The Ending Of Possum Explained

When discussing the film's cinematic influences, Holness has often cited silent era horror movies such as Carl Dreyer's "Vampyr," sensory experiences guided by nightmare logic more so than a straight-forward narrative plot. Save for his scenes with Maurice and his creepy nursery rhyme narration, Philip barely speaks at all. His constant anguish and terror is expressed mostly through Harris' physical performance and a throbbing synth score. But while Holness' goal of creating a latter-day silent horror film is evident, "Possum" also has a lot in common with 2010s horror.

Monsters in film and literature have long been metaphors for psychological or social issues. However, the mid-2010s saw an explosion of so-called "elevated horror" that put its metaphors front and center, films like Jennifer Kent's "The Babadook," Babak Anvari's "Under the Shadow," Ari Aster's "Hereditary," and Jordan Peele's "Get Out." While "Possum" pre-dates the trend due to the original short story, the film is akin to this larger wave due to the way it makes Possum a vessel for Philip's lifetime of abuse, with the puppet a clear vessel for his trauma.

The way that Philip carries Possum around is very telling — he's always with him, but he never holds the brown bag that the puppet is in close to his body. He hates having to carry it around, but he carries it anyway. That's what makes the ending so poignant. Philip believes that he wants to get rid of Possum for good, but to remove this part of his life altogether would mean losing a part of himself. Yes, it's a dark, painful part of him, but a part of him nonetheless, and burying his trauma entirely would mean forgetting about his parents. What the ending tells us is that coming to terms with our demons is different to exorcizing them.