We’re all just meat puppets really, that’s the message here. POSSESSOR is as stylish and extreme and disturbing as expected from Brandon Cronenberg, son of David, but it’s very much its own thing as well. Andrea Riseborough and Christopher Abbott are firmly cemented as two of the most talented young character actors working today, playing as they do a body-hijacking assassin and her latest tool for the job who proves more independent and wilful than expected. This is layered, emotional and an unexpectedly tragic character piece that will doubtless reward repeat viewings. The most complex of philosophical ideas are communicated in striking visual form in a fascinatingly contradictory film that manages to be both beautiful and deformed, unpleasant and entertaining, cynical and spiritual. SSP