Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
The film tells the story of documentary filmmaker Michael King (Shane Johnson), who doesn’t believe in God or the Devil. Following the sudden death of his wife, Michael decides to make his next film about the search for the existence of the supernatural, making himself the center of the experiment – allowing demonologists, necromancers, and various practitioners of the occult to try the deepest and darkest spells and rituals they can find on him – in the hopes that when they fail, he’ll once and for all have proof that religion, spiritualism, and the paranormal are nothing more than myth. But something does happen. An evil and horrifying force has taken over Michael King. And it will not let him go.
The Possession of Michael King works its premise reasonably well — a grieving skeptic filmmaker deliberately inviting demonic forces is a decent hook that gives the found-footage conceit some internal logic. Shane Johnson delivers a committed performance that elevates the material, particularly as the possession escalates. However, the found-footage framework is well-worn by 2014, and the film largely follows genre beats without significant deviation. The cinematography is functional but claustrophobic in the familiar shaky-cam style, and the ending resolves in a predictable, bleak fashion common to possession films. Novelty is limited despite the pseudo-documentary framing, as the core mechanics closely resemble Paranormal Activity and its imitators.