Blu-Ray Review: The Possession Of Michael King

By Brad Henderson

David Jung is a first time director/writer who has brought his first feature to the table with The Possession Of Michael King. Jung did a hell of a job with his first film and I’m excited to see what he does next, but sadly, I wasn’t the biggest fan of this flick.

It seems that every week I write a review of a found footage film, and this is yet another one. I dig the interesting presentation of this film, but it eventually follows the same formula as the rest and plays out like so many other films using this method of storytelling. I don’t have a problem with how the film is presented, but my main issues are the sound design and “scary” moments.

The Possession Of Michael King tries WAY too hard to scare its audience and that lost me quickly. Yes, the sound design is incredible, but we have so many extremely loud moments in the film that come out of nowhere it is more aggravating than scary. Seriously, out of nowhere you hear a crazy high pitched screeching that hurts your ears and nothing is actually going on. These noises are simply put there to scare you but nothing is scary about them. It is a loud noise, so of course I jumped because it scared the shit out of me, but it had nothing to do with the story whatsoever. They just keep doing it and doing it to the point of an ear-bleeding, near-fatal headache.

The story of this flick is mildly interesting but I feel it goes off the rails regarding what the character is trying to prove. Basically, Michael King loses his wife to an accident and then decides to find out if he can catch God or the Devil on film. King is a filmmaker, so he bases his next film on himself and documents his investigation.

The Possession Of Michael King starts off very strong but once we get to know Michael, the movie becomes uninteresting until we actually get towards the ending of the film. The last moments of the film are pretty terrifying and scary, but it literally took about an hour to get there and that is way too long. David Jung made a decent found footage film but it’s one that follows the formula so many others and will easily be forgotten. I imagine people will say the film is scary, but in reality they are being scared by the overly loud noises and jump scares and not the story itself or the creepiness that the film establishes in the beginning.

This movie is well made, but that doesn’t make it good. If you are going to make a found footage film that deals with ghosts you’d think you would steer far away from The Paranormal Activity films, but this kind of borrows things from that series and it’s kind of lazy

I’m excited to see what the director does next because the guy obviously has talent. Instead of relying on tricks to scare the audience I hope he will focus more on the story scaring us. This would be a perfect date flick because your significant other will be in your arms in no time at all.

The Possession of Michael King was released on Blu-Ray by Anchor Bay on August 26.