Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Toby Kebbell, Penelope Mitchell, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Stephen Rider, Melissa Bolona, Beth Broderick, Jason Patric, Lew Temple, John Newberg, Dan Southworth, Zander Essex, Gianni Capaldi, Elana Krausz, Jessica Ambuehl, Kate August Lim, Christianne Case, Rich Williams, Hayden O’Connell, Sienna Farall, Tyler Madden, Dallas Edwards, Louis Robert Thompson, Catherine Kamei, Meredith Crutcher, Kiley B. Moore, Kelly Owens.

The possessed never have it easy, especially when the Devil finds a way to hitch a ride in the soul!

Film makers and script writers never seem to run out of ways to find a place for the Devil to take control of a person’s actions, whether it is by direct confrontation, or by the use of evil being deployed like a parasite, the open contact infecting like a virus in the blood; and audiences, for their part, never grow tired of seeing another person die inside, the shell of humanity broken, the malevolence taking apart their reputation and their soul.

Whilst this system of cinema always remains a staple of the large screen, it can, if not employed correctly, sink faster than a boulder thrown off a tall building into a deep lake, the sediment from the bottom it stirs up also adding to the mess and clouded issues that have created the phenomenon in the first place.

There are only so many tales of possession that can be told reasonably well, the same type of progression of story-line that constantly gets remade, repackaged, re-animated and given life, can be seen to follow the same threads, all which lead to a final confrontation between good and evil, between ownership and freedom.

Becoming is a film that has all the best intentions of breaking out of that route often taken, but which in the end falls neatly into the oncoming path of the train being driven by the trope, helplessly tied up to the tracks, the trope at the head of the engine joyfully slicing through the possibilities, playing for time and emotional release as it does so.

For a film with a hardened and impressive cast, including the two leads of Toby Kebbell and Penelope Mitchell, the overriding factor of intimacy is not to be found, not love, but an embrace of what is happening to those that come into contact with Mr. Kebbell’s Alex Ferri. It is because of this lack of intimacy that reduces the impact of Toby Kebbell’s performance, one that sits in the right side of his interpretations utilised superbly as Koba in the second of The Planet of the Apes trilogy, and yet is not allowed to fulfil the actual fear to a greater degree in Becoming.

It is perhaps that the film descends into the tell too soon, there is no great mystery in what has laid down, no sense of the enigmatic or devilish detail, instead what is offered to the viewer is a sense of distilled terror, the unknown anger in which owes more to the likes of Cape Fear than it does Fallen.

A film which could have been bigger than it ultimately developed into, Becoming flatters, but in the end is only fitting on the surface.

Ian D. Hall