Obsession
2.5/5
The first word that comes to mind when I think about Curry Barker’s Obsession is “economical.” When I describe a film that way, it’s not necessarily good or bad. On the one hand, it might mean that, despite budgetary limitations, the film manages to break open at the seams, creating something that feels like it cannot be contained. Sure, it might be a little messy, but the ambition on display may very well be awe-inspiring. I am looking at you, Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie and Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes.
Other times, a film can feel like it is constrained by its budget. It does some things well but can never quite escape the sense that its creators wanted to do more and simply could not figure out a convincing way to pull it off. Frequently, I find myself respecting a film more than liking it, where it feels like less than the sum of its already meager parts. See: Peter Hujar’s Day.
I’ll stop leaving you all in suspense and say that Obsession is an impressive feature made for under a million dollars… and quite disappointingly falls into the latter camp.
Obsession follows the world’s worst friend group as they aimlessly navigate the perils of early adulthood. Michael Johnson plays Bear, a typical nice guy who just can’t seem to muster the courage to say what’s really on his mind. He’s flanked by his two coworkers, friends, and trivia teammates, Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) and Sarah (Megan Lawless), who are some of the flattest characters I’ve seen on screen this year. The saving grace is Inde Navarrette as the tragic Nikki, who falls under Bear’s spell when, in a moment of emotional frustration, he breaks the One Wish Willow, bringing doom and despair upon all of them. His wish, as you have likely surmised, is for Nikki to love him more than anyone has ever loved anyone in the world. Pretty obvious where this is all going to go wrong, huh?
And that’s really the issue with the film. Johnson and Navarrette are excellent. Their relationship, or lack thereof, is the core of the film. We are given glimpses of Bear’s struggle with this wish, though my main criticism is that the film clearly does not know what to do with him. Barker appears to try to inject some complexity into our main character, but it feels glib and half-assed. The film seems scared to make a statement about Bear, which feels especially ironic considering the age of the incel in which we are living. At times, Bear is sympathetic; at other times, he is vile. But at no point does he feel like a real human character. His decisions exclusively serve the plot, as do those of the entire cast, creating a daunting disconnect that prevents you from feeling anything beyond the most superficial emotions while watching this film.
Navarrette, as Nikki, is rightfully getting rave reviews, and she is excellent. The film just, once again, does not know what to do with her. She has some amazingly memorable moments that feel designed to be memorable rather than creative and engaging in their own right. I certainly don’t blame the actors here. In fact, they should be getting even more credit for elevating such a thin script into something even remotely worth seeing. I just wish the film were able to rise to their level of commitment.
Obsession is clever at times. It feels like a somewhat fresh take on possession, though it ultimately squanders its premise. There are excellent gags and moments of gore rounding out the sloppy writing and thin characters… but we all deserve better than that, and we often get it. The horror genre is an embarrassment of riches in so many ways, but Obsession feels more like a blight on this trend than a beneficiary of it. It seems to be pulling from recent, excellent films like Talk to Me and It Follows without ever grasping what makes those films great modern horror classics.
Those films manage to tap into something — to be about something. Yes, there are frights and gore and humor and all the staples of a great scary movie, but they are there to serve a deeper purpose: to peel away the layers of something uniquely human and often intangible. Obsession utterly fails in this regard. In the most offensive way possible, it feels exactly like a film made by a guy who got his start on YouTube. Obsession feels more like “content” than art, and it’s a shame because there is the potential for something very special here.
A perfect example of this is how mean-spirited the film is, both to its characters and to its audience. There are numerous unearned reveals about our characters’ dynamics that serve no purpose at all. The film has no interest in dissecting the downsides of Bear’s wish or its impact on others. Yeah, it’s bad, but it doesn’t seem to care at all about why it’s bad. This might be the feel-bad movie of the year. Anytime a character tries to get anything they want, they are punished for it in a frequently gruesome and horrific way. There is no differentiation among the characters. The film has one thesis and is only capable of repeating that point to no end. For all its blood and bravado, Obsession mistakes cruelty for insight and ugliness for depth… and this unbelievable box office run is inexplicable to me.