A feel-bad horror film for any man who’s ever whined about being ‘friendzoned’ without considering the damage his unrequited, unfair infatuation has wrought. A relationship drama for anybody who’s ever been in one that’s just a little too intense. A profoundly uncomfortable account of one woman’s agency and individuality being stripped away to satisfy of a man’s ‘love’. Definitely not for cat lovers.
All these things are true of Curry Barker’s Obsession, a supernatural horror film that does for the friendzone what Get Out did for white liberals. Young Bruce Campbell slash Dave Franco lookalike Michael Johnston plays Bear, a man who definitely hasn’t seen that one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Unable to pluck up the courage to ask out long-time crush Nikki (Inde Navarrette), he cracks open the mysterious ‘One Wish Willow,’ and makes his, uh, one wish.
It immediately becomes clear that he should have chosen his words more carefully. Or, better still, wished that his poor dead kitty was still alive instead. Even so, Bear’s initial qualms don’t stop him from enjoying the spoils of his wish, and he’s able to ignore some of nu-Nikki’s quirks in the name of love. Stifling, toxic, co-dependent love.
Barker takes a simple idea and boils it down to its unpleasant core. It’s essential that Nikki’s turn is so abrupt and so very obvious, not excusing Bear of his outright crimes for a second. There’s one shot, soon after their restaurant date, which is simply done, but perhaps the most harrowing in the whole film. Similarly, her monologue about Hansel and Gretel deserves to go down in the history books (preferably in the page next to Mia Goth’s Pearl) as one of the greatest things a horror film has done in the last ten years. Never date a writer.
It’s easy to understand why Bear might be taken with Nikki though. Navarrette is a revelation in the role, constantly leaving the audience trembling in fear as to what she might do next. Often hidden in shadow and moving in broken, puppet-like bursts of unnerving activity, she’s a force of nature, turning on a dime between Deadite and doe-eyed Disney Princess. She’s the manic pixie dream girl turned nightmare, and Navarrette owns the screen for every second of her time. When she’s not on it? You’ll be terrified as to what she’s been up to in Bear’s absence. The key, of course, is that neither she nor Barker lose sight of the young woman trapped inside. The film’s most powerful, primal moments are those in which she emerges – the bleak reality behind Bear’s one wish laid, ah, bare.
Lee Cronin may have only recently unwrapped his show-stoppingly horrible version of The Mummy, but Obsession comes hot on its tail as a contender for most disturbing film of the year. It’s a supernatural horror film which relies on none of the usual cheap tricks. Instead, it builds an air of suffocating malignancy from its leads’ performances. We’ve trodden this path before, the silly conceit is grounded in raw emotion and good humour, making its thrills and spills feel, if not natural, then inevitable. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so horrifying; touching if it wasn’t so deeply upsetting. In that respect, Obsession is the ultimate anti-romcom.
OBSESSION is out in UK cinemas now.
