45 Years Later, A Polarizing Cult Classic Thriller Is More Relevant Than Ever

Possession premiered in 1981 and faced controversy, including a UK ban as a “video nasty.” After 45 years, it developed a loyal cult following and is now treated as a classic. A new remake with Robert Pattinson and Margaret Qualley may bring the film further into mainstream attention. The story centers on Mark returning home to find his wife Anna wants to leave him for someone else, echoing Żuławski’s own divorce. The film’s unsettling imagery includes goopy gore and a human-monster connection, but the emotional core is the pain of a marriage ending, the agony of leaving someone loved, and the confusion of not understanding why. Its excessive, surreal style also mirrors the incomprehensible nature of modern times.

"When Andrzej Żuławski's experimental horror film Possession premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 1981, it too was met with controversy. Bizarre in premise and style, it was banned in the United Kingdom, labeled a "video nasty." As movie history would have it, the film, 45 years later, has turned the tables. The notoriously unsettling movie has amassed a loyal, ever-growing cult following."

"Behind the goopy gore and human-monster intercourse (more on that later), there's a tender, timeless story about, well, breaking up. Żuławski wrote the movie about his own divorce. He came home to Warsaw to bring his wife and child back to France only to find his wife leaving him, which is essentially how Possession starts. Mark (Sam Neill) returns home to find his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) wants to live somewhere else with someone else."

"Critics now applaud the film for how it depicts the raw pains of a marriage coming undone, the agony of leaving someone you love, and the distress of not really understanding why. But age also has also proved the movie's much more prescient than first believed. While Żuławski set out to write a movie about divorce, he unwittingly also captured the surrealness of current times."

"There's nothing in the movie that "makes sense." The premise rests on Mark finding out his wife is sleeping with an octopus monster. The octopus monster then becomes Mark. New Mark links up with New An"

Read at Inverse