The Possession of Michael King

Synopsis

After his beloved wife Samantha (Cara Pifko) dies after receiving poor advice from a psychic, atheist Michael (Shane Johnson) decides to focus on the supernatural for his next film as a way to disprove the existence of God and the Devil. He chooses to achieve this by visiting various people and having them perform various spells and rituals on him. He begins with Beverly (Dale Dickey), the psychic who was partially at fault for Samantha's death. From here he ends up in various different scenarios, all of which involve the supernatural. However even as Michael does this in the hopes of reaffirming his own atheism, he becomes the focus of several dark, supernatural forces that are intent on exerting their influence on him.

Cast

Production

For the film, Jung drew inspiration from the character of Jack Torrance from the 1980 film The Shining. He noticed that The Shining and similar movies that dealt with demonic possession did not tell the story from the viewpoint of the possessed person, and thought that it would be interesting to shift the film's view point to the possessed person. Jung chose to make the film found footage as it would allow the character of Michael to document the events as they occurred, in a "scientific approach and personal approach and documentarian approach". While researching for the film Jung "tracked down a lot of really arcane, occult manuscripts", some of which required translation, and also researched rituals that were passed down through oral traditions. In an interview with Nerdist, Jung stressed that he did not want to use rituals that were like "a lot of the other stuff that had been explored in the recent mythology", as he wanted to avoid "Ouija boards and candle lighting" as the film's sole staple of demonic rituals.

Johnson commented on his role, stating that he spent several months to prepare for the film where he viewed similar films to see "what works and what doesn't work" as he felt that "there's a lot of what doesn't work out there". He also researched demonology and necromancy along with viewing films such as The Last Exorcism, which he said made him feel like he "came into the project with some ammunition".

Reception

Critical reception for The Possession of Michael King has been predominantly negative and as of October 2014, the movie holds a rating of 29% "rotten" on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 16 reviews) and 34 on Metacritic (based on 10 reviews). Many film critics criticized the movie for being too overly familiar in how it delivered scares, its found footage aspect, and in its story line. A reviewer for RogerEbert.com panned the film overall, writing "What’s so depressing about fare like this is how creatively uninspired it feels to see the same tricks pulled over and over again. Horror, true fear only comes from the unknown, the unexpected, the unexplained. There’s never a moment in “The Possession of Michael King” that isn’t telegraphed either by the film itself or from memories of a superior one. It is a work that mistakes loud for scary and turns to camera tricks just to keep you awake." In contrast, Twitch Film commented on the movie's familiarity and stated that "While Jung does not necessarily do anything new under the Sun with his jump scares, they are still effective in their execution." Matt Donato of We Got This Covered also gave The Possession of Michael King a positive review, stating that he had not expected to enjoy the film as much as he had and singled out Johnson's performance as a highlight.

Film reviews from horror websites have been mostly positive. Ain't It Cool News Horror praised Johnson's performance while Shock Till You Drop stated that Jung "gets the most out of the story and his talent". Reviewers for Dread Central were polarized—as one praised the film for its twists while the other criticized it for having too many "cheap scares and found footage tropes".