Mind Control: Possession, Surveillance, and the Tech-Noir Subgenre

Get your mind right for two films that explore identity, autonomy, and the human condition with a dystopian tech-noir lens. 

We’ll start with Brandon Cronenberg’s film about a professional assassin who inhabits other people’s bodies to carry out her assignments. As you might imagine, maintaining a healthy work/life balance might be a challenge.  Then, we’ll take an action-packed ride in Leigh Whannell’s film about a widower out for revenge with a little help from a brain implant. His car is pretty sick, too.

In this class, we’ll explore these two films that, while tonally different from one another, provide an opportunity to examine features of dystopian sci-fi narratives, how the “possession” horror subgenre is recontextualized in sci-fi films, and identity as a driving force in the main characters’ storylines.

Films:

1/10: POSSESSOR (2020, 103 min)

1/17: UPGRADE (2018, 100 min)

This class will be taught by Education Instructor MJ Jackson, who recently taught the MMU classes Disturbing Dinner Conversations and The Man, the Myth, the Forbidden Legend: Candyman (1992).

Each class will begin with a short lecture, followed by a screening of the film, after which an instructor-led discussion will take place. 

Class size will be limited to 18.

Email us at education@moviemadness.org if you have any questions.