THE POSSESSION OF HANNAH GRACE (2018)

Studio:      Screen Gems
Director:    Diederik Van Rooijen
Writer:      Brian Sieve
Producer:  Todd Garner, Sean Robins
Stars:     Shay Mitchell, Grey Damon, Kirby Johnson, Nick Thune, Louis Herthum, Stana Katic, Max McNamara, Jacob Ming-Trent, James A. Watson Jr.

Review Score:

---

Summary:

An ex-cop recovering from addiction encounters a cursed corpse while working the night shift alone in a hospital morgue. 

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Possessed by a demonic entity, Hannah Grace supernaturally kills Father Marcato during a failed exorcism. Hannah’s father Grainger suffocates Hannah with a pillow before she can also kill Father Cunningham.

3 Months Later – Nurse Lisa Roberts helps former cop Megan Reed get a night shift job in the Boston Metro Hospital morgue. Dr. Henry Lewis shows Megan her duties as an intake assistant.

Megan experiences a haunting flashback to when fear prevented her from shooting a junkie who went on to kill her police partner. Megan also recalls Lisa becoming her AA sponsor, as Megan’s life spiraled into addiction following the incident.

Megan’s ex-boyfriend and fellow police officer Andrew Kurtz stops by Megan’s apartment to collect his belongings. The two of them briefly talk about Megan’s struggle with addiction.

Grainger comes to the morgue’s access bay demanding to be let in. Working her night shift alone, Megan reports Grainger to security guards Ernie Gainor and Dave.

EMT Randy arrives to drop off Hannah Grace’s body. While Megan helps Randy with the corpse, Grainger sneaks into the morgue.

Sudden problems with equipment prevent Megan from properly processing Hannah’s body. Over the course of the night, various instances of paranormal activity cause Megan to question if her mind is cracking or if something supernatural is going on.

Megan summons Ernie and Dave when she finds Grainger trying to cremate Hannah’s corpse. As the two security guards subdue him, Grainger exclaims that Hannah’s body must be destroyed because she isn’t really dead.

Lisa comforts Megan after the incident. Having heard about Grainger’s arrest, Andrew also comes to check on Megan.

Megan denies taking his pills when Andrew tells her that his prescription Xanax was missing from his belongings. Megan asks Andrew to look into Hannah Grace for her.

Hannah supernaturally kills Dave while he investigates noises in the morgue alone.

Andrew later calls to tell Megan that the corpse’s fingerprints belong to Hannah Grace. Online research reveals that Hannah died during an exorcism three months earlier.

With instances of paranormal activity intensifying, Megan shows Lisa security footage of what she believes is Hannah’s corpse stalking a hallway. Lisa questions if Megan might be relapsing when she sees Megan has a bottle of pills.

Hannah chases Lisa up a deserted staircase. On the roof, Hannah kills Lisa by supernaturally contorting Lisa’s body.

Randy returns to the morgue. Megan shows Randy how it looks like Hannah’s corpse has been healing itself.

Randy relates to Megan’s struggle with addiction by advising her to make amends with loved ones. Megan calls Andrew to confess that she kept his Xanax, but swears she didn’t take any.

Hannah kills Randy in the access bay. Megan finds Randy’s body.

Andrew calls Megan to warn her that Grainger escaped police custody. Grainger returns to the morgue and forces Megan to take him to Hannah’s body. Grainger tells Megan about Hannah’s demonic possession while explaining that Hannah heals herself by killing people.

Convinced that the corpse is cursed, Megan helps Grainger move Hannah to the incinerator for cremation. Hannah’s corpse reanimates and forces Grainger into the fire instead.

Andrew connects with Ernie when he returns to the hospital. The two men find Megan after she survives an attack by Hannah. Everyone flees, but Hannah slits Ernie’s throat from behind.

Hannah begins levitating Andrew and supernaturally contorting his body. Finally overcoming her fear, Megan shoots Hannah, which saves Andrew.

While Andrew goes to get more police officers, Megan takes Hannah’s body back to the crematorium. Hannah reanimates. Megan overcomes Hannah’s final attack to force Hannah’s corpse into the incinerator. Megan survives as a renewed woman.

---

Review:

A stale scene, the first of many, starts “The Possession of Hannah Grace.” The titular possessee violently thrashes, painfully contorts, and spews verbal venom while tied to a bed. Two priests splash holy water, thrust fists clenching crucifixes, and recite bible rites at either side. Louis Herthum, Hollywood’s go-to guy for fathers of daughters dominated by other entities (see also “Westworld” and his déjà vu role in “The Last Exorcism” - review here), looks on with wide-eyed worry.

Things go exactly as one would expect, which is true of “Hannah Grace” as a whole. The exorcism goes awry and several people die, including the young woman with “The Devil Inside” (review here), to name-drop another blood relative of the movie at hand.

Fast-forward three months to the first clip from a Nike commercial introducing ex-cop Megan. A little later, she’ll pound the pavement in a jogging montage that establishes her dogged determination as well as the Boston backdrop. More immediately, Megan pounds a heavy bag with frustrated ferocity, which is common “screen speak” for saying, “this woman is tough, but also eager to exorcise inner demons.” This stone kills a second bird by putting Megan on a thematic parallel with Hannah.

Megan has been putting her life back on track since the guilt-giving murder of her police partner. Step One was actually twelve. Addiction after the incident spun Megan down a spiral ending in AA. Luckily, her sponsor Lisa works as a nurse at a local hospital and hooks up Megan with a new job as the morgue’s lone intake assistant.

Dr. Lewis shows Megan the ropes. He also shows her where upcoming scares and action beats will take place by pointing out that Megan cannot use elevators or doors without a keycard, automatic lights operate on a sensor, the access bay is for drop-offs only, etc.

Hang on, stay in your seats. The bell hasn’t rung on obligatory introductions just yet. More stereotyping must take place before Megan and Hannah can finally meet.

Current cop and former flame Andrew coincidentally stops by Megan’s apartment to pick up his things while putting down more exposition. Back at the hospital, two security guards fill out the rest of the night shift staff. Curly-haired Dave entertains himself by blowing up a surgical glove like a balloon so we know he is the likable little lug of the pair. Ernie can barely be bothered to look up from his newspaper (people still read those?), setting him up as the lazily disinterested one.

A personable EMT eventually drops off “The Corpse of Anna Fritz” (review here). Whoops, I mean the corpse of Hannah Grace. The more of these cursed cadaver movies that exist, the harder they are to keep straight.

It’s been three months since Hannah died, but she’s in oddly decent shape for a body that was found being sliced in an alley by a derelict. Even odder, as Megan’s second night in the hospital morgue moves forward, more corpses are created while Hannah’s appears to be growing strangely stronger.

Once “The Possession of Hannah Grace” gets up to full speed, which isn’t a particularly brisk pace, it becomes a standard spookshow of one woman flinching at sudden sounds, shapes, and shadows. Marvel as Megan speeds up and slows down security footage so she can pause on an eerie image accompanied by a “dun!” Thrill as she cracks a computer using her ex-boyfriend’s password (it’s her name) to gather more backstory. And watch in wonder as people slowly stalk hallways asking “hello?” out loud because the solo story requires a lot of talking to one’s self.

“The Possession of Hannah Grace” contains more setups than it reasonably needs. One unnecessarily thorough scene of Megan on a toilet features an unusual number of camera angles, including an insert of underwear pulled down to her ankles. I get the feeling the crew was so rightfully unimpressed with the written material, they kept coming up with more movements to make during dry sequences simply to have something to do.

Horror fandom debates relentlessly about PG-13 versus R ratings. “Hannah Grace” provides a prime example of an R rating adding no quantifiable value. Kills are composed of drawn-out scenes where Hannah lures victims into dark corridors only to kill them in the same boring way of supernaturally twisting their bodies. We know someone is slated for the chopping block as soon as they step off alone. We even know approximately what each death will look like based on plentiful foreshadowing. So where is suspense supposed to come from?

While they’re at it, “The Possession of Hanna Grace” squanders a solid cast too. Shay Mitchell, Stana Katic, Nick Thune, and Louis Herthum only have to put proven talents on cruise control to sail through simplicity here. The testament to their collective charisma is the fact that I’d rather see more of Megan’s soap opera side story about overcoming addiction than the ho-hum haunting occupying most of the movie. In the meantime, the unwatered seed of Megan’s mental breakdown never sprouts into anything substantially relevant, unless the tired tangent of “is this all in her head?” counts.

Timing isn’t quite to film releases what location is to real estate, but it matters quite a bit. Par for a Screen Gems 9-holer, “The Possession of Hannah Grace” suffers from being purposefully manufactured as milquetoast media for mainstream consumption. Such unoriginality leaves it ridiculously redundant as a paranormal exorcism thriller, in turn making it way late to a posthumous possession party already won decidedly by “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” (review here).

Review Score: 40

---