Possessed (1999)

directed by Anders Rønnow Klarlund
Denmark
96 minutes
3.5 stars out of 5
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It's a very appropriate coincidence that this movie's original title (Besat) should be so close to the English word "beast".

If you're into despairing over how much time has passed since 1999 and how movies from the late 90s and early 2000s all seem like relics of a more distant time, then Possessed is for you. Apparently Denmark was also fascinated with the amped-up neon lights and dark, gritty, steamy noir that much of US cinema had been infatuated with at that time because this movie has that sort of aesthetic that only really specific crime shows tend to have. I actually started thinking at length about what the meaning of those distinctive neon colors was, because it seems like it was a color palette that only existed in the popular view for a short period of time but was nevertheless bonded to crime flicks like leaves are bonded to a tree- for a brief period this was the new noir, this was the trademark of a crime film. Then we moved on, and we stopped overusing neon solids in every scene.

But to me it looks like in this film those neons are meant to represent environs that are as far from nature as possible. The effect is obviously toned down outdoors as it's difficult to find plant life that fits the striking color palette in an urban environment, but when something happens that we're meant to perceive as being unnatural- moments of high tension, the committing of the central crime, or a scene that's supposed to convey the mental state of a criminal- the neon is brighter than at any other time. It's interesting to me how this hearkens back to the early days of cinema when the only way to color a film was to either color a scene in one single color or not color it at all. The directors are picking and choosing which single colors best represent the emotional content of a scene just like directors in the first decades of the 1900s did.

So how is the movie in general, aside from its aesthetic? Pretty generic, honestly. It reminds me a lot of Nicolas Winding Refn's very early films in both style and content, but it's a little more coherent, at least for a while. It starts out looking like a tense drama involving epidemiologists, police, and several people both living and dead who are connected to a rash of bizarre, fire-related disease outbreaks. All the while there's something shifting through the background, a vague looming that gives you a sense of everything not being out on the table at first glance. As far as slow reveals go, this one is pretty good at doing both paranormal and normal well and not losing anything in the transition between one or the other.