US actress and model Margaret Qualley attends the 97th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California on March 2, 2025.
ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
Parker Finn’s remake of Possession added three new cast members joined last week, and if you have been tracking the production as anything more than celebrity gossip, the completed ensemble signals something genuinely unusual: a studio horror film whose creative logic is backed by peer-reviewed biology published just this year. Madeline Brewer, Emory Cohen, and Nicholas Alexander Chavez joined the already confirmed lineup of Margaret Qualley, Callum Turner, Paul Dano, and Diego Calva in Paramount Pictures’ remake of Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 psychological horror film — a movie whose central mechanism, the idea that sustained grief can generate something biologically autonomous and monstrous from within the body, maps with uncomfortable precision onto what psychoneuroimmunologists now measure in bereaved individuals.
What Finn Is Remaking and Why His Transmissible-Trauma Aesthetic Fits It
Żuławski’s original Possession is not a conventional horror film. Set in Cold War-era West Berlin, it follows Mark (originally played by Sam Neill, who died July 13 in Sydney at 78, before production on this remake concluded) and his wife Anna (originally Isabelle Adjani, whose performance won Best Actress at Cannes at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival). When Anna asks for a divorce, the film refuses to stay in the register of domestic drama. What she is hiding in a rented apartment is not a lover in the ordinary sense but something alive and growing — a tentacled organism that becomes more human-shaped the more time it spends with her, eventually converging on a replica of Mark himself.
In the 45 years since its release, critics have debated whether the creature is meant to be read literally or as a psychosomatic projection — the embodied shape of Anna’s accumulated need, rage, and repressed desire. Żuławski himself described the film as a personal exorcism of his divorce from Małgorzata Braunek and his forced exile from Poland by Communist censors. The creature was realized in practical effects by Carlo Rambaldi created the tentacle creature, the Italian mechanical-effects artist who also built E.T. for Spielberg’s film of the same name.
Parker Finn is remaking this. The director responsible for Smile (2022, budget: $17 million, grossed approximately $217.4 million worldwide) and Smile 2 (2024, budget: $28 million, grossed approximately $138.1 million worldwide) has been attached to write, direct, and produce since a mid-2024 bidding war among five major studios — A24, Netflix, Paramount, Sony, and Warner Bros. — with Paramount ultimately winning. He described the project as viciously sharp, noting he wanted “all the teeth and ferocity that the original had” but also “a spiritual successor in dialogue with the original, with some new explorations in it.”
That framing is not marketing language. Finn’s Smile franchise operates on a specific premise: trauma is transmissible, spreading person to person the way a pathogen does, visible only to those who are already infected. Possession’s creature operates on a related but more intimate logic: trauma does not spread outward but gestates inward, growing in relation to the host’s psychological state and eventually generating something that assumes the form of whatever the host most desires and most fears. Finn moving from Smile to Possession is not a directorial pivot; it is a deepening of the same inquiry.
Qualley (replacing Adjani’s Anna) earned her body-horror credentials with her widely praised performance in Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance (2024). Her counterpart is Callum Turner, who steps into the role originated by Neill. The supporting cast as now assembled includes Paul Dano (The Batman, There Will Be Blood), Diego Calva (Babylon), Madeline Brewer (The Handmaid’s Tale, Netflix’s You), Emory Cohen (A24’s Marty Supreme), and Nicholas Alexander Chavez, who received acclaim for his portrayal of Lyle Menendez in Ryan Murphy’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story and subsequently co-starred in Murphy’s Grotesquerie.
What Grief Actually Grows in the Body
The body-horror mechanism in Possession is fictional, but the psychoneuroimmunology it dramatizes is not.
A 2025 systematic review of PGD biomarkers published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences by Pedrinelli et al. — covering studies of what are now formally categorized as Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) biomarkers under the DSM-5-TR — documented the following measurable effects of pathological grief on the body: altered diurnal cortisol rhythms (a flattened slope, with lower morning levels and elevated afternoon levels, consistent with chronic stress disorders); elevated pro-inflammatory cytokines including IL-6, interferon-gamma, and TNF-alpha; reduced natural killer cell (CD16+) activity and reduced CD8+ T lymphocyte counts; elevated oxytocin in complicated grief compared to individuals with Major Depressive Disorder; and dysregulated endocannabinoid signaling, specifically elevated anandamide (AEA) concentrations in bereaved individuals experiencing high loneliness.
To be precise about what this means: grief does not merely “affect” the immune system metaphorically. Sustained pathological grief measurably reduces the body’s capacity to fight infection, elevates inflammatory markers associated with cardiovascular disease, disrupts the hormonal system that regulates daily biological rhythms, and alters the endocannabinoid system that modulates stress and emotional processing. These are not analogies for what Żuławski filmed; they are the biological processes his film literalized.
Anna’s creature in Possession is, on the reading that the science now makes available, not an external invader but a biological consequence of sustained grief — the body’s stress, immune, and hormonal dysregulation granted physical autonomy and form. The creature does not merely reflect Anna’s psychological state; it develops in direct proportion to it, becoming more elaborate as her grief intensifies, eventually converging on the precise human shape she most desires and most fears. This is what elevated anandamide, disrupted cortisol, and activated pro-inflammatory cytokines look like in a film made in 1981 by a director working entirely on instinct.
PGD was a DSM-5-TR diagnostic category only from 2022, when it was formally included in the updated manual. Żuławski’s film preceded that recognition by 41 years.
Why Finn Is Shooting on 35mm
The cast expansion is not the only signal that this remake is being made with unusual seriousness about the source material. Finn is shooting Possession on 35mm film rather than digital — a decision confirmed filming on 35mm film stock when on-set photography from Jersey City, New Jersey, appeared on July 22, 2026, alongside reporting from World of Reel.
The difference between 35mm and digital acquisition is technical and visible. Film grain is produced by silver halide crystals of varying sizes, creating an organic, non-uniform texture that responds differently to highlights, shadows, and motion than digital sensors do. Highlights “roll off” on film rather than clipping hard at a threshold, producing a different relationship between light and darkness. The 1981 original was shot on 35mm by cinematographer Bruno Nuytten, and the look Żuławski and Nuytten achieved — the grainy, slightly unstable quality of the apartment scenes, the cold overcast texture of the West Berlin exteriors — is inseparable from that acquisition format.
Finn’s choice to shoot on 35mm is a commitment to that visual language, which costs more and requires more logistical complexity than modern digital workflows. It is not a nostalgic affectation; it is a technical decision that signals the film intends to exist in dialogue with the original at the level of image, not just narrative.
Several recent prestige horror productions have made the same choice for related reasons: Robert Eggers shot The Witch (2015) on 35mm; Ari Aster and Pawel Pogorzelski shot Hereditary (2018) on 35mm; Fargeat shot The Substance (2024) in a format that prioritized texture and physical viscera over digital cleanliness. Qualley’s transition from The Substance to Possession means she is bringing body-horror experience into a production that is using the same physical film stock that made body-horror’s golden age look like body-horror’s golden age.
What the Original Star Said
Isabelle Adjani, whose performance as Anna in the 1981 original remains one of the most analyzed in horror cinema — including the 12-minute continuous subway sequence that critics have described as one of horror’s most demanding performances ever captured on film — endorsed Qualley in the role at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Speaking with Numéro magazine at Cannes, Adjani described the project as a form of “enlightened opportunism” capitalizing on a pervasive Hollywood remake trend, and added: “When I met Margaret at a dinner party a few years ago, she told me she looked more like me than her mother, so it seems this family resemblance influenced the director’s choice of actress for the role in Possession. Besides, she’s incredibly talented!” Adjani subsequently shared praise of Qualley’s work on her Instagram.
The online reaction to the remake has not been uniformly positive. Critics argued the original is unreplicable at World of Reel and writers at Inverse have argued the original’s irreducibly personal character — Żuławski’s divorce, his exile, his emotional crisis — makes it categorically unreplicable in the way a story with a more objective premise might not be. The complaint is legitimate; whether it is lethal depends on what Finn finds in the material that is his rather than Żuławski’s. His stated emphasis on “new explorations” and a “spiritual successor in dialogue with the original” rather than a shot-for-shot reconstruction is the only answer available until the film releases.
Why the Source Material Was Always Bigger Than Its Director Knew
The above is not an argument that Possession (2026) will be good. It is an argument for why the genre logic underlying the source material is, unusually, scientifically grounded — and why the specific combination of Finn’s established thematic preoccupations, Qualley’s body-horror background, and the 35mm production choice suggests the remake is approaching the source material from a direction that could justify its existence.
Horror remakes fail when they treat the original’s surface as the thing to be reproduced. They succeed, occasionally, when they treat the original’s structural logic as the thing to be inhabited and extended. The structural logic of Possession — grief as a biological process that generates something monstrous when it cannot resolve — is now documented science. Whether Finn and Qualley can make that science into cinema the way Żuławski and Adjani made their personal pain into cinema is the only question that matters.
No release date has been announced by Paramount Pictures. Principal photography is ongoing as of early August 2026. Based on Parker Finn’s previous Paramount productions, a late 2027 or early 2028 release window is a reasonable speculative estimate, though no official projection has been made by the studio.
Frequently Asked QuestionsWho stars in the Possession remake?
Margaret Qualley plays Anna, the role originated by Isabelle Adjani, whose 1981 performance won Best Actress at Cannes. Callum Turner plays Mark, the role originated by the late Sam Neill, who died July 13, 2026, at 78, before this production concluded. The supporting cast includes Paul Dano, Diego Calva, Madeline Brewer, Emory Cohen, and Nicholas Alexander Chavez. Parker Finn writes, directs, and produces; Robert Pattinson, Roy Lee, and Jonathan Fass also produce.
When will the Possession remake be released?
No official release date has been announced by Paramount Pictures. The film is in active principal photography as of August 2026. Given the typical post-production timeline for Paramount productions of comparable scale, a late 2027 or early 2028 release is a reasonable estimate, though this is not confirmed by the studio.
What is the connection between the Possession remake and the science of grief?
The 1981 original operates on a premise — that sustained grief can generate something physically autonomous and monstrous within the body — that maps closely onto findings in modern psychoneuroimmunology. A 2025 systematic review in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences documented that Prolonged Grief Disorder, now a DSM-5-TR diagnostic category, produces measurable biological changes: elevated pro-inflammatory cytokines, disrupted cortisol rhythms, reduced immune function, and dysregulated endocannabinoid signaling. Żuławski literalized these biological processes as a horror narrative 41 years before they were formally categorized as a disease. The connection is not metaphorical; it is structural.
Why is Parker Finn’s background in the Smile franchise relevant to the Possession remake?
Both the Smile franchise and Possession are built on the idea that trauma has a transmissible or generative biology. In Smile, trauma spreads person to person, visible as a supernatural entity but operating like a pathogen. In Possession, trauma does not spread outward but gestates inward — the body’s sustained grief generates something that grows in proportion to the host’s psychological state. Finn’s move from Smile to Possession is a deepening of the same inquiry rather than a genre change.