A Review of Obsession

Michael Johnston as Baron "Bear" Bailey

Before the thought of seeing Obsession had entered my head, I was hearing about it. A close friend of mine had seen it at CUFF and was talking about it nonstop (if you are reading this, hello!) when I had seen Mārama– which I previously reviewed– instead; the poster was all over every cinema I entered; clips of the film were flooding the internet. This movie was an honest-to-goodness sensation. For these reasons, I was of two minds seeing it: would it live up to its hype? Or was this just another Marvel-like media circus drummed up by the studio which melts away as fast as it emerges? From my two viewings of this film, I feel like I can comfortably say that it is the former.

I will warn you here, this is where the spoilers begin. I cannot stress enough that this is a film that you must see blind: go to the theatre, and then come back here. You will thank me. Obsession by Curry Barker of YouTube fame, tells the story of Bear, an introverted and awkward music store employee on a cringe quest to ask out his close friend and object of his affections, Nikki. He has clearly been pining after her for a while now, and he has to find just the right way to confess his feelings. After a drive home after trivia night turns to total embarrassment, he forfeits this discomfort entirely and uses a One-wish Willow, a children’s toy that supposedly grants wishes. Much to his surprise, the Willow actually works, but as horror-watchers we know that this is not going to be so easy. Nikki’s love quickly turns to obsession (he said the line!) to truly disastrous results for all involved.

Obsession is a brilliant bait-and-switch. The premise is fairly standard– protagonist becomes infatuated with his close friend, so he turns to dubious means to win her over. The woman becomes obsessed, he breaks the spell, yada yada yada. What was compelling about this film, though, is the deconstruction. This is the only film I have seen that truly takes this premise seriously, not as a gag or a set up, but as an act of rape, whether it was intentional or not. To use a love spell is to deny someone’s autonomy, to deny their choice to either choose you or not. This film understands that all action post-Willow is a reaction, for both Nikkis, to being raped. To this end, Barker makes use of the cleverest of references. I know I always talk about references, but for me, it helps me place the film in a larger cultural conversation, which I would argue this film demands. Rather than drawing from other horror films, which runs the risk of genre-inbreeding, Barker draws from rom-com, romantic drama, and melodrama–I saw Zefferelli’s Romeo and Juliet, Notting Hill, All That Heaven Allows, creating a powerful narrative and thematic contrast, while still leaning into their cinematic unity as body genres.

This film is also unafraid to make Bear a genuinely rotten person, a rapist, for using the Willow. He is too afraid to muddle through the confession-and-getting-to-know-you phase of a relationship, so he circumvents that by using magic. He has the chance to undo the wish when he calls the support line, with the understanding that Nikki was in agony, and he still refuses. When Willow-Nikki is asleep, real Nikki begs for Bear to kill her and end–I cannot stress enough–what is effectively a prolonged rape, and all he can respond with is: “Is it really that bad to be with me?”

I have seen discourse about Bear coming off as too sympathetic of a character, but I would argue, that is the point. He is a rotten person, and you are meant to sympathize with him because every single person alive can have an instinct towards cowardice. You aren’t meant to hate him; that is the most difficult, and most effective part of this film. Barker asks, “Do you understand him?” Yes, I do understand him, and yes, I do hate him. I am willing to argue that every person, at some point in their lives, has hoped for something akin to the One-wish Willow to escape relationship awkwardness, and in that moment, they were Bear. What this film presents with him is when you let that cowardice, that lack of resilience, win, and where it leads you, too.

This year has been a year of brand-new horror actresses stealing the show. In my last review, we had Ariāna Osborne, and this time we have Inde Navarette. This woman was making facial expressions in a horror picture that I have not seen since Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. Never, ever let this woman touch her face with a botox needle. What stood out to me particularly was her movement work–probably because I am a dancer myself and one of my great goals is to, at some point, work as a movement director on a horror film; but I digress– because it was exceptional. A quality I deeply value in a performer is a willingness to allow the character to completely inhabit them, down to the way they walk, talk and breathe. Navarette opened herself up completely to Nikki. The shift she was able to illustrate between Pre-Willow Nikki and Post-Willow Nikki was stark, and chilling. It was truly shocking how one woman can be two completely different people. The comparison I keep coming back to is Bette Davis; they share a complete fearlessness about the work, unafraid to look stupid, scary, clownish, filthy to tell the story as accurately as they are able. Ironically, this fearlessness added all the more terror to Nikki, as she loses more and more of her autonomy and tries more and more violently to claim it back in any way she can.

Obsession was a haunting, upsetting, terrifying and excellent film. In all honesty, I am still in the process of parsing out whether my feelings about this film were me getting swept up in the hype, this film being specifically engineered towards my interests, or it being genuinely good. Writing this review was a part of that process, and the more I write the more I find that I have more to say. That is usually a good sign for me. What is also a good sign is the urge to watch it again; I want to keep picking it apart, keep hunting, keep seeing what I can find. There are so many analytical angles you can take with this film, and I want to take them all. If you want to see this film, hit me up. I’ll go see it with you.