Inner demons: The greatest possessions in movies

The gold standard for possession performances starts with Linda Blair’s frightening performance as Regan MacNeil in 1973’s The Exorcist. The pea-soup vomiting, head-turning, expletive-spewing performance Blair gave earned his an Oscar nomination when she was 14 years old. Blair went through hell to give the best performance as the poor child taken over the powerful demon Pazuzu in which she endured long shoots in freezing temperatures and even a fractured spine from the violent bed-shaking scenes to recreate the infamous exorcism scene that shocked audiences around the world.

Essie Davis should’ve gotten an Academy Award nomination for her performance in this sleeper horror hit. The Babadook is an unknown entity that enters the lives of a single mother and a child through an eerie, prophetic pop-up book. The monstrous figure in the top hat seems to feed off the misery and sorrow her character feels as a widow that eventually takes control of her towards the end of the film. Is The Babadook real or just a manifestation of the complicated feelings for and burdens she carries having to raise a child on her own? Her performance really sells the audience on the former, even if it’s still the latter.

2022’s horror hit Smile is another scary tale in which the supernatural forces feel like a bigger metaphor for the struggles its cursed characters carry throughout the film. Rose, played by Sosie Bacon, is a psychiatrist treating one of the smile demon’s victims who eventually takes them over in mid-session and takes their own life in a grisly fashion right in Rose’s office. The demon jumps from body to body before finally taking over Rose in her childhood home, where we learn her mother died in a way Rose hasn’t come to terms with yet, and the demon horrifyingly possesses her. She sets herself on fire just as the smile creeps across her face, but its hidden ambiguity makes it even more frightening because we don’t know if Rose could stop the demon in time or if it’s been passed on to someone else.

Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel’s meta-apocalypse comedy takes place during the Biblical apocalypse, with celebrities like the aforementioned and Danny McBride, Michael Cera, and Craig Robinson playing themselves. They hole up in James Franco’s barricaded house and accidentally let in a demon that, well, inhabits Jonah’s body. Since they are just dumb movie stars who only learned how to do things from movies, they try to hold an exorcism that’s one of the most memorable and funniest scenes in the whole movie.

The entire army of villains in the Evil Dead universe is built on possessions. Demons inhabit the living after being released from hell by incantations from the Necronomicon, turning them into violent, grotesque creatures who turn on their loved ones. We could fill up this whole feature with demons from the movies and even the TV show Ash vs. Evil Dead, but if we have to pick just one from each entry, the best beast is the one that inhabits Ash Williams’ sister Cheryl in The Evil Dead. She first appears by floating in front of the crew in the cabin and promising each of them a slow and painful death. She stabs one of them in the ankle with a pencil and tosses the rest around the room like toys before locking her in the cellar. She pops up throughout the movie, and her death is one of the grisliest you’ll ever see in a gorefest.

There’s no contest who wins the award for Best Possession in the Evil Dead sequel. Ash and his friends accidentally unleash the evil in the woods once again, and this time it starts to take control of her chainsaw-wielding hero by infecting his right hand. The only way Ash can stop it from taking over him is to lop his hand at the wrist, and the severed hand becomes this evil critter who runs around the cabin creating all sorts of wacky havoc for Ash and the dwindling survivors. Ash’s hand also deserves credit for allowing Ash to become horror’s greatest hero by leaving his arm so he can attach a chainsaw to the stump for the movie’s climactic battle and the many more to come after the credits roll.

The third film in the Evil Dead trilogy picks up right where the second leaves off, with Ash being sucked into a time warp that banishes him and the evil to the Dark Ages. He’s forced to fight the growing army of the dead and falls in love with a medieval maiden who gets kidnapped by a flying deadite. Evil Ash transforms Sheila, played by Embeth Davidtz, into a deadite who uses her womanly charms to trick Ash into laying down his boomstick during the movie’s climactic battle. She makes being bad look really good.

The latest entry in the Evil Dead franchise brings the film back to its horrifying roots (no pun intended) by infecting a single mother who threatens the lives of her own children. This time, a new volume of the Necronomicon turns up in an apartment complex where two teenagers discover that an evil entity has possessed their mother. The ensuing scenes are a series of unthinkable and harrowing moments where a person who appears to be their mother threatens her own children mercilessly before going on a bloody and visceral killing spree. The mother, Ellie, played by Alyssa Sutherland, is horrifying as the evil matriarch who can weaponize her love and charms on her children and their friends.

This horror gem from 2018 is unnerving from beginning to end as it amps up the dread exponentially from scene to scene. Hands down, the scariest moment happens when Annie, played by Toni Collette, succumbs to the evil. Annie is struggling to recover from the grisly, accidental death of her son and turns to the occult to reach him and becomes possessed, presumably by her son’s spirit, causing her to do some dark things. Her other son, Peter, discovers her mother’s possessed body, who chases him into the attic and starts banging her head on the door in rapid succession. Sitting still or staying in the theater during this clever horror story is very hard.

One of Denzel Washington’s first big hits happened in 1998 with this unique supernatural thriller about the spirit of a dead serial killer who can inhabit the bodies of the living. Washington plays a police detective who finally tracks down serial killer Edgar Reese and sends him to death row, but Reese comes back by jumping into living bodies to work his way back to Washington’s character for one more game of cat and mouse. It’s a frightening and riveting premise for a detective story because the killer could literally be anyone, even members of your own family.

Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s career catapulting, meta-absurdist comedy dealt with the idea of possession on more scientific and comedic turns, and it’s absolutely brilliant. This time, lowly New York City puppeteer Craig Schwartz, played by John Cusack, caves and gets a job as a file clerk in an office building. One day, he discovers a tiny door that allows people to inhabit the body of acclaimed screen and stage actor John Malkovich for 15 minutes before spitting them out on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike. Every time Craig enters the portal, he can stay longer in Malkovich’s body and even control his movements. The portal creates a bizarre love triangle that produces some hilarious scenes and clever consequences for pretending to be someone else.

Director John Carpenter’s second foray into the possession film landed in theaters in 1987, and it’s one of his most underrated gems. This time, a Satanic liquid is the delivery method for demons from hell that can inhabit the bodies of the living that’s accidentally unleashed as a team of scientists try to study it. Susan is one of its first victims who turns on her scientific co-workers. The movie offers a unique take on the possession genre as some of Carpenter’s regular castmates, like Halloween’s Donald Pleasence, return to fight the Satanic entity. It’s also part of a loosely connected trilogy that Carpenter dubbed his “Apocalypse Trilogy” with 1982’s The Thing and 1994’s In the Mouth of Madness.  

It’s not really known exactly what evil force possesses Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, to turn on his own family, and that’s what makes this Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King staple so scary. Could it be the remote isolation of the snowbound motel he’s tasked with caring for during the off-season? Are the apparitions Jack sees throughout the hotel some kind of demonic divorce that’s been disturbed by humanity’s presence who convince him to do something utterly unthinkable? The possibilities are endless and more horrifying as you try to unpack them.

Stephen King’s possession stories seem to like leaving the cause of human control very ambiguous, and no one’s complaining because they produce some truly great scary stories. Carpenter’s 1983 remake of King’s best-selling horror novel about a car possessed by some kind of evil entity is unique because the car isn’t a rote zombie roaming the streets for victims. The Plymouth Fury has a personality and emotions that are devoted to its new owner Arnie, played by Keith Gordon, who seems to be possessed by the car’s powers. Anyone who gets in Arnie’s way is dispatched by the evil car that can return to its original form even after it's been crushed and crumpled into a metal heap. It's amazing in this day and age that anything made by Plymouth could be so menacing. 

Director Tim Burton’s brilliant afterlife comedy about a countryside couple played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis who try to haunt out their home’s new eccentric residents was a huge hit in 1988 that’s finally getting a sequel. One of their failed attempts to scare the Deetzes, played by Catherine O’Hara and Jeffrey Jones, happens during a dinner party. They take over the dinner guests’ bodies, forcing them to dance and lip sync to the sounds of Harry Belafonte’s 1956 hit single "Banana Boat" before their shrimp appetizer turns into a monstrous hand that attacks them. The haunting fails to get them out of the house, but it’s one of the most memorable and funniest scenes in the whole film, and that’s hard to do when you’ve got Michael Keaton stealing the spotlight as the conniving Betelgeuse in every scene.

Steve Martin got his start in stand-up comedy that turned into a comedy rockstar with his banjo-playing, absurdist physical humor bringing in audiences that could fill up stadiums. This 1984 comedy, directed by the great Carl Reiner, utilizes Martin’s unique talent for physicality to full effect in this possession comedy. Martin plays an attorney and musician who is accidentally possessed on the deathbed from the dead soul of one of his rich, snooty clients, played by Lily Tomlin. The woman’s soul can control one-half of Martin’s body, and it’s hilarious to watch Martin wrestle with himself to do the most basic tasks and maintain some sense of control over himself and his life.