After what I witnessed as of early April, I’m positive Curry Barker is holding the award for horror story of the year. I could see myself going on a date with my abhorrent high school situationship before I could see myself being wrong in that assumption. Obsession is a cruel as hell anti-romance that threatens the audience with the question of who really does the suffering in the friend zone.
The subject is Bear (Michael Johnston), whom I can best describe in simple terms, as a loser. Bear suffers from the most agonizing type of torture “a nice guy” could ever fall into; the friend zone. He’s crushing on his coworker, childhood friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette), and plans to reveal his feelings to her before her last two weeks at the music store are up. Timid and sensitive are the typical traits tacked to Bear’s “nice guy” type, making his challenge just desperate enough to need little outside encouragement. From a hippy-dippy crystal shop, he buys a “One Wish Willow”; a 60’s era gift shop tchotchke that supposedly grants a single wish when snapped in half. Soon, the situation will be jacked up beyond all recognition.
Those are all the story details I’m willing to describe in this review. Anything else would jab at my code of movie watching ethics. Sorry for the lack of details- I’m forcing a tiptoe around my praise, because this movie is that good. Just be warned that a romance and a love story are not the same thing.
What makes the master levels of chaos so striking is that this tale of judgement takes place from Bear, the unassuming antagonist’s perspective. You might know a guy like Bear. You might pity their frustrations with romantic relationships, because we all deserve someone. But have you ever considered that shy guy’s capacity to exploit a self-serving situation, if given one wish? Bear’s character starts as one that we are socially groomed to pity (and we really should unpack that eventually), but travels to the far side of the spectrum. In Obsession, Barker really throws the hot light on young men to put their intentions in check.
Crimes of misogyny are usually expressed through physical or verbal aggression in horror. Those crimes are still with us, but Obsession presses on a nuanced, contemporary source of male panic. The problem eating away at Bear jumps from his crippling loneliness, to the second worst thing to happen to men that cling to social circles; character criticism. Every man, especially “the nice guys” will avoid the perception of the problematic dude who can’t be trusted around women, like the plague. When your emotional baggage becomes everyone’s concern, the common denominator has got to be a you problem. What happens behind locked, or duct taped shut doors, is the same, but a much more morbid story.
Obsession would not have an ounce of the bite it has without Inde Navarrette as Nikki. Barker’s screenplay format of perp-first gives Navarette the freedom to sink herself into a neurotic performance that looks, moves and sounds how it feels to be held hostage in intimacy. Manic pixie dreamgirl, no ma’am. I would compare her perfect hysteria to Isabelle Adjani’s in Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession (1981). I wouldn’t recommend it, hell no, but remove the consent and come get this wrath. This is a graphic story about projection, and Nikki force feeds four times the weight of Bear’s social and romantic anxieties back to him while the audience throws their hands up from the gore-zone.
The ratios that make up Obsession’s cinematic pieces are so figured out, I wouldn’t notice another 10 minutes on top of the 109. There’s a lot of intention behind the choices made. Dialogue holds secrets that will always wrap around, while lighting and camerawork uncover their own details of the story. It’s a fruitful slow panic that swells at a constant rate from grounded in reality, and multiplied over and over until “wrecked beyond belief” status is achieved. It’s steady, tight, and brutal, but nowhere near a slow burn.
Yes, I am obsessed with this objectively messed up anti-romance. What the times are telling us, and have been telling us for a minute, is to trust the funny guy with a camera and some friends, making internet skits for fun. If they say they have a taste for horror, believe them and back them up. It’s always the chipper guys who turn out the most horrific stuff. Perfect for that special someone in your life! Nice guys, tread lightly.
