The Possession of Michael King

Documentary-maker Michael King does not believe in God, the devil, or any other supernatural existence. His wife Samantha believed the opposite. For many years she visited medium Beverly for spiritual assistance. In a confrontation with Beverly, Michael tells her that his wife was killed in an accident after taking Beverly’s advise to stay home for her potential career instead of traveling with Michael. He asks her to admit that she’s faking it, and instead consoles him, then asks him to leave.

Michael struggles to pick up his life again after the death of Samantha, having his sister Beth help care for his daughter, Ellie. He decides to make a documentary to prove that there is no paranormal world or afterlife, in which he offers himself as a test subject for the darkest supernatural rituals people believe. He places an advertisement on the internet where people can respond with suggestions for experiments to prove the opposite of his position. Cameraman Jordan will film everything. Michael assumes that he can show that there is nothing, but if he’s wrong, at least he will become the first person with concrete evidence for the supernatural. Hundreds of responses come in.

The first of Michael's new internet contacts to visit him is a spiritual named Gibbons, whose sexually-abusive father died of a heart attack shortly after he prayed to Satan for help, which Michael calls coincidence. Next, Michael orders things online with which he could attempt to call demons, but seemingly nothing happens. Then he visits self-proclaimed demonologist Augustine and his wife Marsha. They give him LSD, bind him to a cross in their cellar and speak spells onto him. Michael trips, but demons do not appear, and instead Augustine and Marsha used the opportunity to have sex with each other in his and Jordan’s presence.

Michael contacts a funeral director who claims to be a necromancer. He dehydrates Michael with the substance DMT from the body of a toad, which causes psychedelic experiences. Then he takes Michael to a cemetery at night, where he wants to transfer the spirit of a newly deceased person into Michael’s body. Before they are able to complete the ritual, police arrive. They run from them, and Jordan finds Michael under a trance, throwing himself at Jordan, later claiming to have seen and felt Samantha.

Then Michael and Jordan attend a large group meeting with a medium, who tries to give a message directly to the former, but has a seizure midway. At home, Michael begins suffering from a constant sound inside his head. He goes to a psychologist, who tries to get rid of the sound with hypnotherapy. The session is interrupted because lights in the room fail, and Michael moves feverishly around and shouts unintelligibly. Jordan analyzes the camera recording and determines that human vocal chords are not capable of producing those shouts. Michael suspects it’s a camera defect, which Jordan doesn't believe and he decides to no longer work on the documentary. Michael takes the camera to film himself. Without knowing it, he walks around at night, in one instance feeling Beth while she sleeps.

The sound in Michael's head begins to appear more often, and is like a talking voice. He becomes convinced that something dangerous is happening to him. Michael asks the voice to leave him alone. A "no" thunders through his head, and his own image appears on the television screen, mocking him. Michael looks for the funeral owner to ask for help, but he pushes him away. Augustine and Marsha explain that what they did was just for fun and put him out. Michael continues losing control of himself. At night he unwittingly goes into Ellie's bedroom with a kitchen knife. The next day, Beth finds their dog, Fishbone, dead in Ellie's bed.

Michael sends Beth and Ellie away to stay with friends. Because the church refuses to do an exorcism, he tries to do it at home on his own. A Bible Michael holds goes up in flames, the entity taking possession of his body throws him around and makes him carve a pentagram in his torso. When he sews his injuries the next day, he notices that it hardly hurts to insert a needle even into his thumb. The voice in his head demands that Michael kill Ellie. He refuses and goes after random people instead, feeling unable to control himself. Michael decides to go home and chain himself with handcuffs to his bed. He wakes the next morning to find that the living room is completely trashed. The walls are full of signs written in blood in Latin.

The next night, Michael handcuffs himself to his bed again with the key beyond his reach, while the demons are torturing him for not being able to make him harm anyone else. In the morning he finds his hand un-cuffed and bloodied. He walks around in his room finding arrows in blood pointing him to the lounge room TV where on the screen is written "Watch this". He pushes the player button and a recording of the events the night before play. He sees that Jordan came by, finding Michael in bed, releases him on the condition to seek help. As the recording distorts, Michael calls Jordan's mobile, ringing from one of the rooms upstairs, but no one answers. He then finds Jordan dead, hanging from the ceiling with a kitchen knife stuck in the middle of his left hand.

Michael tries to kill himself, but every time, the entity within stops him. Later, he watches a recording of Samantha, speaking from a hospital bed after the accident. She talks about meeting with angels and God and tries to convince Michael to not be worried for her. Michael talks to himself and his inner demon about the sounds inside his head, which he initially described as "white noise,” ended up being the sounds of angels trying to cover up the demon's voice, which he can now hear clearly. As he sits in a rocking chair at the front door, the voice in his head tells him: "We're together now, Michael."

In the morning, Beth comes home with Ellie. Michael goes after Beth and kills her. Then he heads to Ellie, struggling with the demon inside to stop himself from hurting her. After he grabs her, Michael begs Samantha for help. His wife’s coin, which he'd been carrying, starts to spin fast while standing on its edge, then stops for few seconds and drops flat. Looking into the mirror, Michael gets momentary control over himself, and uses the opportunity to throw himself out the window. He falls to the street and dies while hearing Samantha's voice telling him "Everything will be all right now".

• Shane Johnson as Michael King
• Ella Anderson as Ellie King
• Cara Pifko as Samantha
• Tomas Arana as Augustine
• Luke Baines as Elias
• Dale Dickey as Beverly
• Julie McNiven as Beth King
• Patricia Healy as Marsha
• Tobias Jelinek as Father Gibbons
• Freda Foh Shen as Dr. Cox
• Krystal Alvarez as Waitress
• RJ Farrington as Audience Member
• Shirley Jordan as Church Assistant
• Michael Lesly as Cop
• Michael Ray Escamilla as The Engineer
• Cullen Douglas as Mortician

For the film, Jung drew inspiration from the character of Jack Torrance from the 1980 film The Shining. He noticed that The Shining and similar movies that dealt with demonic possession did not tell the story from the viewpoint of the possessed person, and thought that it would be interesting to shift the film's view point to the possessed person.[3] Jung chose to make the film found footage as it would allow the character of Michael to document the events as they occurred, in a "scientific approach and personal approach and documentarian approach".[3] While researching for the film Jung "tracked down a lot of really arcane, occult manuscripts", some of which required translation, and also researched rituals that were passed down through oral traditions.[3] In an interview with Nerdist, Jung stressed that he did not want to use rituals that were like "a lot of the other stuff that had been explored in the recent mythology", as he wanted to avoid "Ouija boards and candle lighting" as the film's sole staple of demonic rituals.[3]

Johnson commented on his role, stating that he spent several months to prepare for the film where he viewed similar films to see "what works and what doesn't work" as he felt that "there's a lot of what doesn't work out there".[4] He also researched demonology and necromancy along with viewing films such as The Last Exorcism, which he said made him feel like he "came into the project with some ammunition".[4]

Critical reception for The Possession of Michael King has been predominantly negative and as of October 2014, the movie holds a rating of 29% "rotten" on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 16 reviews) and 34 on Metacritic (based on 10 reviews).[5][6] Many film critics criticized the movie for being too overly familiar in how it delivered scares, its found footage aspect, and in its story line.[7][8][9][10] A reviewer for RogerEbert.com panned the film overall, writing "What’s so depressing about fare like this is how creatively uninspired it feels to see the same tricks pulled over and over again. Horror, true fear only comes from the unknown, the unexpected, the unexplained. There’s never a moment in “The Possession of Michael King” that isn’t telegraphed either by the film itself or from memories of a superior one. It is a work that mistakes loud for scary and turns to camera tricks just to keep you awake."[11] In contrast, Twitch Film commented on the movie's familiarity and stated that "While Jung does not necessarily do anything new under the Sun with his jump scares, they are still effective in their execution."[12] Matt Donato of We Got This Covered also gave The Possession of Michael King a positive review, stating that he had not expected to enjoy the film as much as he had and singled out Johnson's performance as a highlight.[13]

Film reviews from horror websites have been mostly positive. Ain't It Cool News Horror praised Johnson's performance while Shock Till You Drop stated that Jung "gets the most out of the story and his talent".[14][15] Reviewers for Dread Central were polarized—as one praised the film for its twists while the other criticized it for having too many "cheap scares and found footage tropes".[16][17]

• The Possession of Michael King at IMDb