Another week, another remake green-lit by Hollywood. This time it’s the 1981 German cult classic Possession – a romantic thriller imbued with a Cold War backdrop, doppelgänger surrealism, and visceral body horror. It’s truly a movie you need to see for yourself to believe. Emmy-winner Margaret Qualley and potential new James Bond actor Callum Turner are being discussed as the leads. Qualified actors no doubt, but I cannot shake the question of whether this remake should exist.
Let me begin by asking a simple question – why have remakes become so reviled in the last 15 years? Beyond the simple repetition of their releases, more often than not, they actively choose to not say anything new. Sure, they’re made to exploit nostalgia, but audiences can tell the difference between an update to a story they know and being told an old story with superficial changes. Let’s take two recent remakes: 2019’s The Lion King and 2023’s Godzilla Minus One as examples. While the former has obvious technological advantages over the original, it had no identity of its own with its themes or tone so despite making a billion dollars it’s remembered as inferior to the original. On the other hand, Godzilla Minus One took the bones of the 1954 original and created an original story by reinterpreting the titular monster as an embodiment of destructive guilt. Partnered with award-winning visual effects, it feels like a fresh retelling of the classic movie that can also stand on its own.
To draw this back to Possession, I have to question if this remake can really add anything new to the narrative beyond updated visuals. As mentioned earlier, Possession was made at a very particular time in history, which is reflected in its plot. The themes of division are meant to be a clear homage to the divided nation of Germany during the Cold War and the drab setting of Berlin is meant to reflect the bleak circumstances of the main couple as their marriage, and combined sanity, spiral. These factors, unlike Godzilla Minus One’s universal dread of nuclear annihilation, are hard to imprint onto the modern day. My greatest concern is that director Parker Finn will try and capture the bleak atmosphere of the original film and miss the poignant mirror it held to the real world, or alternatively that he’ll forgo the aesthetic and lose a key part of the original’s identity. Finn made the Smile duology which are wonderfully effective psychological teardowns of its protagonists, so he is a qualified candidate for this remake, but again – should this movie exist if it will inevitably miss key ingredients that made the original unforgettable?
“Margaret Qualley at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival 4” by Jay Dixit is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.