[Film Review] The Last Possession (2022)

Directed by Dan Riddle, The Last Possession (2022) is a haunted house chiller with an intercosmic twist. Marrying the supernatural with the intergalactic, The Last Possession is an unusual and unique take on the stereotypical horror movie familial unit. 

When Kent Peroni (Stephen Brodie) is forced to relocate his young family to his recently deceased father’s house, they come to experience more than just new house teething troubles. After what seems like a small earthquake, they discover a hole in their yard, and thus begin the family’s problems. Like any good haunted house story, objects begin to move of their own accord, and it seems like the children are the particular subject of the entity’s concentration. Through employing the services of a clairvoyant grandmother, the Brodie family discover that their initial belief that they were being haunted by their late grandfather, is in fact far from the truth.

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Despite the title of the film being The Last Possession, save for the last 15 minutes, there is very little content that actually involves a possession or  possession-like tropes that one would commonly expect from the horror subgenre. However, where The Last Possession succeeds is in depicting how much children are gaslighted by adults in horror movies, and to a certain extent, reality. The two children in the film, Jack and Gabby, are like most children in horror, the initial indicators of unusual activity present in the family’s new inherited homestead. Despite their warnings, both the mother and especially the father who is borderline emotionally abusive, ignore the early warning signs and through this disbelief, allow the entity to become stronger. The morality tale here is to always listen to children, especially in a new house where a traumatic death has occurred.

The task of combining the two subgenres of possession or poltergeist horror and outer space science fiction terror is an interesting concoction. Borrowing quite strongly from films such as Poltergeist (1982) with a vein of Signs (2002) running throughout, it unfortunately feels a little disconnected. The effort to amalgamate the two styles is commendable, but the narration just needs further development to achieve a fully coherent plotline. 

A strong theme occurring in the film is that of science versus belief as is common in both supernatural horrors as well as intergalactic movies, and unfortunately  The Last Possession does not break new ground on this thematic debate. It is, however, an enjoyable and fresh take on both genres with a striking creature design.

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