Notable Cast: Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper
Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, Andy Richter
I have to give Curry Barker some very intense respect. Not
only has his latest film, Obsession, been one of the biggest horror
films of all time at the box office, but he also did it with a film that asks
the age-old question, ‘What if a Gen Z romantic comedy was the most terrifying
thing to exist?’ The premise of so many romantic comedies, particularly those
in the 90s and 00s, prior to the genre being stripped for parts and sold
wholesale to streaming and television to be exploited as year-round bubblegum
movies, was based on a hook and then mined for comedic value. Barker seemingly
saw that and decided to take it in the other direction. The results, box office
receipts aside, are rather astoundingly effective. Obsession is
pitch-black perfect in its tones, a precise blend of dark humor and crippling
horror, and executed to the highest degree to deliver a generationally relevant
urban-legend-style morality tale.
There was intense hype for Obsession… and the hype is real.
To be fair, the hook of its premise is a well-trodden trail
for horror. Bear, played by Michael Johnston in a performance that one might
call ‘a half step away from dying of anxiety at any given moment,’ stumbles
across a cheap ‘wish fulfillment’ tchotchke called the One Wish Willow and uses
it to wish that the girl he has been pining for at work will love him more than
anyone. It’s a monkey’s paw scenario: once he breaks the willow piece for his
wish, after absolutely whiffing his chance to confess his feelings for her when
she just blatantly asks if he likes her, she becomes obsessed with him, and it
gets real fuckin’ scary from there. Not in a Lifetime movie way either. As the
tagline states, be careful who you wish for.
However, while the premise could have easily collapsed into
the comedic style of ‘look at my crazy girlfriend, isn’t that insane!’, Barker,
serving as both writer and director, ably navigates the pitfalls in two
ways.
Firstly, Obsession is a film that feels absolutely
like a young person's perspective commenting on the culture and people around
them to drive the characters and narrative. Instead of broad-stroke
caricatures, the people in the film feel nuanced and layered while still functioning
as social commentary.
Bear, even though he is the protagonist, is absolutely the
villain of this morality tale. His character drives the plot, but his own
disintegration from his Obsession with his co-worker, Nikki, is
absolutely villainous. Barker paints him as a person terrified to take control
of his life at all and would rather see those around him drown with him rather
than make a choice. He has been given everything in his life, including a house
from his grandmother that has no personality of his in it - right down to the
fact that he keeps her decor and her medicine in the bathroom, and he has no
future or ambition. His loneliness and inability to move make him a black hole
personified, only perpetuated further by his co-worker and toxic friend Ian,
who would rather keep Bear back than actually support him. It’s a fascinating
and very potent choice to have Michael Johnston as a sad and potentially
sympathetic character, but to then have everything in the script and designs
undercut that performance to present him as the most dangerous kind of villain
- one that refuses to acknowledge their own moral rot that’s hidden behind a
‘nice guy’ facade without making him a cartoon visage.
The second aspect that makes Obsesion so effective is how the horror combines the uncanny or unnatural with its core relationship narrative. It is Bear’s supernaturally granted wish that this girl, Nikki, falls in love with him that creates the horror. Like the Lament Configuration from Hellraiser, the One Wish Willow must read the truth in the heart of its opener, as Nikki transforms from the quirky co-worker who puts in her two weeks' notice to follow her dream of writing a novel into the twisted, sinister truth of what Bear wants in his misunderstanding of how relationships should work.
For much of my life, I’ve had a strange, very intense fear
of doppelgangers. Sure, it seems absolutely nonsensical that this is something
I would be terrified of, since, well, I can remember, but it definitely has
haunted me for a long time. While Obsession doesn’t directly relate to
doppelgangers, it certainly hit all those same primal fears for me in Nikki’s
change. It manages to take the doppelganger idea of “this looks like you, but
this is not you” and injects it into this rom-com premise. The idea that
something sinister Bear wished for replacing Nikki is only made so horrifyingly
real by the fact that the real Nikki will occasionally break to the surface,
and her reaction to everything is sheer unadulterated horror, often screaming,
performing self-harm, or, in the film’s most truly harrowing moment - begging
to be killed in her sleep because the thing that is suppressing Nikki has
waivered enough to let her whisper to Bear. Bear selfishly responds, “What
would be so bad? What's so bad about being with me?” When she answers, “I've
never been with you, Bear... Just kill me, please,” he simply walks away,
sealing his fate for a final act that bears the fruit of his morally bankrupt
choices with some of the most intensely violent and disturbing moments
punctuated with fantastic effects and style.
While the film's incredibly adept script and meticulously
impressive visual style certainly warrant the highest praise for Barker, it’s
hard not to give Inde Navarrette the award for the most valuable creative force
of Obsession. Her performance as Nikki is one for the books as she works
through some of the most challenging choices an actor can make. Moment to
moment, she is deftly gliding through darkly humorous lines that cascade into
terrifying realizations, and she makes this demonic presence feel almost heroic
at times as she eviscerates Bear while still painting it as an undying love.
It’s not often that one is asked to deliver a monologue regarding Hansel and
Gretel incestual erotic fan fiction, and she manages to make it one of the most
intense moments of the film, and for that - she deserves all the praise she is
receiving. Pair that with Barker’s ability to craft some of the most insane,
creepy moments in her movements or looks - holding a flower vase has never felt
so intentionally malicious - and the combination proves to be incendiary.
In the indie film market, there are plenty of films that
come out as confident and with a sense of vision. Obsession, however,
manages to be an absolutely confident swing that executes it with the precision
of a master surgeon and does the unthinkable - immediately resonates with a
mass audience and propels them to support it wholeheartedly like it was
blockbuster entertainment.
To be fair, it deserves it. Obsession is a brilliant
balancing act. Its visuals blend shadows to contract them with the ‘drained of
life’ color schemes that reflect its messages; the performances find the sweet
spot between too realistic and grotesquely supernatural; and its script feels
like it's a half step between derailing into rom-com territory one way and into
new wave French extreme horror on the other. Yet, in every instance, it
executes those choices to perfection, guiding its audience into Bear’s
black-hole persona with its familiar premise and dark humor, before scraping
them to rock bottom with the terrors of its social commentary and vicious
horror.
While the term ‘instant classic’ might be overused, Obsession
rightly earns it through effort, vision, and execution… without the use of a
One Wish Willow.
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