Ava's Possessions

Oops, I said the d-word. The golden rule of spirit possession anonymous is never ever use that word. Yes, you read it right. Ever wonder how someone gets their life back on track after a hellish possession? This novel approach turns upside down the well-worn formula of recent horror involving satanic possession. It's basically a peculiar, playful and dry comedy-horror looking at the aftermath of an exorcism and how one goes about trying to piece everything back together again. As you know, it's hard to remember what you did on a night out on the town when drunk, let alone under possession for over a month. Maybe you don't want to know. Not Ava. It's part of the therapy to expose those repressed memories. Meaning good times ahead. The narrative is not so basic, due the various sub-plots and characters leading onto a mysterious, if intricate path. I actually preferred it when it was focusing on the actual metaphoric therapy classes than Ava trying to uncover what her family is hiding from her. The self-aware humour running throughout is consistent, if quite low-key and a touch morbid in delivery. Although I probably wished it had pushed the boundaries a little more on that front. Sometimes it just lacked a bit of punch with it being cute. There's a real haze to the scummy atmosphere consisting of vibrant neon lighting, a hip synth soundtrack and impulsive acts of bitter violence. The tailored performances are spot on with Louisa Krause's stolid turn as Ava. Also great to see the 1976 horror "Alice, Sweet Alice" get a little plug on the TV.

At the start of the film I was like WTF is going on is this a comedy. I almost stopped watching there and then but decided to keep on going for a bit. The story afterwards, fleshed out more and the comedy was gone. It was pretty cool trying to figure out what's happening and putting the story together. I do recommend for anyone wanting to watch a mildly horror movie but I felt it was more drama then anything else.

Ava is just your average twenty something who's just been exorcised. She's now trying to figure out what went down when she was a demon. Ooops. I mean "entity." (You're not supposed to say the D word - inside joke with the movie). She gets some leads and finds some clues and eventually comes full circle. She may even end up in jail for her crimes. Ava (Louisa Krause) plays her part extremely well, both as a demon and a regular woman. All the other actors are just okay. I'd recommend this movie if you like possession movies. I watched this movie on Netflix.

When I read the premise of this movie, I knew I had to see it. I thought the idea was so unique, and I personally don't know of any other movies that show what happens to a person after the spirit they are possessed by is exorcised. If you know of any, please let me know in the comments, because I would love to see them. The movie starts out with the typical scene of a girl tied to the bed, and the priest doing his thing. (My mind just went to a bad place when I typed that… maybe it's all the cold medicine I'm on.) Then a month has passed, and we see the aftermath of Ava's destroyed apartment, and her family physically pulls back from her when she approaches them. Ava's mom has a patch over her eye, and you just know it was Ava's fault. Ava's then talks to her lawyer, and he tells her that she has three options; go to prison for harming people and property damage, go to a crazy home, or go to SPA and get help so her demon doesn't come back. She chooses SPA, and we get to see how other people react to their lives after the spirit leaves their body. I will say I wish there were more scenes in the SPA group. I think a lot more character development could have been done here, and seeing how the different people were coping was very interesting, and in some cases, humorous. Although this is a horror movie, to my it was more of a mystery. Ava's family wants her to leave it all alone, and just get better, but she wants to find out why a demon possessed her. The mystery itself was done okay. For me the clues were laid out very quickly, and were not hard at all to figure out. The reason I'm giving it four stars instead of five, is all the unanswered questions at the end. But I would say to definitely give this one a watch. Major Spoilers Ahead. There are various ways that you can get possessed. They put forward the idea that it might be genetic, and another way is for someone other than yourself, to do a ritual and burn an object from your childhood that meant a lot to you. Ava has a creepy bear go missing before she's possessed, and she keeps having waking dreams of the burnt bear talking to her, trying to give her information. If someone did burn the bear, who was it? I'm thinking her sister, because towards the end, Ava sees a mark on her sister's neck. But if her sister did do it, why? They seemed to get along well, and there was never any motive given at to why she would want her sister possessed/out of the picture. Then Ava stumbles across a file towards the end of the movie, that pertains to her mom, hinting towards the genetic aspect. If this was the case, was Ava's sister possessed at one time too. But if so I would think the family would have realized it.

About 20 minutes in I had to check that I wasn't watching a series pilot. AVA'S POSSESSION doesn't really take off like a movie should. The back-story is a mismatch of flash-backs and hints from the family that don't accelerate the plot much. I realise I'm supposed to suspend disbelief a bit more than usual due to the genre, but the alternate world, where possession is relatively common, wasn't as fleshed out as I thought it should be. That aside, it is funny in parts, and watchable in a very predictable and cliched way. Overall: a bit flat, a bit lazy and nothing to get excited about.

I really liked this movie. I may be biased because I adore film noir, but I was impressed with this movie's plot. It was more of a mystery than a horror film, but it was certainly a thriller. They were really creative in showing possible life changes that occur after a possession. Also POSSIBLE SPOILER! there is an excellent twist that I was totally not expecting! But that's all i am going to tell you. I totally recommend Ava's Possessions because it had a twist AND a freaking cool cliffhanger. Just go watch it. Like open a new tab and stream this movie, watch it, then tell everyone you know. I don't care what the critics say. Just go watch and tell me what it made you feel.

Jordan Galland's "Ava's Possessions" stood out in the Fantasia International Film Festival schedule to me for being a movie about the aftermath of a possession. When I originally heard about a little movie called "Tonight, We Stay Indoors" by no-budget filmmaker Joseph Larsen, I was intrigued in similar ways. If you don't know, "Tonight, We Stay Indoors" is essentially about what happens after a slasher movie. Yet "Ava's Possessions" seemed to take a completely different route with its aftermath story. A more traditional one than Joseph Larsen's very slow art-house approach. "Ava's Possessions" mixes crime mysteries and comedy with its horror themes, making it something that doesn't require you to be completely on edge. Ava wakes up as her normal self, with a priest telling her that she has been possessed by a demon. This has been going on for a month, and her family have desperately tried to get through this month of torment. Finally Ava is back! Because crimes were committed during her possession, Ava has to take responsibility for them. She can either go to jail and serve the time, or she can go to meetings with the Spirit Possession Anonymous group. The group helps her on her journey to recovery - a long and hard journey as the demon might return. When things are starting to look up, Ava is told to get in contact with all the people she wronged during her possession, and she slowly finds evidence of something horrible having taken place. "Ava's Possessions" feels like if you treat possession like going on a bender, and the movie takes place the day after when trying to remember where you were, what you did and who you slept with. Yes, it's very on the nose about this, especially considering that the demon that Ava was possessed by was a rich, snotty and careless demon. The movie is rather basic and you can quickly tell what the filmmaker was going for. This wasn't really issue to me until a slightly underwhelming end to the movie. For a movie with such a great premise, it felt like the movie became less and less original the longer it went on. Don't let the above statement scare you from watching the movie though, it is still a very fun movie. It's still relatively fresh and unique, with plenty of fun horror movie clichés having been skewed to fit the mold. "Ava's Possessions" is not a horror movie, but I'd absolutely regard it as a movie made for horror movie fans. It's a perfect movie to watch when you want a horror comedy but have realized that the majority of them are the same. I appreciated that "Ava's Possessions" never blossomed into full horror, and was always much more a mystery/crime comedy than anything else. The clichés were done in just the perfect way where they didn't feel like parody, yet somehow intentional. The possession scenes themselves were pretty much what you expect but they are treated well within the "lore" of the movie. Overall a pleasant watch that's worth keeping in mind when you want an easier movie.

Normally, a possession movie ends with the victim baths in sunlight or in some cases wanders into the dark. In "Ava's Possessions" it's just the beginning as the priest commences the procedure along with opening credit. There's quite the idea here, comically displays the aftereffect of the unfortunate event, but it becomes too busy with overload of subplots, colors and eventually too plodding for its own good. It begins right after the exorcism, a young girl must face the consequences of her actions, even though she is not responsible for them. Soon she joins a support group filled with equally outlandish characters. This is a good quirky premise, it even includes actual collateral of damage to property as well as a couple of comical antics. Mystery or horror aspect is not entirely prevalent as it dabbles more on world affairs. Most of the time is spend dealing with real life problem and threats, although it plays with the theme to make it as though there's more than what it seems. Nevertheless, it doesn't peak more than a few shock value. The use of satire is sometimes decent, but it tries to make connection from possession to real life problems. These analogies might be appealing at first, yet it repeats itself too much. Furthermore, the design for costumes and setting is heavily colored, which can be distracting at times. Acting from the cast is not bad, but there are too many characters to distribute the focus evenly. It's a nice twist on the genre, the mix of thriller and occasional satire might work as well, but it tries to fit too much into overwhelming and messy presentation.

This movie drew my attention due to its somewhat original premise. Instead of focusing on her possession, this movie asks the question, what is life like AFTER your demon has been exorcised? It's a question not many movies have asked, so I sat down and took it in. AP has some starts strong, with a mystery at hand. I love movies that keep me off-kilter and I wasn't quite sure what was happening. This puts the viewer in the shoes of Ava, who also has no memories of her possession and therefore, no idea of the damage she wrought. There is also a lot of dark comedy here, with the rehab for the once possessed and Ava dealing with the things she did (beat up people, slept with strangers etc) Sadly, the movie loses focus and gets convoluted, with too many players on the board. They also have sub-plots like a girl who wants her demon back and a serial killer on the loose, that just didn't do anything but confuse the main plot. If they had left this stuff on the back burner, Ava's Possessions would've been a much stronger film. Points for originality and the acting is pretty decent, but unfortunately they tried to do too much and it ended up taking away from the main story and weakening the entire flick.

Finally someone made a movie, that is so obvious, you really wonder, how no one came up with that simple yet brilliant concept yet. All the exorcism/possession movies end, after the exorcism - whether it went right or wrong, there's not much we get after that. There have been sequels to exorcism movies of course and they show a sort of aftermath, but this is an "original", without any background as to what happened before. Well until you watch the movie and it backtracks at certain points so we do see what has occurred. It's all done in a rather light (still vivid) fashion, that doesn't shy away from gross or graphic content. If you are into the idea, you will like what they did with it. The movie is worth it (the performances too).