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[tab title="Movie Review"]
The unnatural body contortions and bed thumpings happen early in The Possession of Hannah Grace. What we have come to expect from these movies of possession is shoved right in our faces before we are even ready for our popcorn.
It works well enough to get our motors revved for a tale of religion, recovery, and spooky shit. After all, everyone knows what happens during an exorcism. This movie attempts to answer what happens afterwards, when the dust is supposedly settled.
Because, sometimes, these exorcisms fail. Uh-oh. Confined and constricted, we are mostly in a morgue for this tale and, man, that should work to keep things focused but it doesn't.
In the beginning of the movie, we are thrust immediately into a scene of swirling flies and demonic possession as priests are raised off the ground, choked, and thrown back into religious sculptures that end up killing them. Tired of the abuse, one father takes a pillow to the face of his own daughter as he smothers her, ending her life and the possession of whatever demon had hold of her.
This scene isn’t a tease, though. It’s not a prologue either. Thankfully, it leads us right into the drama involving a former cop who, after an intense encounter that leaves her mentally shaken, takes on morgue duty during the graveyard shift. Talk about bad timing. She’s there for some rest and, as the bodies come slowly arriving, she’ll discover one body that has a devilish mind of its own.{googleads}
That should be all it takes to get this one off the ground. It isn’t, though. Starring You’s Shay Mitchell, the graveyard shift might come alive thanks to the undead demonic spirit in Hannah Grace when her body is brought to the morgue to hang out. But we also have Dad’s hellbent on making sure their daughter’s are dead, a body bag that won’t stay zipped, and a corpse that seems to move on its own.
Because – surprise, surprise – Hannah Grace is still possessed! Holy Sheet, Stimpy! The demon is still in her, still guiding her, and still making her brown eyes turn blue. That’s how we know that she is completely under its control.
Directed by Diederik Van Rooijen and written by Brian Sieve, the sad fact facing this movie is that it follows in the wake of the excellent The Autopsy of Jane Doe. Comparisons have to be made, of course. And the film really doesn’t have an identity of its own to make it memorable. This is disappointing. This is a movie – while ripe with atmosphere and potential – where too many “suits” were messing around with its content.
Give me a Director’s Cut of this movie any day. There is something here in all its bits and pieces, but the film (as it is currently) struggles with pacing and with story in this studio-approved cut. There is a lot of drama in Megan Reed’s life and it involves a fellow cop, a security guard, and – of course – the corpse itself but none of it resonates, filling the gaps between all the haunted occurrences. Hell, even I need a bit more than that.
Hear corpses breathe! The Exorcism of Hannah Grace is now on blu-ray thanks to Screen Gems.
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[tab title="Details"]
MPAA Rating: R for gruesome images and terror throughout.
Runtime: 86 mins
Director: Diederik Van Rooijen
Writer: Brian Sieve
Cast: Shay Mitchell, Grey Damon, Kirby Johnson
Genre: Horror
Tagline: Death is Only the Beginning.
Memorable Movie Quote: "You know what they say: if an exorcism isn't completed, evil will find a new vessel."
Theatrical Distributor: Screen Gems
Official Site:
Release Date: November 30, 2018
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: February 26, 2018
Synopsis: When a cop who is just out of rehab takes the graveyard shift in a city hospital morgue, she faces a series of bizarre, violent events caused by an evil entity in one of the corpses.
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[tab title="Blu-ray Review"]
Blu-ray Details:
Home Video Distributor: Screen Gems
Available on Blu-ray - February 26, 2019
Screen Formats: 2.40:1
Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Korean, Malay, Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional), Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Thai, Turkish
Audio: English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1; French: Dolby Digital 5.1; Hindi: Dolby Digital 5.1; Hungarian: Dolby Digital 5.1; Polish: Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Discs: Blu-ray Disc; Single disc; Digital copy; Movies Anywhere
Region Encoding: Locked to Region A
Released by Screen Gems and featuring a 2.39:1 aspect ratio, The Possession of Hannah Grace looks like a million atmospheric bucks on 1080p. Black levels are crisp and deep, and colors are saturated. The color palette is naturally well balanced with warm and rich hues. Contrast is excellent, with solid and deep blacks and revealing shadow delineation. Flesh tones are naturally cast. The film is rich with atmosphere thanks to handling of many black levels. We also get a solidly creepy DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound mix.
Supplements:
Commentary:
- None.
Special Features:
Fans of the movie get a deleted scene and three featurettes that graze over the film’s making, cast, and its concept.
- Deleted Scene
- An Autopsy of Hannah
- Megan’s Diaries
- Killer Cast
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[tab title="Art"]
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