If I find a movie with an intriguing premise, I ignore the reviews and give it a shot. An interesting story that begs you to find out what transpires, goes a long way. Michael King, an atheist, finds himself a widower as the result of his wife's trust in a spiritualist. So he sets out to prove all such people wrong, that there is no such thing as God or the devil, by making a documentary debunking the existence of the paranormal. He uses himself as the victim (er, subject), where he invites all sorts of practitioners of the occult to try and do their worst.
You can see where this is going just from the title. The Possession of Michael King, genre-wise, falls under a few catagories: It is part faux-documentary, part found footage, and part Paranormal Activity voyeuristic camera monitoring. Anyone on here complaining this is just another found footage movie is incorrect, and it's actually one of the things I DIDN'T like about this movie: It breaks from all these formats to go full-on cinematic. I think this would have been more effective had it been filmed by someone (fictitiously) inside the movie, not a cinematographer and director trying to find the right angles. I also found fault in the ending, where they spoon-feed you something that happened earlier in the film... which I felt they had already clearly spelled out before.
However, I did enjoy the story and the performances, and especially liked that Michael couldn't figure out which ritual actually caused the possession. That was a nice touch. Overall, as a descent-into-madness/"Possession Of" movie, this one fares pretty well.
You can see where this is going just from the title. The Possession of Michael King, genre-wise, falls under a few catagories: It is part faux-documentary, part found footage, and part Paranormal Activity voyeuristic camera monitoring. Anyone on here complaining this is just another found footage movie is incorrect, and it's actually one of the things I DIDN'T like about this movie: It breaks from all these formats to go full-on cinematic. I think this would have been more effective had it been filmed by someone (fictitiously) inside the movie, not a cinematographer and director trying to find the right angles. I also found fault in the ending, where they spoon-feed you something that happened earlier in the film... which I felt they had already clearly spelled out before.
However, I did enjoy the story and the performances, and especially liked that Michael couldn't figure out which ritual actually caused the possession. That was a nice touch. Overall, as a descent-into-madness/"Possession Of" movie, this one fares pretty well.