The real-life owners of the Dibbuk Box, which is at the center of new Sam Raimi horror exploration ‘The Possession’ recounted many horrors – among them gruesome insect manifestations involving scorpions and cockroaches. When director Ole Bornedal came aboard ‘The Possession’ he made the decision to focus on an insect less commonly seen on film: the hypnotic and spooky moth. “Moths are weirder and more ancient than most insects and they seem to have something supernatural about them,” the director explains.

“The eerie flutter of their wings, the way they unexpectedly brush against your skin, it’s chilling.” And accordingly, Bornedal made a decision that would shock everyone on set – the decision use live moths for the pivotal scene. He explains, “Having actors act against the feeling of having real moths crawling on your face and your body, you can’t fake that.”

Adds producer J.R. Young: “When we saw Ole’s vision of these huge moths, it was something we’d never seen in a horror movie before. It was very fresh.”

The film’s big moth scene called for a staggering 2000 insects to invade Em’s new bedroom in her father’s house. In order for the moths to be ready for the sequence, they had to be shipped to the set as larvae and hatched on location. Overseeing the process was another unusual addition to the crew: Moth Wrangler Brad MacDonald.

Says producer Robert Tapert: “We could have created the moths entirely with CGI, but Ole very much wanted the real thing. I commend him for his staunch decision to bring in the moth wrangler. The moths made the scene that much more chilling for us all.”

Every department had to work around the peculiar nature of moth behavior. Production Designer Rachel O’Toole designed bedroom walls that the moths would stick to naturally. Director of Photography Dan Laustsen learned to light the set so the moths wouldn’t be completely distracted by their attraction to bright objects. Later, visual effects supervisor Adam Stern enhanced the creepiness factor of the moths.

Most of all, the actors had to deal with the heebie-jeebies of having these insects crawling all over them. “I’m not a big insect guy,” confesses Jeffrey Dean Morgan. “And these were really huge monster moths. On the first day shooting with them, one got on my bare foot, and let’s just say it wasn’t pretty.”

Adds Natasha Calis: “I was up for a challenge but these things were huge and they’re like black and orange and when I saw them it was kind of like how when you go bungee jumping and at first you’re excited, but then you look over the edge and it’s like uh-oh.  Some of them even have little spikes coming out of their legs and are sharp on your skin.”

Still, Young was impressed with how well Natasha kept her composure within the invading storm of moths. “She was a real trooper,” he says.

As for moth wrangler Brad MacDonald, at the end of the day, his only comment was, “I prefer working with snakes.”

The article Unleashing the Moths: ‘The Possession’s Insect Manifestations appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

The haunting realization of the new movie ‘The Possession’ is coming to US theaters on August 31. Based on true events, both Ghost House and Lionsgate were excited to add a new entry to the roster of horror movies based on unsettling news stories.

Among others, ‘The Exorcist’ was inspired by an article about the real exorcism of a teenaged boy from Maryland; ‘The Amityville Horror’ was based on George and Kathy Lutz’s experiences living in a Long Island house rocked by occult events; and ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ was based on an actual story of a cannibalistic clan in Scotland. “When you know what are seeing on screen is linked to real events, that only magnifies your questions and fears,” says filmmaker Sam Raimi.

To direct the film, Ghost House and Lionsgate wanted a fresh vision. They found that in an unexpected source: Ole Bornedal, an award-winning Danish director who makes his long-awaited return to American filmmaking after his spine-tingling suspense thriller ‘Nightwatch’.

“Sam and myself are great lovers of cinema and one thing horror films have is the director’s vision printed squarely on the material,” explains producer Robert Tapert. “We felt Ole had the experience to really deliver on the horror in this story while also bringing out the interpersonal relationships that allow the audience to personally relate to what is happening to this family.”

Raimi had been intrigued by Bornedal since he saw his film ‘The Substitute’, a Danish horror-comedy about a substitute teacher who turns out to be literally from another planet.  “We were big fans of Ole already and when he pitched his approach to ‘The Possession’, we were sold,” he recalls. “Ole saw that all the fear and suspense would hinge on the story of the family.

He has a terrific sense of character and he built the atmosphere around the family being threatened, the family being broken apart, and the family having to find the courage and love to beat back the darkness of this demon. He really went to great lengths to make what each person is experiencing psychologically real.”

From the beginning, Bornedal was excited about the story, but he, like Raimi, was very wary of the real-life box, wanting to keep the production safe from the source of apprehension that inspired it. “I was invited to stay with a family who had the Dibbuk Box, but I turned the invitation down,” he admits. “I heard too many rumors that it’s not a good idea for anyone to be around the real thing.”

Since it all started with a true story, a disquieting psychological realism became a cornerstone of Bornedal’s approach. He hoped to explore the enduring theme of an innocent child threatened by all-consuming evil in a more probing, contemporary way.

“With this movie we wanted to see if we could interpret the genre a little differently,” says Bornedal. “What we tried to do with this film was to first and foremost make the characters real – and then to show how an authentic modern family might truly react to these terrible, unexplained events. We wanted not just to show the audience the possession of Em, but to give them the experience of how a little girl reacts emotionally to the devastating realization that she is harboring a demon within her own body.”

Anxiety and paranoia seep through the Brenek family as they are turned against each other by the Dibbuk – and must fight to regain control from the demon that would not only claim their daughter but destroy their bonds. “There are no greater stakes than a family trying to survive – and Ole makes that the focal point of the film,” says producer J.R. Young. “We want audiences jumping out of their seats fifteen times during the movie – but at the same time we want audiences to walk away feeling that all this happened to a real family.”

The real Dibbuk Box might have been kept far away from the set, but its ghostly presence was felt nonetheless. Indeed, for cast and crew the production of ‘The Possession’ would challenge not only their skills but also their courage – as something about the Dibbuk seemed to inspire bone-chilling occurrences throughout.

“Strange things happened over the course of this movie,” confesses Young. “At one point we were scouting for the room where the film’s final exorcism takes place – and suddenly there was a huge ‘boom’ and a light bulb literally exploded. We had already heard that there were claims that the Dibbuk Box could cause light bulbs to shatter, and then it happened.

One of the previous owners of the box, an antique dealer, had reported that one day he left his shop and his employee called him crying ‘There’s someone in here, there’s someone in here.’ When he returned, every bulb in his shop was smashed. So when you start making these connections, you start wondering: what did we bring upon ourselves by getting involved in this movie?”

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Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Stephanie Brenek (Kyra Sedgwick) see little cause for alarm when their youngest daughter Em becomes oddly obsessed with an antique wooden box she purchased at a yard sale. But as Em’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic, the couple fears the presence of a malevolent force in their midst, only to discover that the box was built to contain a Dibbuk, a dislocated spirit that inhabits and ultimately devours its human host. ‘The Possssion’ will be in cinemas on August 31, 2012.

Throughout history, one of the darkest and most relentlessly persistent of human fears has been that of possession – the blood-curdling idea that your body and mind could be overtaken by a hungry, inhuman force with a sinister will of its own. All manner of demons and phantoms have been rumored to prey on our souls, but unique among them is the Dibbuk.

Written about in Jewish folklore, one type of Dibbuk (which literally means “an attachment”) is said to be a malicious spirit wandering in limbo, which survives by fusing itself to a living person and inhabiting their very flesh. To keep their harrowing power at bay, carpenters built special arks or boxes to trap the Dibbuks – and the incomprehensible evil they represented — for all time.

There are stories of Dibbuks going back to the Biblical era. But heads were recently turned by an unexpected 21st Century emergence that made for chilling news headlines. In 2004, Los Angeles Times journalist Leslie Gornstein uncovered the story of a man who was auctioning a particularly disturbing item on Ebay: what he claimed was an authentic “Dibbuk Box,” one that had beset each of its owners, including himself, with so much unholy terror that he was desperate to be rid of it. His story recounted the box’s harrowing effects on its owners to date.

Hair fell out. Nightmares stalked entire households. Sudden illnesses struck some owners down, while others saw freakish visions and heard unexplained voices. And every single owner reported a string of horrific bad luck that the seller likened to “all hell breaking loose.”

The box drew interest from supernatural investigators around the world, and quickly sold to a university museum curator named Jason Haxton. Haxton then began to further document its macabre history of tormenting its owners and to examine the peculiar tokens and relics within, aided by Jewish mystics familiar with the myths and legends of the Dibbuk. Ultimately, the box was traced back to a 103 year-old survivor of the Holocaust, who had brought the sealed vessel with her to America after the war, warning her family (apparently in vain) to never, ever attempt to open it.

The real-life existence of such an accursed box frightened those who already knew about Dibbuks. One person was reported in The Los Angeles Times to have even begged Haxton to take the photos of the box off the Internet, lest the spirit find its way into someone through that portal.

But the spine-tingling true tale fascinated others – among them Sam Raimi, the filmmaker who has put his own original stamp on the horror film genre with storytelling that is all about the art of the unforeseen surprise. While going on to the blockbuster success of the ‘Spider Man’ series, Raimi has always stayed true to his love of a good, primal scare – and of stories that bring audiences face-to-face with the numinous mysteries that remain, even today, hauntingly inexplicable.

Because the Dibbuk Box was completely real – and scaring people out of their minds — Raimi felt the story had all the makings of a cinematic journey that would have audiences on the edges of their seats and haunted by frights that linger long after the movie is over.

“We always live with the fear of the unknown,” says Raimi. “And of course we want to know if ghosts and demons really exist or not, and what happens to your spirit when you die. So when someone tells a story like that of the Dibbuk Box and its terrible, terrible effects on everyone who got close to, it cuts to very core of our most immense fears and desires.  In this real story, we saw a chance to explore some classic horror themes – and make them new for a new generation.”

Raimi’s production company, Ghost House Pictures, was ready to jump on the concept. “As soon as we read the article in the LA Times, we couldn’t believe this box was really out there in the world,” comments producer J.R. Young. “Sam said this is exactly the kind of movie Ghost House should be making. It had all the creepy, supernatural qualities to inspire something really special.”

Adds producer Robert Tapert: “The story had several new and intriguing elements that Sam and I had never seen before, especially the whole mythology of the Dibbuk. The fact that there was a horrifying, recent truth behind it that you could find on the internet made it that much more exciting. It really challenges your beliefs when you read about all the scary things that seem to be happening around this box.”

The box was so frightening that, even as they began development, the team at Ghost House maintained a respectful dread and kept their distance. “I never got close to the box, nor did I want to,” says Raimi. “The website itself was scary enough, so the last thing I felt I needed to do was to risk bringing it to my home or office. The price of finding out more was just too high.”

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