The Possession of Hannah Grace | Film Review

Hey Guys x

I remember seeing the trailer for this on TV and thought that it looked really interesting. It reminded me of 'The Autopsy of Jane Doe', which was a really good horror movie, so I was already feeling positive about this before I saw it.

Megan Reed (Shay Mitchell) begins working in a morgue after a personal tragedy, when she is delivered a body that supposedly died months earlier. But when strange things start happening, and Megan starts seeing things that she shouldn't be seeing, she begins to wonder - what the hell happened to Hannah Grace?

Horror movies never really get high scores on sites like Rotten Tomatoes, mainly because it's hard to do something that hasn't been done in some shape or form before. However, while I do see the problems that this film has, as a horror movie fan I really enjoyed watching it.

Like 'The Autopsy of Jane Doe', I think that a morgue is a great setting for a horror movie. It makes everything instantly scary and automatically more interesting.

Because of the setting, and the beginning of the movie, the concept in and of itself is scary without the additional use of jump scares.
However, the jump scares that are used in the movie are fun and add to the horror of the film. They're done to up the scare-factor, but they all make sense for their specific circumstances.

The story itself, while not 100% original, is made original because of the interesting main character. Megan Reed is a character that we don't usually see films about, because we either see characters whose stories end with the big tragedy, or the film is about them getting revenge. Megan is just a woman who is trying to live her life in spite of what happened, and because of this, there are also a few small scenes that depict mental illness and grief. Of course, that's not what the film is about, but it's still nice to see the realism of this, and the fact that she can't just bounce back like people might expect her to.
Shay Mitchell is great in this role. Not only is she extremely believable, but she also acted the part really well.

However, this is one of those films where it makes no sense that the possessed (or otherwise) entity didn't immediately aim for the main character. The film kind of alluded to something, but didn't bother to go back and explain it.

Considering that she is the title character, we don't actually learn much about Hannah Grace. In fact, we know practically nothing about her, where it would have been nice to get a bit of back story.

There were a lot of really lovely side characters who were used and discarded to advance the plot, and as much as this is Megan's story, I would have liked to see them more, and for them to be made more three dimensional.

And then it was let down by a cliche ending, when there were so many routes that it could have gone down that would have instantly made the whole film ten times better. It feels like towards the end everyone got a bit bored of the story and decided to just... stop.

Overall, I enjoyed this movie, even if there were a lot of things that I'd change!

6/10

Lou