Review | Obsessed with ‘Obsession’

If you could have just one wish, what would it be?

A million dollars? Bringing a loved one back to life? The ability to read minds? Invisibility? Flying?

Or perhaps you just want the person you like to like you back. Perhaps you wish they loved you “more than anyone in the fucking world.”

It seems simple enough. Surely nothing wrong could come from such an innocuous wish, right?

At least that’s what Bear (Michael Johnston), a main character in the new hit horror movie Obsession, thought when he made that wish while breaking a mysterious device he had purchased called a “One Wish Willow.”

Granted, he didn’t actually think it would come true. Still, it would soon prove to be his biggest mistake, as Nikki Freeman (Inde Navarrette) would not only love him but also become obsessed with him. 

The film opens with Bear at a diner, practicing with a waiter and his friend Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) on what to say when he tells Nikki how he really feels about her. Later, after a trivia night with his friends and coworkers, Ian, Sarah Harper (Megan Lawless), and Nikki, he offers to drive her home. They chat for a while before Nikki exits the car.

Bear, defeated and hopeless, suddenly remembers the “One Wish Willow” he purchased at a magical apothecary as a gift for Nikki. Impulsively, he pulls out the stick and makes the aforementioned wish.

Immediately afterward, Nikki’s silhouette can be seen paused in a doorway in the background, almost frozen, as if she were a statue. She walks back to the car and begins acting erratically, showing a sudden interest in Bear that perplexes him.

From there, they enter into what appears to be a consensual relationship, and the film flashes through sequences of them doing normal couple things: watching movies on the couch, cooking together, and cuddling up at the local music store Mad Music, where they both work.

However, the honeymoon phase, as it so often does, begins to fade. Nikki begins to exhibit imperceptible shifts in her behavior. Then it escalates: She’s making him food with questionable ingredients, watching him sleep, standing in the same position for hours on end, and refusing to let him go anywhere without her.

For example, in the scene where Nikki watches Bear sleep, she moves in a deeply unnerving manner, inching back and forth toward him. When he wakes up, she tells him she likes watching him sleep. But when he invites her back to bed, she responds with a deep, guttural “NO” before slinking away into the corner of the bedroom, crying out, “Why don’t you like me? I feel like I like you more than you like me.”

Her face is slightly altered so that you can’t quite tell who — or what — you’re looking at. But it isn’t the makeup that creates the scare. It’s the unsettling feeling that something is off, not quite right.

What I’ve just described doesn’t sound all that scary when set next to classically terrifying horror movies.What we get in Obsession is not the run-of-the-mill, gory jump-scare horror we’re used to seeing; it’s a perfect representation of the uncanny valley phenomenon, the idea that something looks and acts human, but something is still off.

With traditional horror villains like Stephen King’s Pennywise or the demons that populate so many modern horror films, the fear stems from their appearance and the fact that we know from the outset they are inherently evil. Here, we have absolutely no idea what Nikki will do next.

Navarrette’s performance was so bone-chilling that, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, she said she scared herself while practicing certain facial expressions in the mirror at home. 

Since its May 15 release, Obsession has dominated the box office, with gross earnings of almost $287 million on a $750,000 budget — an even more impressive feat when you consider that the director behind it all, Curry Barker, is 26 years old. 

In an interview with film reviewer and TikToker Straw Hat Goofy, Barker discussed his approach to what he calls “the modern jump scare” and his move away from the traditional horror-film demon we so often see.

“The modern jump scare,” he says, “is if you can get your audience to go, ‘I didn’t like that, that felt weird.'”

I found myself uttering those exact words multiple times throughout the movie.

All in all, Obsession has undoubtedly redefined the boundaries of horror, begging the question: Are our desires the scariest monsters of all? 

Obsession is currently playing in multiple Metropolitan Theatres. See trailer here.