The Possession of Hannah Grace (2018)
Directed by Diederick Van Rooijen
Written by Brian Sieve
Starring Shay Mitchell, Grey Damon, Kirby Johnson, Stana Katic
Release Date November 30th, 2018
Published November 29th, 2018
The Possession of Hannah Grace stars Shay Mitchell, one of the stars of TV’s Pretty Little Liars, as Megan, a former police officer now working the graveyard shift at a Boston area morgue. Megan lost her partner tragically in a moment when Megan hesitated and didn’t shoot an armed suspect. The moment haunted her to the point of driving her toward alcoholism and abuse of prescription drugs.
Today, Megan is still haunted by her partner’s death but she’s in AA and recovering. Megan’s sponsor, Lisa (Castle star Stana Katic), got her the morgue job and since she also works there, she keeps a close eye on her newly sober friend. Megan will be spending many long nights by herself in the creepy basement level morgue so having someone to occasionally look after Megan and make sure she hasn’t gone crazy isn’t a bad thing.
Right off the bat The Possession of Hannah Grace strikes a creepy tone. We start the movie not with Megan but with the titular Hannah Grace who we never really meet. Hannah is possessed by an unnamed and very powerful demon. The demon murders one of the priests during its exorcism by impaling his skull on a cross. The special effect is bad but the impact is strong enough story-wise to indicate the power of the demon.
The film then, quite interestingly, flashes a graphic that says 3 months later. We’re left to wonder, where is Hannah Grace now? Grace’s father murdered Grace at the end of the exorcism so where has her body been for 3 months? We will get a sense of that eventually but first a handsome and funny EMT, played by comedian Nick Thune, drops off Hannah’s body with Megan in the morgue and the strange occurrences begin to ramp up.
The Possession of Hannah Grace comes from international director Diederik Van Roojien in his American feature debut. This director’s strengths do not lie with special effects which throughout The Possession of Hannah Grace are hilariously low grade. I mentioned the impaling early on as an example. That scene is cartoonishly, garishly bad with fuzzy images and poor acting combining to get a big laugh without intending to be funny in any way.
The special effects, thankfully, are only a minor issue. The film makes up for the low grade effects with some top notch creepy sound design. The sound of bones cracking and snapping reminded me of the stomach turning work in the Saw movies. Sean Kennelly was the lead Foley artist on the movie and he deserves a lot of praise for nailing the creepiest sounds for the way Hannah Grace crackles and pops as she stalks the morgue or is being exorcised.
If you have a weak stomach, the sound design and editing of The Possession of Hannah Grace could be triggering for you. The cracking of bones and the buzzing of flies are amped up to a disturbing degree. Actress Kirby Johnson is a special effect in her own right with the ways she’s able to contort her body and face in the creepiest possible manner. Johnson has a very limited part with minimal dialogue but she manages to make a strong physical impression.
The Possession of Hannah Grace is not a movie you need to rush out to see in theaters. But, if you are looking for a streaming option once it makes the move to home video, probably in February or so, of 2019, you could do a lot worse than picking this demon based horror flick. The Possession of Hannah Grace is a solid effort in a tired genre that doesn’t recycle every cliche, just a sizable portion of them.
Lower your standards and turn off your brain and you may find something to enjoy about The Possession of Hannah Grace which is in theaters nationwide this week.
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