Forty years after the premiere of William Friedkin's The Exorcist, Hollywood is still milking the demonic possession cow for every drop it's worth. Sadly, most of the neo-exorcist features being cranked out now are nowhere near as good as that legendary aforementioned film's bastard redheaded stepchild of a sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic — which is really saying a lot when you stop and think about it. Occasionally, they try something slightly different, like they did in the imaginatively titled 2012 flick, The Possession, which was co-produced by none other than Sam Raimi.
As you probably should know, Raimi begat his career in Tinseltown with his classic Evil Dead movies, before abandoning his horror roots in favor of resurrecting — and subsequently burying — the Marvel comic book character, Spider-Man. Here, Raimi takes a backseat to directing, giving Danish filmmaker Ole Bornedal a chance to show American audiences what he's made of. Sadly, however, us Yankees might get the impression that he hasn't a single iota of talent within him, as The Possession is about as dull and routine as you can imagine. The only difference here is that Catholicism doesn't enter into the tale; instead, the demon is dybbuk, which can only be stopped by a nice Jewish boy.
In other words, you can toss out your tired old Catholic pedophile jokes, people, because this is The Jewish Exorcist. And it's a relief, too, because a) I'm not Catholic, and b) I have a plethora of Jewish jokes that are even older: the first of which spewed forth from my mouth like split pea soup as I pondered why they didn't just grab some bacon or non-kosher salt to dispel the demon. Ta-dum. Thank you, I'll be here all night.
Anyway, the story here centers on a divorced high school coach (yes, our hero is a jock) by the name o' Clyde — as played by Brad Garrett clone, Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Stopping at a yard sale one day with is two teenage daughters, he makes the mistake of purchasing a haunted dubbyk box from the seller, which contains an angry l'il demon inside who begins to possess his youngest daughter, Em (Natasha Calis). At first, Clyde ignores the bizarre behavior of his offspring, chalking off the fact that she outright stabs his hand with a fork as a girl thing. Eventually, coach gets a clue, and enlists the assistance of a young hip rabbi (Jewish hip-hop artist Matisyahu) to help him ward off the evil (of course, first, he has to ask how much he paid for the dybbuk box and haggles with Clyde on an exorcism price). Kyra Sedgwick and Madison Davenport (as the divorced wife and elder daughter, respectively) co-star in this boring and lackluster look into the world of the supernatural.
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