Ava's Possessions (2015)

Too much of everything

Redundant and unnecessary.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Ava (Louisa Krause) has a possession issue of which she is cured in the first scene. Her immediate response is "How long was I out?" and "Did anyone call in sick for me?" Facing multiple criminal offenses, Ava opts to go into "Spirit Possession Anonymous" where she meets Hazel who liked being possessed and wants to embrace her demon.The film is a light demonic possession as compared to "Repossessed." There are a number of good scenes and lines, but it tapers off. There is a mystery aspect to this, one that is fairly easy to figure out, and doesn't really add to the film as the comedy aspect outweighs the mystery aspect.Worth a view for fans of horror comedy.Guide: Swearing, sex. No nudity.

Is too bad this isn´t good because the concept is gold. It goes for a neo-noir horror mystery comedy, how cool is that? It is mysterious alright. It kind of floats around, without much highs and lows, between the main character trying to figure out what happened during her possesion and her efforts to control a possible demon´s return. The 12 steps for possessed people is genius. It sets a world where this kind of things seem normal and that feels nice, like getting something annoying out of the way. The problem is it tries to be so many things at once than it´s mostly none of them. The ending is atrocious. I´m not a fan of this digital filming stuff, it looks horrible. Overall, it´s a sexy and funny horror mystery, cool enough to be worth the time.

I dunno... this should have been a pretty great dark/quirky cult movie, along the lines of Repo Man and After Hours and others like it. The cast was great, the cinematography was appropriately oddball (so many Dutch angles! so much neon lighting!)... and that music, with all its funhouse-mirror doo-wop and moody rockabilly-ish twang, was ready for action.And yet, it just didn't go there, which is a real shame.Characters kept having these stilted awkward talky scenes where the whole thing just dragged. It's like someone with some influence felt this could be a horror trope parody, and someone else kept wanting it to be a lightly-creepy noir-ish thriller of the Lynchian variety, and yet someone else kept trying to keep things on track towards the kind of breathless, no-holds-barred screwball wackiness that should have been but never actually came to be.Anyway, it's kind of a mess as it is, and it sure seems that could have been avoided.

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.