An infuriatingly uneventful tale of tedious possession exorcises its streaming demons

Tales of demonic possession will always reign as one of horror’s most popular subgenres, but the discrepancy between how many onscreen exorcisms we’ve witnessed compared to how many live long in the memory as cult favorites and all-time classics is vast, with The Possession of Hannah Grace hardly setting the world on fire.

In fairness, it turned a decent-sized profit at the box office thanks largely to its status as an R-rated chiller, which is often more than enough to entice patrons into their local theater. Even more impressively, director Diederik van Rooijen’s feature recouped its budget six times over in the face of poor reviews from both critics and crowds.

On Rotten Tomatoes, The Possession of Hannah Grace holds dismal scores of 21 and 27 percent, the latter being especially egregious when fans are always willing to cut spooky stories a great deal more slack. Speaking of which, Halloween fever must have gripped the streaming sphere, because the widely-panned effort is back with a thunderously boring vengeance.

Per FlixPatrol, The Possession of Hannah Grace has been haunting the charts on Rakuten and iTunes over All Hallow’s Eve, with patient subscribers willing to subject themselves to an admittedly brief 86 minutes of banality. Funnily enough, the plot does revolve around a character named Hannah Grace being possessed, but the burning question is whether or not you’ll actually care.

The answer will likely depend on your tolerance for run of the mill fare that offers nothing you haven’t seen before, which can often be comforting under the right set of circumstances for longtime gorehounds.