • doctorburglary
    September 2, 2009
    doctorburglary
    but DONT watch the butchered US version!
  • fungifago
    September 2, 2009
    fungifago
    La pelicula de horror mas bizarra que he visto, te deja en un estado de trance del que no puedes salir. A destacar la impactante (y desconcertante) actuacion de Isabel Adjani, que gano en Cannes como mejor actriz por este papel.
  • g0y
    September 2, 2009
    g0y
    Art house, horror and a bit of shock cinema - my three favorite genres. Plus it was labeled as a Video Nasty so that adds even more depth to the coolness in this film's reputation.

    The beginning is really boring while it's setting up the "normal" lives of these spouses going thr...( read more)ough their marital issues. I first turned it off and didn't finish it until months later, but had I known what was to occur later on, I would've finished it in one sit. The acting by Isabelle Adjani is shocking seeing how much she's in character. She doesn't give a performance, she practically gives her soul to the devil with what she does. Ever hear about those female performances that creep you out or make your jaw drop because of how accurate or good they are? Like Charlize Theron in Monster, Falconetti in Joan of Arc, Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry, or Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher? Well, Adjani joins these legendary performers with her acting (Soul dealing). See the movie for it alone!

    It's a "metaphor" film, you'll have your skull phucked about trying to figure out how crazy or deep-in-shit these divorcing people are. It's surreal, intense and eye-popping.
  • bbliumis
    September 2, 2009
    bbliumis
    f......up film TOTAllY.

    I WAS LUCKY THAT I WATCHED THIS ONE ON THE THEATERS ;)
  • wkt
    August 6, 2009
    wkt
    Extremely bizarre, gory movie with over the top acting. Not for the squeamish.
  • mpghoul1973
    May 6, 2009
    mpghoul1973
    A very odd film, but very cool. Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani give very intense performances. They push their emotions to the brink of utter madness....and ours. Brilliant on their part. The "cuccumber" creature is cool. And Isabelle's miscarriage is about as moist as it gets! Ve...( read more)ry disturbing. I bet her lungs ached for years after filming that scene.
    A very emotionally draining film. But my god i love it! One of the best european art house horror pictures.
  • sweetkibibi
    January 1, 2009
    sweetkibibi
    This is one of a kind psychological thriller-horror-drama movie. I think that there is not to many people who really understand what happend here, as it's pure symbolism. I loved the whole atmosphere, but it's just the kind of movie you think about for a very long time. It's like...( read more) I have seen the surface and now it interested me so much that I'll do my best to find out more about it! Scary, confuzing and the weirdest of them all!
  • felipeta
    December 22, 2008
    felipeta
    Horror, art, sci-fi. Isabelle Adjani.
  • jes25924
    December 22, 2008
    jes25924
    This was my first experience with Zulawski (and thank god because the next film I saw by him is the even more difficult, even more bizzare "On The Silver Globe" and "Diabel"). This film however floored me instantly. People can and will mention the in...(read more)tensity of all t...( read more)he performances, the swirling cinematography which moves constantly even as the characters remain static, and the bizzare ridiculoussness of the situations these characters find themselves in. Anyone watching this movie would be hard pressed not to laugh at quite a few scenes, some of which are intentionally funny, others merge grotesquery, absurdity, and intensity to such a degree that it's imposslbe not to laugh out of discomfirt.

    The story also is not a kitchen sink affair, but a surrreal examination of division and breakdown. The setting is west Berlin, a divided city, and we are introduced to our charcters a divided couple whose marriage is in smolders, Sam Niels character has some shadowy job with the government and he's been "away at the war", while his wife has seemingly lost all control over her life due to an obsessive affair with...(SPOILERALERT)

    ...a slimmy tentacled creater which resembles an scaley abortion with the head of a carrot, like the baby from "Eraserhead" had they let it grow up and reproduce with the sentient pile of zombie intestines from "Dead Alive". Meanwhile, Sam Niels character grows more and more suspicious and begins an affair with his sons school teacher who is also played by Issabell Adanji, and is essentially the opposite(or other) of Sam Niels wife's character, calm, sweet, dependable and loving, to manic, maddening, unstable and lustfull. To prevent her other lovers, policemen, and curious parties from finding out about her relationship which she describes as beautiful for its "otherness", Adjani(as Niels wife) kills several people leaving their corpses spread about her flat. Sam Niel, after one knock-out emotional performance after another, discovers the horrible truth. His wife was pregnant and misscarried(in a disturbingly powerfull scene where she mentstrates milk in a dimly lit subway), and gave birth to a "thing", which she took back to an apartment and fed until it became the tentacle creature, who she then took up as her lover(shown in another disturbing erotic scene). Sam Niel's character is horrified, and flees, until the two catch up with him them and the creature is revealed in his fully grown form (which is played by Sam Niel, just as Adjani had dual roles), the creature smiles, and appears to be invulnerable as a hail of police bullets cut down Niel(human) and his wife, but dont seem to affect the creature. The creature then returns to the couples home, where their other young son repeats "dont open the door" and hides under his bed, as his teacher(also Adjani) screams in terror as the creature stands outside the door screaming and causing the house to shake and bright lights to appear which eventually overwhem the camera and we have the end.

    So yeah, theres some intense performances, monster sex, and a story that feels more like Franz Kafka, bare desperate human emotions displayed through inhuman events and surreal happenings, more than Clive Barker(who was very influenced by this film). It's difficult to nail down percise meanings, and there are no polemnical points or tragic flaws, it seems as if both characters have their angels and demons, and all that is assured in the end is destruction.

    "Possession: The Night The Screaming Stopped" is a one of a kind horror film full of psychological bends and monsterous gore, it's a story of a relationship diveded, a nation dvided, and an eternal divide between the "self" and the "other", that gives us our God's and monsters, as well as our repulsions and attractions. It is absoultely not a demonization of "woman" as destroyer, as the dual roles suggest that no one is A. whole in any sense of the word and B. free of guilt. Theres few horror films which are really this good (too smart for their own good, because this will largely sail over your head if your not watching closely, a good deal hinges on a one off sentence roughly about God having pink socks, and a man with pink socks showing up later, albiet breifly in the film).

    Very hard to find, Netflix doesnt carry it, but those of you in the Los Angeles area, might try Eddie Brandts Saturday Matinee in North Hollywood(just off the Orange Line), that's where I found a copy as well as many other hard to find films. Happy hunting.

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