POSSUM is about a disgraced puppeteer (played by Sean Harris) on the edge of his own sanity.
POSSUM is Matt Holness' debut feature. He is probably best known for 2004’s Garth Marenghi's DARKPLACE, and boy has he switched dramatic gears. Where once he revelled in a very British horror parody, be prepared to wallow in a bleak, fever dream about one man isolation and abandonment issues.
Phillip (played by Sean Harris) is a disgraced puppeteer on the edge of his own sanity. He carries a brown leather holdall that contains a gruesome spider like puppet with an adult doll’s face. He spends a lot of the film trying to get rid of it, but like the book in THE BABADOOK, it inexplicably comes back. When he’s not coping with his own dissociative unreality he’s being taunted and teased by unhinged stepfather Maurice – a minimalist Fagin character who Alun Armstrong twists and turns for his own morbid fascination and ours.
POSSUM is light on traditional narrative cues until the final act where clarity is finally reached.
Experiencing the craziness of Phillip’s mind means POSSUM is light on traditional narrative cues until the final act where clarity is finally reached. Before then Kit Fraser’s stunning cinematography, Charlotte Pearson’s grimy and dilapidated production design, Crispin Buxton’s lost and lonely locations and the profound sounds and melodies of The Radiophonic Workshop are a dark, twisted delight for the eyes and ears as the madness unfolds.
POSSUM is released on Digital, DVD & Blu-Ray 4th March 2019.
Stuart Wright
@LeytonRocks
