Brandon Cronenberg Talks ‘Possessor,’ Practical Effects, & Phillip K. Dick [Fourth Wall Podcast]

Being the son of one of Canada’s most heralded genre filmmakers casts a large shadow often resulting in tired comparisons between their respective works that might not have been drawn otherwise. The desire for film fans to group filmmakers together due to familial ties isn’t exactly a new concept (even if it is unfair), however, it is something Brandon Cronenberg has had to grapple with his entire filmmaking career. It’s fair to acknowledge an overlap of interests given both he and his father, David Cronenberg, have a knack for practical effects-driven body horror. However, that’s where the comparison should stop. David is more interested in creating something visually and/or viscerally arresting first and uses that to propel you through the story, whereas Brandon seems more interested in allowing the world of his films to breathe and develop using that to crescendo to a bloody fever dream. With Brandon’s latest film, “Possessor,” many will be quick to quote “like father, like son” (in a positive sense I might add), however, it’s clear the budding filmmaker is personifying the conflict and torment of his own personal identity crisis to say something more.

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In “Possessor,” Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough) works for a secret organization with brain-implant technology, allowing agents to inhabit other people’s bodies and commit assassinations for affluent clients. The years of becoming someone else has taken its toll on her as she begins to lose any semblance of her former self. Her latest mission requires her to slip into the consciousness of Colin Tate (Christopher Abbott) as the lines between who she is and who she wants to be, begin to blur.

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Brandon Cronenberg’s directorial debut, “Antiviral,” was the product of the filmmaker’s own sickness as he obsessed over the idea of someone else being inside of you via the transmission of disease. Continuing this exploration of existentialism, Cronenberg’s sophomore effort was birthed out of his experience on the press tour for “Antiviral” during which he struggled with the idea of creating a media persona detached from “David Cronenberg’s son” and living life as different people day-to-day.

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“[While I was making the film] it was very much a personal experience,” said Cronenberg. “Traveling with a film for the first time is incredibly surreal because you’re constructing a public persona and you’re performing this other version of yourself, this new, media version of yourself that runs off and has its own life without you. That experience and a few other things led me to feel like I was waking up in the morning and sitting up into someone else’s life and having to madly construct some kind of character who could operate in that context. So I wanted to write a film about somebody who may or may not be an imposter in their own life as a way of talking about how we build characters and narratives in order to function as human beings. Of course, we perform for other people, but we also perform for ourselves. I don’t think the way we see ourselves represents the true version of who we are. I think we have our own self-image and personal mythologies as well.”

During our conversation with Cronenberg, we also discussed Canadian existentialism in horror, how his previous artistic ventures in fine art and music eventually led him to film, practical vs. digital effects and why he thinks filmmakers stray away from the former, wanting to adapt Phillip K. Dick, and much more.

“Possessor” is in select theaters and drive-ins now via Neon.

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