While Sundance may draw big crowds and long lines for its lineup of indie dramas, its genre offerings often serve up some of the boldest and most experimental films of the festival. This year saw a movie from the world cinema dramatic competition that was so gruesome, the festival turned away anyone under 18 who tried to get into the screenings. The movie was Possessor, and it is the most brutal and unforgiving cinematic experience in recent memory.

The film doesn’t pull any punches, as it opens with a startling scene in which a young woman inserts a needle in the top of her head and turns a dial that “calibrates” her, as we watch her face go through several emotions. Hours later she walks up to a man at a party and stabs him in the throat with a knife before repeatedly jabbing it all over his body. It turns out the woman was not acting of her own free will, but was “possessed” by Tasya (Mandy’s Andrea Riseborough), who is a killer-for-hire at a company that downloads her consciousness into the brains of others in order to make them commit corporate assassinations. It’s a bit like Inception--nefarious characters making a business of invading other people's minds--if Christopher Nolan was way more into body horror and bashing people’s skulls in with a fireplace poker.

But of course, Possessor doesn’t come from Nolan, but from Brandon Cronenberg, son of the legendary David Cronenberg (The Fly, Videodrome), who also has a similar interest in body horror, though bent slightly more toward the surreal. After making a great and terrifying first impression with his debut feature Antiviral, the younger Cronenberg here announces himself to have inherited the skills that make his father’s work so great. However, he's also carving out a new space for himself, developing a unique voice with a great visual eye that knows when to push boundaries.