Reviewed by Alicia Glass

 Directors: Ming Siu Goh, Scott C. Hillyard

Studio: Monkey and Boar

Review Rating: 7 out of 10

 50-something Jim loses his longstanding job in terribly expensive Singapore and while trying to hide the fact from his family and find new employment, unleashes a malevolent force that terrorizes his crumbling life!

So Jim (Gerald Chew) just got laid off from the job he’s had for more than a decade. The job that allowed him and his wife Linda (Amy Cheng) to live in this ridiculously luxurious condo, complete with a lap pool and sun windows and yes, even a live-in maid, in horrendously expensive Singapore. The old job can barely bring themselves to see Jim off, much less thank him for long years of hard work, they just want him gone with a minimum of fuss. But fuss is precisely what Jim has to do now, to pay for all these pretty things and people, and at least initially keep the fact that he got laid off a secret.

Jim apparently has one good friend, Vinod (Sivakumar Palakrishnan), in whom he confides about being laid fired and laments, what to do now? Being a practical sort, Vinod advises Jim to find a job, even a lower-end one, as quickly as possible, and to tell his wife and daughter about his job loss now, as opposed to keeping it a secret from them. But Jim’s pride is as strong as his work ethic, and he flatly refuses to tell his wife, involved with her charity work, or his daughter, involved in her schooling and her own life, about his daily money struggles.

What to do now? Jim decides to suck it up and become an Uber driver, using his rather expensive car to try and make back some money as his bills – rent, schooling, maid wages – mount expeditiously. Jim also takes part in some ill-advised and risky business adventures online, enduring extreme lows and brief but joyous highs when he can get them. But then one day Jim apparently hits a young man with his car, and after reassuring them both of a lack of injuries, offers to take the boy home free of charge. The boy recounts a story of madness and unapologetic savagery during the ride, turning a simple guilty transaction into the beginning of a journey into darkness, and ultimately the end, for Jim.

Companies and big corporations like to say that their repossession of a persons assets when they can’t pay their bills is nothing personal, just business. But the boys story and the subsequent visitations of a blood-soaked shadow monster that wants nothing more than to devour Jim’s entire life just because it can, is potentially more terrifying. Especially since the black demon can apparently possess other peoples bodies, and does so to Jim’s friend and daughter and even his wife, with the kind of horrific glee that only the truly evil can espouse, with simply no reason why other than, just because it can.

By turns both devastatingly realistic and hauntingly supernatural, aided by a terrific score and a pair of newly-come directors with good eyes towards real-life horror, ‘Repossession’ is a journey into the depths of desperation and the wanton evil that takes advantage of it.