_Possum_ may be the slowest of slow-burn movies ever made. Nothing really happens until the third act, and I mean **deep** into the third act... like the last five to ten minutes. The movie feels like a nightmare. It's cold, dirty, dark, and painfully slow.
Now, that's not to say the movie is boring. It builds tension the entire time. We follow Philip, who has a permanent frown on his face, and looks like he has never had sufficient sleep in his entire life, as he travels back to his boyhood home. There we meet Maurice - if poor self care could be in carnal form, it would be Maurice. Philip has nothing with him, but a bag containing a grotesque puppet. Repeatedly, Philip tries to dispose of the spider-like puppet, but it keeps returning (smells like _Babadook_ in here). The metaphor seemed all too clear to me early on, but the reveal at the end was still sickening.
_Possum_ deals with heavy subject matter, but has a paper-thin plot, so I will need to address spoilers to make sense of the overall tone.
[spoiler]Okay, so Maurice is Philip's uncle, as well as a pedophile/child murderer. The symbolism of the spider legs are made clear when Maurice mounts Philip, and removes his gloves to reveal his fingers - which I swear looked abnormally long, but I think that was my imagination. I really thought there was going to be rape when Maurice took off Philip's pants, and it feels wrong to describe my mood as disappointed when it didn't go there. Okay, the point of horror is to be a platform for topics that are hard to deal with - I realize some horror movies are meant to be like a visual rollercoaster, just for fun, but there is still an unconscious fear of death being managed. _Possum_ deals with child molestation. It's disgusting, but it happens. If we can't talk about it in movies, how the hell are we going to talk about it in life? I commend the director for making this, but ultimately I think the movie doesn't go as far as it needed to.[/spoiler]
My main problem with _Possum_ is the problem I always have with art films: they want to shove in loads of imagery, but never fully explain any of it (e.g., the balloons, and candy). Therefore, I think the arthouse crowd will enjoy this film more than most horror fans.
I liked this movie. I am impressed with how it captured the revolting feel of the environment as a reflection of the story. It's a tough subject to handle, and while I think it did a great job, it just seemed to fall short.