There are few names bigger in the body-horror pantheon than David Cronenberg – the guy who slowly turned Jeff Goldblum into an acid-spewing mutant bug in The Fly, popped heads in Scanners, and declared ‘long live the new flesh’ in Videodrome. And speaking of new flesh, get ready for a new Cronenberg body-horror in the form of Possessor – except, this one comes not from David, but from his filmmaker son Brandon.
Brandon Cronenberg’s second feature film as director is a violent tech-horror, starring Andrea Riseborough as Tasya Voss – a hitwoman who uses brain-implant technology to hack her way into other people’s minds and use them to commit her murders. But when she gets stuck in someone else’s body it sparks a psychological battle with extreme consequences. Take an exclusive new look at the film here, as seen in Empire’s November issue.
Speaking to Empire, Cronenberg opened up about the real life tech that feels not too distant from the fictional tech in Possessor, and the small matter of his genre-defining father. Does he see his dad as a creative influence? “Yeah, in the sense that he literally created me,” he laughs. “I have a good relationship with my father, but it’s not like we sit around talking about body horror. People on the outside are always going to make comparisons, but my films are an honest expression of my own obsessions.”
Read Empire’s full Possessor story in the November issue, on sale Thursday 1 October and available to pre-order online here. Possessor is expected to arrive in the UK in early 2021.