It’s not like we needed more proof that the future voices of horror have been lurking on social media – but just in case we diiiiiiid… yet another potentially fresh genre voice has suddenly crested with Curry Barker’s Obsession; a film that genuinely may be one of the most stressful cinema going experiences of the year. While you’d think that a tense, artful frightener that concerns itself by violently exaggerating a social trope (in this case, having a crush) would be prome real estate for A24, it’s actually Blumhouse that managed to score Barker’s breakthrough movie – and make no mistake, the director is truly about to break through.
Be warned, if you have any fluffy notions about romanticising the notion of a love sick person actually managing to land their crush, Obsession is about to take those gooey thoughts and bash them in the face with a brick repeatedly until you know what the word gooey really means. Love sucks.
Private and fairly sensitive, Baron “Bear” Bailey has had undpoken feelings for his childhood friend and co-worker, Nikki Freeman, for a very long time. Working at the same job and seeing each other almost every day has nonetheless made making that last leap and finally asking her out virtually impossible – especially considering that their mutual friends all think it’s a bad idea. That doesn’t stop Bear from attempting a painfully awkward attempt at venting his feelings after he discovers that the object of his affections is planning to quit her job to concentrate on her writing. Bungling it horribly, Bear doesn’t even have a chance to give her a present he bought her from a mystic shop – a novelty toy called One Wish Willow that apparently grants you a wish once snapped. In a state of utter defeat, Bear snaps the thing himself and wishes that Nikki loves him more than anyone else in the world and almost instantly, things change – and not for the better.
Yes, Nikki now seems to love him way more than as just a friend, but her new way of thinking leaves her acting utterly out of character. First the red flags are just odd, such as making up a story about her estranged father having cancer in order to manuver herself into staying round Bear house, or having huge mood swings, but after they become a couple much to the confusion of their friends, people start to struggle for explanations.
However, Bear soon discovers that being the complete and total focal point for someone’s intense love isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be as Nikki’s increasingly erratic behavior starts taking legitimately terrifying turns. When she isn’t watching him sleep from the corner of the room, or gaffer taping the door such to stop him going to work, she veers into blind rages, sudden recoils of horror and even self harm as Bear’s fondest dream takes a left turn into a living Hell.
The only thing really holding Obsession from scoring a full five stars is that Curry Barker’s impressive variation of the monkey’s paw story is something that numerous filmmaker have toyed with quite a lot. We’ve all seen stories about cursed items that work overtime to fuck over your entire existence and we’ve also seen plenty of movies where someone’s demeanor takes a violent turn thanks to some outside, supernatural factor – be it a Book Of The Dead or even a possessed hand that let’s you commune with the other side. However, while Obsession may toy with a few familiar horror tropes, that doesn’t stop Barker’s genuinely nerve-shredding movie from being a shoe-in for one of the year’s best horror offerings. Yes, some of the subject matter may be as well worn as a welcome mat in a half-price brothel, but the way the director handled it proves to not only be legitimately inspired, his grasp on sustained tension and shocks is nothing short of remarkable.
Even before Bear snaps that One Wish Willow, Aunt Gladys style, Barker proves that he’s extremely adept at making us uncomfortable thanks to us dreading the inevitable moment where our love sick moron is going to humiliate himself by pouring his heart out. However, once this cringe-inducing preamble is dispensed with, the movie has already snared us mostly because we all at sometime or another have had an unrequited love we just couldn’t shake, or an admirer desperate to claw their way out of the friend zone. But the second that cheap looking toy snaps and Bear has made his fateful, and careless wish, both Curry and his two leads managed to scare up a movie that’s not only terrifying when the hexed Nikki is on screen, but also proves to be unbearably tense when she’s off it too. It’s a hell of a trick to pull, but whenever Nikki is calm, or off screen, her demeanor and behavior is so erratic and unpredictable, you literally sit there in a ball of scrunched nerves waiting for something jarring to occur. That essentially means we have a horror movie that never actually let’s up twisting your stress triggers until the final credits roll.
Michael Johnston, who spends the entire film looking like someone’s been violently abusing him in another language, manages to look genuinely terrified for the entire duration of the film, but while his impressive performance as both simultaneous, put-upon victim and uncomprehending villain (the selfish wish is admittedly all his fault and none of what occurs actually has consent considering demonic wishing was involved), but it’s Inde Navarrette as the deranged Nikki who impresses the most. At turns terrifying, pathetic, pitiful and vicious, it could be the performance of the year as she switches unpredictable moods as fast as I change the channel when there’s nothing on. It’s actually been a while since I’ve seen a performance that’s so magnetic and yet so difficult to watch as every move, facial expression and gesture could lead to another freakish episode, be it standing in her own mess all day waiting for her love to get home, watching him sleep from a shadowy corner of the room, wailing uncontrollably when she finds she’s dome something to upset Bear, or even mutilating herself with a bottle after delivering a impromptu story about an incestuous Hansel and Gretel to a stunned room of party goers. But as phenomenal as all this is, Barker insists on keeping a fat, pulsing vein of absurdist humour pumping through the story (the disinterested voice on the other end of the One Wish Willow hotline is genuis) that proves to be the cherry on a wonderfully upsetting cake.
Quite possibly one of the greatest anti-love stories you’ve seen in quite some time, Curry Barker already seems to have made quite an impression on the horror genre because as of the time of writing, he’s already been handed to keys to the Texas Chain Saw Massarce franchise. However, that’s then and this is now, and before we head back to the deep south and rev up those saws, due has to be paid for a film that’s just aching to become your next Obsession…
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 