 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Repossession • Year: 2019 • Country: Singapore • Director: Ming Siu Goh, Scott C. Hillyard • Main cast: Gerald Chew, Amy Cheng, Rachel Wan, Sivakumar Palakrishnan • Runtime: 96 minutes • Production company: Monkey & Boa • TRAILER |
We are obsessed with conquering outer space and the atom, but we forget that one of the most unexplored and not understood bunch of matter in our world is the human mind. Really, what is going on in those little heads of us? How can we fool ourselves sometimes to a level where we cannot see the difference between reality and fiction? And how dangerous it is to repress our emotions, frustrations, and fears until they are so deep inside our psyche that we literally lost control of our thoughts and actions. Well, in the horror drama Repossession (2019) Jim is one of those men who never learned how to deal with adverse situations and he keeps lying to himself and his family until the situation is out of control.
The movie is set in Singapore, but it could be set in any so-called developed country. One day Jim gets fired from the firm he has been working for the last 25 years. He is not taking it very well, he can’t deal with the situation, with that change of his routine. And won’t tell his wife, instead, he will play with the stock exchange, thinking they would be easy money. He tries to manage by himself, without the help of anyone, and the fastest and easiest way. But that will push him deeper in the well. Yet, he is a good man, a loving husband and father, and he keeps visiting his sister that has been in a vegetative state since she was a little girl. And, soon, the past comes back at him, all those secrets he acted as never existed, all those lies he said to cover up the fact that his life wasn’t so perfect as he wanted to pretend, all that starts to crumble down.
So, now you see the picture. Now you know what we are dealing with. Repossession (2019) is a movie that during most of its running time takes us as a witness of the life of that man in his 50s that one of a sudden saw how his reality ceased to exist. A man that cannot cope with the new challenges life is imposing on him. And we see how his bag of lies gets bigger and bigger as he is running out of time. Because there is a countdown on him, the bank will take over the family possessions if the payments are not done, and also the demons inside of Jim’s head are taking control of his mind. That’s a good title, “repossession”, what used to be his, physical and mental, is being taken.
The way the movie depicts the falling of Jim is so realistic that one could think this could happen to anyone in our family, friends, maybe even ourselves. Because when the horror knocks at his door when Jim realizes he has lost control of his mind and his life, it is too late. The seed already germinated. People use to say “it is never too late” but perhaps sometimes, for some people, it gets to be too late.
Very realistic, very well written, well directed, and avoiding direct conflicts and the easy drama, Repossession (2019) is the kind of movie that makes us feel so close to the main character and the situations he’s living that we pity him when the madness takes over. It’s a smart film, without fake pretensions of grandiloquence, with costumbrist situations, and a terrible ending that everyone could see coming. Because, Jim, you are fucking up, and this won’t end well. Wake up before it is too late because this is getting out of your hands. And it does.
The movie is available on digital, so if you catch it I think it’s worth a watch.
RATE: 6/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt8574124
