Film Review: “Obsession”

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Warning: Full spoilers for the film follow.

Like many other people, I was quite simply blown away by Obsession, Curry Barker’s horror film that’s taken the world and the box office by storm. It’s one of those films that held me rapt from the very beginning and, as its plot unfolded and as the horrors piled up on each other, I kept wondering just what was going to happen next and how much further things were going to go off the rails. Like the best horror, it’s a rather simple story–Michael Johnston’s Bear pines for his friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette) and makes a wish on a novelty toy for her to love him more than anyone else, with predictably disastrous consequences–and it’s in its simplicity that its power rests. It speaks to so many of the issues plaguing us today, particularly surrounding young men, and it’s the kind of film I’ll be thinking about and wrestling with for months.

The moment Bear breaks that little toy stick and invokes his wish, Nikki seems to become a totally different person. She’s no longer the fierce, independent spirit he fell in love with. Instead, her entire existence revolves around him and her desperate (and increasingly terrifying) need to impress him. As Bear soon learns, obsessive love–of precisely the kind he’s harbored for Nikki all these years–can be a very unpleasant thing when it’s inflicted by some sort of supernatural entity. When you wish for someone to love you more than anyone else in the world, you have to contend with the fact that obsession destroys.

This is the kind of horror film that truly gets under your skin and into the back of your mind, lodging there and refusing to leave. In part, this is because Barker has a keen sense of suspense and framing, with the narrative and the camera working in tandem to keep us, like Bear, uncertain about what’s going to happen next. I was particularly struck by the way that Nikki’s appearance changes the moment that stick breaks. She’s repeatedly backlit–whether by the lights of her own porch or the stoop to Bear’s house–which means we see her the same way Nick does: as a sort of menacing dark presence, only her eyes gleaming in the light. Bear, of course, is too oblivious–and too blinded by his overwhelming “love” for Nikki–to sense that something might be amiss, at least not until it’s too late.

I lost count of the number of times in this film where I gripped the edges of my seat, absolutely dreading what was going to happen next, and it must be said that a great deal of the film’s terror comes from Inde Navarrette’s truly electrifying and captivating performance. She gives us just enough in the first few moments before Nikki’s possession for us to get a sense of who she is as a person before the horrors unfold. As her alternative self becomes ever more unhinged in her devotion to Bear–watching him while he sleeps at night, screaming at him to love her, staying in one place all day so as not to risk his anger (and covering herself with urine and vomit in the process)–we find ourselves missing who she once was and wondering how much of her original self is left.

There’s also something insidiously brilliant about the way the film toys with our affiliation as viewers. On the one hand, Johnston’’s performance as Bear makes him ever-so-slightly sympathetic, at least up until a point (though young men fruitlessly pining after women who don’t want them always involves a certain level of creepiness). Things change, though, when he calls the help number on the toy and hears the real Nikki screaming in torment while her alternative self continues her absolute devotion to Bear. It’s at this point that our sympathies with him–assuming they ever existed at all–start to curdle into hostility. When, a short time later, the real Nikki surfaces briefly to beg him to kill her so she can be freed from her horrible existence, the only thing Bear can think to do is to ask why she couldn’t have loved him, before leaving her behind. It was at this point that I leaned over to my viewing partner and whispered, “he has to die.” I said this not just because the narrative required it but also because, in the film’s own logic, Bear has earned his eventual fate. It takes quite a brave film to turn its hero into a villain, and I give Barker a lot of credit for making this choice.

When it comes to the film’s message, however, I’m a little torn. Now, we all know that horror, perhaps more than any other genre, is a genre predicated on saying something, whether explicitly or implicitly. Horror films work on us because they tap into the things we collectively fear or are anxious about, whether it’s immigration, bodily autonomy, or race relations in the US. On the surface, at least, Obsession seems to be arguing that young men’s obsession with viewing women as nothing more than emotional appendages to their desires, and to a certain degree it succeeds, at least if one starts to see Bear as the villain of the piece. However, the film also falls into a double-bind of its own creation, because at the end of the day this is still Bear’s film: we’re sutured into his POV, we see Nikki as a source of horror and terror through his eyes, and he ultimately gets to escape the mess of his own creation through dying.

It’s also more than a little revealing that the film’s most gruesome acts of violence are acted out on the very bodies of the women with whom we are, according to the film’s narrative and political logic, supposed to be identifying. Bear’s friend Sarah (Megan Lawless) suffers especially egregiously in this regard, when an enraged Nikki bludgeons her to death, the camera leaving nothing to the imagination as, once again, a woman’s mutilated body is offered up as spectacle. It’s also worth noting that Nikki’s body also bears the wounds of her possession, whether it’s standing in one place all day or, in a gut-wrenching moment, when the real Nikki stabs herself in an effort to free herself from her imprisonment and torment. As so often in the movies, women’s bodies bear the punishment for men’s cruelty and desires.

What, then, are we to make of the ending? Yes, Bear has died (somewhat inadvertently) by his own hand, a fitting punishment, perhaps, for the suffering his selfishness has caused. But what of Nikki? She might finally be liberated from the possession Bear’s thoughtless wish inflicted upon her, but she’s the one left to pick up the pieces of both her shattered life and the bodies strewn around her. I highly doubt the legal system is going to be very understanding of her plight, since last I checked “an evil toy made me do it” isn’t a valid legal defense. At best, she can look forward to a life in either an institution or prison, forced to live with the trauma of her imprisonment in her own body, her murder of two of her friends (she also shoots Ian, the fourth member of the friend group, during the climax), and the fact that one of her best friends took control of her body and kept doing it even when he knew what he was doing.

So, I must admit that I’m a bit more mixed about Obsession than I thought I would be. While I think it’s remarkably effective and terrifying and horrifying as a piece of horror cinema, the ends to which it puts those sensations leaves me feeling rather cold. But then, perhaps I’m being unfair. The double bind of patriarchy–and the ubiquity of patriarchal methods of meaning-making within cinema–means that it’s almost impossible to show the toll that it takes on women without indulging in the very system itself. If nothing else, then, Obsession reminds us that horror films still have much to say and, if they manage to make us think and force us to grapple with the deep issues of our time, then all the better.