The Possession of Michael King
| The Possession of Michael King | |
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| Directed by | David Jung |
| Produced by | Paul Brooks Jaime Burke Guy Danella Jef Levine Scott Niemeyer Tedi Sarafian |
| Screenplay by | David Jung |
| Story by | Tedi Sarafian and David Jung |
| Starring | Shane Johnson, Ella Anderson, Cara Pifko |
| Cinematography | Phil Parmet |
| Edited by | Jake York |
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Production
company |
Gold Circle Films
Quickfire Films |
| Distributed by | Anchor Bay Films |
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Release date
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Running time
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83 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $12.3 million |
The Possession of Michael King is a 2014 American found footage horror film and the directorial debut of David Jung, who also wrote the film's script. The film had its world premiere on August 14, 2014 in Singapore and had a limited theatrical release in the United States on August 22 of the same year. It was released on to video on demand on August 26, 2014. It stars Shane Johnson as a widowed, atheist filmmaker who finds himself the target of demonic forces.
After his beloved wife Samantha (Cara Pifko) dies after receiving poor advice from a psychic, atheist Michael (Shane Johnson) decides to focus on the supernatural for his next film as a way to disprove the existence of God and the Devil. He chooses to achieve this by visiting various people and having them perform various spells and rituals on him. He begins with Beverly (Dale Dickey), the psychic who was partially at fault for Samantha's death. From here he ends up in various different scenarios, all of which involve the supernatural. However even as Michael does this in the hopes of reaffirming his own atheism, he becomes the focus of several dark, supernatural forces that are intent on exerting their influence on him.
For the film, Jung drew inspiration from the character of Jack Torrance from the 1980 film The Shining. He noticed that The Shining and similar movies that dealt with demonic possession did not tell the story from the viewpoint of the possessed person, and thought that it would be interesting to shift the film's view point to the possessed person. Jung chose to make the film found footage as it would allow the character of Michael to document the events as they occurred, in a "scientific approach and personal approach and documentarian approach". While researching for the film Jung "tracked down a lot of really arcane, occult manuscripts", some of which required translation, and also researched rituals that were passed down through oral traditions. In an interview with Nerdist, Jung stressed that he did not want to use rituals that were like "a lot of the other stuff that had been explored in the recent mythology", as he wanted to avoid "Ouija boards and candle lighting" as the film's sole staple of demonic rituals.
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