Possession · reception & legacy

How Possession has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

Butchered by ~40 minutes and sold as schlock horror in the US, banned in the UK as a 'video nasty' — then decades later rediscovered uncut and canonised, with sold-out repertory runs and a full-blown 2020s revival as THE cult art-horror object.

What's debated

Is Adjani's performance the greatest ever committed to film or pure hysterical excess — and is the movie a profound divorce drama or just gorgeously unhinged?

Its footprint

The subway scene is one of the most referenced sequences in cult cinema — endlessly clipped, gif'd, and homaged, including by Massive Attack's 'Voodoo In My Blood' video with Rosamund Pike. It's also the crown jewel of the 'divorce movie' and 'feral woman cinema' canons on film Twitter and Letterboxd.

Where it stands

A Letterboxd darling and cult-canon summit — the 'you haven't really started watching weird movies until you've seen Possession' film.