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Sam Raimi is involved in a lot of producing these days, what with Fede Alvarez's new version of The Evil Dead looming on the horizon. Before that one arrives, however, he has Ole Bornedal's The Possession to promote, and has been discussing just what it was that attracted him to the spooky tale.
"My partner, Nathan Kahane, had brought in to the office an article from The L.A. Times , written by Leslie Gornstein," explains Raimi, "and it was called Jinx in a Box. It was about this terrible Dibbuk box, and the article told the story of all these different people that had come in contact with it and the awful things that had befallen them, and it was really freaky and scary."
in the film, little Natasha Calis buys one such box and finds herself possessed by an evil spirit. Raimi has always been a fan of possession in his movies, apparently because he considers it to be a relatable phenomena to audiences.
"It’s so easy, in three different ways, to see how possession exists, in our world," he says. "The first is just when you see a very domineering person who has somebody that they’re with, obviously under their psychological control. We know that that exists, in that form. The domination of one’s spirit and mind is not a pretty thing, but I think it happens."
"The second type of possession we see is a computer possession. You’re able to go into and hack somebody’s computer and take over its brain. It’s not a living thing, but it’s a purely mathematical position. You’re able to tell their computer to do anything you want it to do. So, it exists in that form, in our world."
"And then, finally, there’s a virus that’s a little piece of floating RNA that splices itself into our DNA and tells your body, 'Replicate me until the red hour, and then we’ll go berserk and take control.' Really, it’s controlling your body. It’s secretly there, until one day it becomes known. That’s the physical kind of possession that takes place. So, because there are so many types of possession already in our world, it’s actually just a small step for me to believe that this type of possession could actually be real."
