Title: Obsession
Describe This Movie In One Simpsons Quote:
SHOPKEEPER: Take this object, but beware it carries a terrible curse.
HOMER: Oooh, that’s bad.
SHOPKEEPER: But it comes with a free frogurt!
HOMER: That’s good.
SHOPKEEPER: The frogurt is also cursed.
Brief Plot Synopsis: Boy meets girl. Boy subjugates girl. Hilarity … sorry, I mean horror ensues.
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 3.5 Animotions out of 5.
Tagline: “Be careful what you wish for.”
Better Tagline: “Have you ever tried, I dunno, *talking* to girls?”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Bear (Michael Johnston) has a heavy crush on friend/co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarrette). Unable to profess his true feelings, he uses a novelty gift (a “One Wish Willow”) to make Nikki love him. “More than anyone in the world,” in point of fact. Faster than you can boil a rabbit, Bear and Nikki become almost inseparable. But all is not well in their new paradise, as Bear realizes Nikki’s new affection comes at the expense of everything else in his life. Serves him right.
“Critical” Analysis: Two things can be true at once. Curry Barker’s Obsession is a master class in low-budget filmmaking. The subject of a studio bidding war following its Toronto International Film Festival debut, Obsession has grossed over $400 million globally on a $750K budget. Barker used digital modeling, in-camera practical effects, and a relatively unknown cast to put together one of the more unsettling horror movies in recent years.
The marketing also focuses on the wrong villain, and Barker doesn’t go far enough to clarify this. The movie holds back unforgivably on indicting its “protagonist” Bear, who consigns the subject of his affections to a purgatorial state, stripped of free will. He also fails to do what’s necessary to set things right.
The “be careful what you wish for” trope dates back (at least) to the fabled King Midas. And wishing for others to fall in love with you is so frowned upon that not even the Genie in Aladdin would grant it. The One Wish Willow, on the other hand, has no such compunctions (an exchange with the OWW “help” line later in the movie emphasizes this). Add someone as pathetic as Bear and you don’t need a monkey’s paw to see where things are going.
Barker gets that Bear is a loser, but rather than lean into that, he tries (unconvincingly) to engender sympathy for him. There are several points where Nikki’s nightmare situation is played for laughs (I wonder how many people guffawing in my audience at the sex scene understood they were watching an assault). And too often the movie conflates Nikki’s involuntarily unhinged infatuation with any of a million “psycho girlfriend” portrayals.
None of this is Navarrette’s fault, however. Her arc from buddy to romantic thrall to full-bore psychopath is incredible. Even reduced to channeling the (often effective) scares, she fully embodies the treachery and horror Nikki experiences.
No, the bigger problem is Barker maintaining the fiction that Bear is somehow a good guy, even when it’s obvious to anyone with eyes that every atrocity visited upon him and his friends is a direct result of his actions. Even when Nikki — in a rare moment of lucidity, pleads with him to kill her – he slinks off like the coward he is. And in the penultimate scene, when a clear path out is right in front of him, he can’t bring himself to do it. By then, it’s too late for certain other characters.
Horror has found some real talents in Inde Navarrette and Curry Barker. She’s already poised for bigger things (a rumored role in the upcoming X-Men movie, for one). As for Barker, the chops are there. Obsession is as assured a horror movie as I’ve seen in recent years. If he can embrace the real horror in his subjects, we’ll be talking about him as one of the decade’s biggest talents.
Obsession is in theaters now.
