Actors: Shane Johnson, Julie McNiven, Ella Anderson, Cara Pifko, Dale Dickey
Directors: David Jung
Rated: R (Restricted)
Studio: ANCHOR BAY
Release Date: August 26, 2014
Run Time: 83 minutes
Film: 3 out of 5 stars
Blu-ray: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Extras: N/A
Found footage meets Exorcism, sounds good but has been done before, with “The Last Exorcism” coming to mind. Surprisingly, “The Possession of Michael King” is a decent entry. Not groundbreaking or genre changing but overall decent. It comes from the producers of “White Noise” and “The Haunting in Connecticut”, so that is a plus in its corner. The film fails with its narrative and wide open ending that answers basically nothing but it definitely had some solid scares and kept my attention the whole film. Plus it run just over 80 minutes, so that works in its favor as well. Shane Johnson is a good lead and has solid co-stars including Dale Dickey (“Iron Man 3”), Tomas Arana (“Gladiator”), and Julie McNiven (“Mad Men”). Worth a rent if you got nothing else to do this week.
Official Premise: Michael King (Shane Johnson) doesn’t believe in God or The Devil. Following the sudden death of his wife, the documentary filmmaker decides to make his next film about the search for the existence of the supernatural. Michael decides to make himself the center of the experiment – allowing demonologists, necromancers, and various practitioners of the occult to try the deepest and darkest spells and rituals they can find on him – in the hopes that when they fail, he’ll once and for all have proof that religion, spiritualism, and the paranormal are nothing more than myth. But something does happen. An evil and horrifying force has taken over Michael King. And it will not let him go.
Anchor Bay is releasing this film as a combo pack with a Blu-ray + DVD + UltraViolet HD Digital copy included. Honestly, it is really rare for Anchor Bay to be releasing digital copies for it’s smaller releases, so this is a real treat. Not that I loved the film enough to watch it again but it hopefully means going they are going to do so. The 1080p transfer is what it is since we are working with found footage here. The picture is clear and the dark scenes are balanced well. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround track sound solid and works well the film scares for sure. There are no special features at all included on this release, which is definitely a let down.