The Possession of Hannah Grace

(spoiler free)

With a somewhat puzzling release date in the midst of the holiday season new horror film ‘The Possession of Hannah Grace’ sees ‘Pretty Little Liars’ star Shay Mitchell tackle the lead role. She portrays Megan, an ex-cop who takes on a new job working the night shift in a hospital morgue. She’s got a few of her own personal demons that she’s already doing battle with but little does she know that with the arrival of a certain Hannah Grace she’s about to come face to face with a much more literal kind too!

The setting of a hospital morgue is an appropriately unsettling one for a story like this, and cinematographer Lennert Hillege has shot the location very well creating a visually appealing aesthetic for the film. It’s a shame then that the narrative that fills this well captured location is fairly basic. There really isn’t that much of a story to tell at all, the basic plot has been created with only one purpose, to scare its audience. This could be forgiven if it was effective at this but unfortunately for the most part it’s predictable and unoriginal, filled with cliches and repetition that don’t do it any favours. The horror is average at best demonstrating fairly by the numbers possession movie scares. It features the expected gruesome body horror stuff and a whole heap of jump scares, all of which you can see coming a mile off resulting in a somewhat scare-free experience.

Despite this lack of originality the whole film is executed to a better than expected standard. The film never comes boring, proving strangely engrossing. This can largely be traced back to Mitchell’s lead performance. She carries much of the film on her own and she manages to be a captivating presence among an otherwise less than compelling project, which is more than can be said for some of her ‘Pretty Little Liars’ co-stars work since the shows conclusion. Although, as well as Mitchell’s confident turn in the lead role, the film manages to inject an enjoyable level of tension into its story despite it lacking on the horror front. This is thanks to one particular plot point that works in the films favour allowing for an added element of suspense beyond the usual possession horror content. These more positive aspects of the film do make up for the unoriginal content making it watchable but the negatives are to prevalent for them to overcome entirely.

‘The Possession of Hannah Grace’ is certainly better than expected but this doesn’t warrant praise itself for the film. However, several aspects of the film-making, unoriginality aside, do show a lot of potential for those involved and help to enhance the viewing experience here too. It’s not a bad film, it just falls victim to the heavily trodden tropes of the genre, not so badly to be remembered as a low light for the genre this year, however neither does it achieve enough to elevate it to a memorable highlight.

Written by Hamish Calvert

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Rating – 5/10

Question: What is your favourite horror film of the year?
(Leave your answers in the comments section below!)

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