BriarMoone
United States
This review may contain spoilers
A Supernatural Drama that Loses Sight of its Strengths
I went into "Possessed" thinking it would be a buddy-cop comedy about and odd couple solving mysteries and helping (or fighting) ghosts. Something in the vein of USA's "Psych", or even TheCW's short-lived "Reaper". Despite its particularly violent and bloody opening, the show lived up to that comedic premise. Sort've.
The jumpy, ghost-seeing cop, and the trendy shaman-in-training, worked great as a comedic dynamic. It was pretty easy to forget how the show started when so much of it was invested in the relationship between the show's leads. (As a friendship. Their dynamic just felt completely devoid of romantic chemistry.)
Additional humor, provided by the truly eccentric and exaggerated personalities of the supporting cast only worked to the show's advantage. "Possessed" had a solid grasp on its humor and angst at first. You never had too much of one or the other. But, this is a cop drama, and if "Voice 2" taught me anything, the show was only going to get progressively darker and violent (even if it wasn't warranted).
Somewhere between the fifth and sixth episode, the persisting story of the vengeful serial killer ghost began to drag the show down. As more focus was afforded to the cast's familial or romantic relationships, his mechanical plans and Doctor Tomoe cackling was altogether unwelcome. If "Possessed" was a Monster/Crook of the Week kind of show, I could see it striking the right balance with its cop and relationship story elements.
But the the overarching plot of "Possessed" overshadows everything that's good about it. It afforded the ghostly antagonist so much plot armor, the show stopped being entertaining and became a chore. The final stretch of the show feels like it was lifted from the 1998 supernatural thriller, "Fallen" (starring Denzel Washington and John Goodman), right down to who makes the big sacrifice to stop the bad guy.
Like others have said, "Possessed" went off the rails when it decided to kill the entire cast within the span its last of five or six episodes. It was melodrama for the sake of melodrama. How hard can our cast cry, how loud can they scream in dire situations? None of it was earned, none of it made sense (but I'm noticing a lot of procedural, terminal-illness, or horror dramas follow this pattern a lot!). The show wrote itself into a corner with the constant power boosts of the antagonist and the general ineffectiveness of its heroes.
Overall, when it wasn't focusing on the murderer spreed ghost, the show was pretty fun. "Possessed" has its moments and it's sure to hit right with others, but it just crumbled toward the end for me.
The jumpy, ghost-seeing cop, and the trendy shaman-in-training, worked great as a comedic dynamic. It was pretty easy to forget how the show started when so much of it was invested in the relationship between the show's leads. (As a friendship. Their dynamic just felt completely devoid of romantic chemistry.)
Additional humor, provided by the truly eccentric and exaggerated personalities of the supporting cast only worked to the show's advantage. "Possessed" had a solid grasp on its humor and angst at first. You never had too much of one or the other. But, this is a cop drama, and if "Voice 2" taught me anything, the show was only going to get progressively darker and violent (even if it wasn't warranted).
Somewhere between the fifth and sixth episode, the persisting story of the vengeful serial killer ghost began to drag the show down. As more focus was afforded to the cast's familial or romantic relationships, his mechanical plans and Doctor Tomoe cackling was altogether unwelcome. If "Possessed" was a Monster/Crook of the Week kind of show, I could see it striking the right balance with its cop and relationship story elements.
But the the overarching plot of "Possessed" overshadows everything that's good about it. It afforded the ghostly antagonist so much plot armor, the show stopped being entertaining and became a chore. The final stretch of the show feels like it was lifted from the 1998 supernatural thriller, "Fallen" (starring Denzel Washington and John Goodman), right down to who makes the big sacrifice to stop the bad guy.
Like others have said, "Possessed" went off the rails when it decided to kill the entire cast within the span its last of five or six episodes. It was melodrama for the sake of melodrama. How hard can our cast cry, how loud can they scream in dire situations? None of it was earned, none of it made sense (but I'm noticing a lot of procedural, terminal-illness, or horror dramas follow this pattern a lot!). The show wrote itself into a corner with the constant power boosts of the antagonist and the general ineffectiveness of its heroes.
Overall, when it wasn't focusing on the murderer spreed ghost, the show was pretty fun. "Possessed" has its moments and it's sure to hit right with others, but it just crumbled toward the end for me.
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