Like many short films, Brad McGann's Possum bears little resemblance to his subsequent feature work, at least in terms of tone; there's almost no narrative, with instead a focus on intense atmospherics. Set in the New Zealand bush, at some indeterminate time in the past, McGann experiments with sepia-toned imagery and, especially, an intense and occasionally disturbing palette of sounds to evoke a backwoods nightmare, in which a disciplinarian father attempts to rule over his meagre kingdom, including a daughter who is closer to the animals that surround the hut than to her relatives. Although it's hard to grasp what McGann's ultimate purpose is - the narrative doesn't help much - the film insinuates itself into the mind, and the overall atmosphere of dread plays cleverly with audience expectations.
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