Under the Skin: Brandon Cronenberg on Possessor Uncut

Angela Riseborough in Possessor Uncut, the new bodyswap horror from Brandon Cronenberg

When Possessor Uncut slipped into cinemas last month, it seemed like Brandon Cronenberg may have released his films out of order. After all, his 2012 debut, Antiviral, dealt with the convergence of celebrity and virus. But as Possessor arrives on VOD, its question of who we really are seems more timely today than ever.

"If I could swap them, maybe I would," laughed Cronenberg, but the two are really interlinked. He became fascinated by the ideas that would become Possessor during the Antiviral press tour. "It's a strange experience to be traveling with a film for the first time. You're inventing a public persona, and performing this other form of yourself, this media self, that goes off and has this unrecognizable life without you. ... I was sitting up in the morning and feeling like I was sitting into someone else's life, and having to scramble to build some kind of character who could operate in that context."

In the psychotronic thriller, Andrea Riseborough plays assassin Tasya Vos, and Christopher Abbott plays Tasya Vos. That's not a typo. Vos (Riseborough) is an assassin for a shadowy organization that uses technology to keep their killers safe and untraceable. The killer implants themselves into the brain of an innocent dupe who walks in, does the deed, and then kills themselves or gets taken down by the cops, just as the mental murderer removes their consciousness. Colin (Abbott) is Vos' latest drone, but this vessel may not be as empty as the procedure requires.

Austin Chronicle: You develop a story about layered personalities and mixing it with surveillance culture, this idea of you never know who's watching where, or through what eyes.

Brandon Cronenberg: It started with the idea of invasion. ... I wanted to write a script about a character who may or may not be an imposter in their own life, and use that as a way to discuss how we construct characters and narratives in order to function as human beings on a basic level. The thriller/sci fi stuff came afterwards, and in that process of developing the script the Snowden leaks happened, and I was becoming very angry and depressed about the death or privacy through technology, so I wanted to include that in the film.

So the two, in a sense, ended up complimenting each other because, in the film, the possessions end up being a weird parallel for that invasion of privacy. Instead of someone turning on your camera, turning on your microphone, they're in your body experiencing the most intimate moments of your life, experiencing your own nerves and your own body. Or, just as terrifying, that someone in your life is an imposter recording you through a full-body sensory surveillance camera.

AC: What's still surprising to me is the number of people who recently went, "The loss of privacy is a thing," and if you ask anybody in tech they go, "We've been telling you this forever."

BC: Absolutely. It's funny because it keeps on not being surprising, but it's also infuriating and surprising. For instance, there was recently the reveal with Siri and Alexa, that these microphones were coming on at random in people's lives, recording 30 second conversations or people having sex, and then sending these recordings to private contractors to check that things were working perfectly - but in ways that were completely revealing who was talking.

On one level, obviously that was happening. Anyone who was following this stuff could tell you that was happening. But on another level it's additionally infuriating when it's confirmed, and it's as bad or worse than you were expecting it to be.

AC: My wife is in tech, and that's exactly why we don't trust those systems. When a camera is not in use, it's covered.

BC: I'm exactly the same way, but the two scary, unnerving, anxiety-producing things for people like us is that, first of all, you can only sort of avoid that stuff because you're out with 50 people who don't behave that way and have Siri and have all their smart phones and smart watches activated. So you're being recorded outside of your house, and you can't really control that.

The other thing is that I feel very much part of a strange, transitional generation because I was born before everybody had the internet. So I feel like, for some of us, we can see how strange this is but generation after generation are being born into situations where this is the norm and you can't function socially and be a part of what's going on if you don't have this equipment. So there's this kind of creep forward of what's being normalized. It's unavoidable, I just don't know what it means.

Christopher Abbott as Colin - or potentially Tasya Vos, the assassin plugged into his brain - in Possessor.

AC: How do you as a director direct two actors who are playing two characters layered over each other, when there are constant questions of who's in charge and who's imitating who.

BC: It was basically a two-stage process. Stage one was working with the actors, and that was surprisingly easy because they're both completely brilliant at making it look really good. There was an initial period in which I was thinking how we would approach it in a rigid, formal way, and there was some discussion about would they be on set with each other, watching each other's scenes? Would they work on the character together? Was one going to take the lead and the other mimic them? So there was a bit of a rabbit warren there that we went down during an early discussion where we were trying to figure out what the access to that would be.

In practice, it was very organic. Initially, I conveyed to the idea to the actors that they would be playing two characters, and the details that would be tying those two performances together. I understand they were in touch with each other, talking about what Vos would do under certain circumstances, just to make sure they were on the same page.

AC: Oh, you never want your actors talking behind your back.

BC: It's a terrifying prospect, but I didn't realize until it was too late!

On a scene-by-scene level we would work together on ideas and tidbits. Occasionally it would be a little more what you would expect. For instance, Andrea looking at how Chris cut the apple, in order to make sure she was cutting the apple the same way. But a lot of it was just built out very organically and collaboratively as we went.

The second aspect of that process was the editing. We shot more than was actually in the film, but in terms of tracking those character a lot of the shape was given to that arc as I was working with Matt Hannam, my editor. For instance, there would be some scenes where we would shoot with both actors and it would seem like a great time to mash up the two performances and do something a bit trippy. Then, as we were refining the story line in editing, it became apparent that in that moment it was very important to show who was in control, so we favored one actor over the other. We would pick our moments to have the elements of confusion, and pick our moments to focus on a certain actor. Some of that isn't clear until you're seeing the whole thing together and seeing the shape of it.

Possessor Uncut is available on VOD now, and will inhabit DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K UHD on Dec. 8.

Read our four star review here.