Try to go into this knowing as little about it as possible. Watching it unfold and figuring it our is part of the joy. What starts off as a wacky meta movie only becomes more so. An in the end this beautiful folding narrative torus expands into an adorable homage to the loving family that a film crew becomes. Filmmaking is a brutal collaborative art form and getting others to join your collective madness is much like spreading a zombie plague.
Dryer is often appreciated as a transcendent filmmaker, by this I mean that the films use the ordinary everyday and earthly materials and THROUGH those we experience the divine, the holy and the supernatural. This particular film is so remarkable for possibly containing the single best ever performance recorded on film. As Maria Falconetti has her head shaved, the horrific despair on her face in undeniable. And in the end as she burns, we in the audience mourn.
Sometimes a film comes together in an unrepeatable alchemy of performance, direction, tone that just makes all the bad films you've ever seen in your life worth it to get to this one. This film is incredible, a simple masterpiece of unbelievable horrors and madness. My life is simply two distinct eras, before I saw POSSESSION and after.
