The concept of two human minds waging an interior grappling match with each other for control over a body/identity has to be extremely difficult to convey on a screen, but 𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘰𝘳 effectively managed this task and left me feeling as though someone had just been messing around in my head!

Bringing a whole new dimension to 'intrusive thoughts' this film transports the viewer to an even more nightmarey alternate version of our nightmare world where you might find yourself kidnapped and implanted with a sort of remote control, a device assassins may use to inhabit your body and marionette-puppet you into killing your loved ones or even yourself for whatever foul purposes their customers have. (If one of you would invent this tech and just use it to make me exercise more that would be both much appreciated and considerably less morally abhorrent!)

Be advised though that your mileage may vary with 𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘰𝘳'𝘴 heavy reliance on special effects and hallucinatory sequences to show all this internal conflict; they are slickly done and look great but they're asked to do a lot of the heavy lifting to help inform you of these characters' emotional/mental states. Again, this must have been a very tricky script to get on film with the central conflict taking place in the vacuum of headspace. For my two-cents I was all in on that stuff; I actually would have preferred a more art-house direction for this project but there's at least enough of that sensibility here that I can't complain.

While not exactly a 'beautiful' movie every frame has a glossy quality and I would love to have some physical stills if there's ever a special edition. A steady pace evenly spreads out several bursts of gnarly violence though there's not much in the way of especially memorable moments save for the bit which (dis)graces the awesome cover. I've had that poster as my desktop wallpaper for months so that scene had me doing the DiCaprio finger point from my seat and grinning like a hyena; it is an incredible sight to behold.

I certainly enjoyed 𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘰𝘳, I think it's probably gonna stand as my favorite horror film of 2020, but I did feel like it left some untapped potential on the table. We're kept laser-focused on the primary theme of personal agency and the immediate horror of having it ripped away from you. That's okay but I think we needed a bit more time for character and world development, especially around Riseborough's Tasya Vos. I want to know more details about her, this company she works for which seems to be such a well-oiled killing machine, and the rules/limits of the possession tech. Hell, I would have appreciated a rambling philosophical monologue from either her or Jennifer Jason Leigh. The people in this gloomy world are mostly cold, unknowable, and difficult to care about.

Those are minor gripes though and you may not desire that sort of thing anyway. 𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘰𝘳 is a great sophomore effort from 'berg Jr. and it's an appreciable upgrade in production quality from his also-good 𝘈𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘳𝘢𝘭. Don't hesitate to catch this nasty little treat.