Obsession

Baron “Bear” Bailey (Michael Johnston) is in love with Nikki Freeman. He loves her as only a timid dope with a not-so-secret crush can love, unconditionally and irrecoverably. Nikki (Inde Navarrette) is Bear’s childhood friend and currently works with him at a music store alongside goofball bro Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) and arty alt-girl Sarah (Megan Lawless). (Said business is owned by Sarah’s dad, who is played by Andy Richter in a charmingly normie, semi-offscreen performance.) This twenty-something foursome seems to have a good dynamic going: They grouse about the indignities of retail work, commiserate about their uncertain futures, and unwind by stomping the competition at weekly bar trivia. A romance skeptic might ask why Bear would want to disrupt his friend group’s platonic equilibrium.

However, it’s clear that Bear’s pining for Nikki is as discombobulating as it is unwavering. As writer-director Curry Barker’s deceptively simple and shockingly gnarly sophomore horror feature Obsession opens, Bear is working up the courage to reveal his true feelings to his crush. While employing a random waitress as a Nikki stand-in, his practice run at a heartfelt confession quickly goes off the rails, leaving him a puddle of stammering jelly. When we finally meet the real Nikki, she is revealed to be charming, quick-witted, and (of course) conventionally attractive, but still approachably good-natured in the fashion of all cinematic girls-next-door. Bear’s paralyzing fear of rejection seems wildly out of proportion to the reality of his situation, but romantic infatuation is nothing if not irrational.

The horror-story swerve that Barker (Milk & Serial) adds to this cringeworthy non-situationship is fantastical yet cunningly straightforward. While idly shopping for a crystal necklace for Nikki at a local New Age store, Bear happens upon a display for the “One-Wish Willow,” a mostly forgotten novelty from the 1980s. According to the retro packaging, the twisted twig within will grant a single wish if the user snaps it in half while speaking their heart’s desire aloud. Bear is understandably incredulous at this claim but still purchases one of the trifles. Later, after a disillusioning trivia night in which his planned declaration to Nikki is repeatedly thwarted by both circumstance and his own cowardice, Bear breaks the Willow and wishes for his crush’s undying love. Much to his astonishment, the effect is both instantaneous and deeply, deeply unsettling. (To be fair, who would have thought the sort of junk sold alongside X-ray glasses and sea monkeys in the back of a Boy’s Life magazine would actually work?)

As folktales have warned us for generations – and the Simpson family once demonstrated in their inimitably idiotic way – wishes are tricky things. Even the most well-intentioned request will inevitably be perverted into disturbing unintended consequences, while desires with darker motivations end up reaping the kind of karmic comeuppance that would make an ancient Greek playwright blanch. Obsession leans into the self-parodic creepiness of Nikki’s newfound interest in Bear, which quickly intensifies from flirtation to love-bombing to monomania. As Bear haplessly attempts to steer Nikki’s co-dependence-on-steroids to less off-putting ends, her behavior predictably shifts into violence, but it’s shocking just how gruesome (and bloody-minded) the film gets as its ludicrous premise escalates.

Although Obsession isn’t above deploying the Fatal Attraction (1987) trope of the overly attached girlfriend who turns into a bunny-boiling psycho-stalker, Barker’s feature is ultimately playing in a somewhat broader (and less misogynistic) horror sandbox. The nervous laughs and appalled gasps elicited by Navarrette’s deliciously unhinged performance take on an even darker cast as the film prods the viewer to ruminate on the appalling implications of its core conceit.  A different kind of screenplay might have hand-waved the workings of Bear’s wish – “Nikki is just like this now, don’t worry about the how” – but Obsession gestures towards something much stranger than a radical personality change. The film suggests that the person eerily watching Bear sleep, duct-taping his front door shut, and scribbling bizarre, quasi-incestuous erotica about him might not be the “real” Nikki at all. Nikki might be … somewhere else.

“Love-potion horror” isn’t an especially common subgenre, but a few works have played with the concept’s disturbing implications vis-à-vis consent and authenticity (The Twilight Zone, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural). The pivotal early Rick & Morty episode “Rick Potion No. 9” used a science-fiction twist on the notion to achieve some outrageous body horror – and immortalize the phrase, “Cronenberg world” – but Obsession might be one of the first examples to mine the concept for existential dread. The feature hews to Bear’s viewpoint as the relationship he has long fantasized about mutates into a downward-spiraling farce of gore-clotted horror. Yet Barker’s nastiest touch might be the suggestion that Bear’s selfish stupidity has damned the woman he claims to love to eternal torment. Although the film keeps Nikki’s firsthand experiences mostly out of reach – reflecting the way that Bear views her less as a person with agency than a vessel into which he pours his longing and loneliness – the oblique glimpses we do get are the stuff of unadulterated nightmare.

To be clear, Bear doesn’t do much to earn the audience’s sympathy. Using black magic to roofie your crush into perpetual, frenzied romantic devotion is a shit move any way you slice it, after all. And doubly foolish, given that Sarah is very obviously into Bear and would have gladly dated him without the intercession of a magic stick, despite his limp cluelessness. (“Therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind” and all that.) Barker’s screenplay and Teen Wolf breakout Johnston – who somewhat fittingly resembles a cross between Dave Franco and Theo James – portray Bear with a clammy blend of golden-retriever earnestness, Nice Guy entitlement, and sputtering uselessness. Even the doltish sincerity of his original affection is an open question: Does he love Nikki or does he just love the idea of being in love with Nikki? The viewer isn’t so much rooting for him to outwit the wish’s parameters as hoping that the damage caused by his folly will be minimized.

No such luck, unfortunately. Like fellow sketch comedian-turned-horror director Zach Creggar (Weapons), Barker has a taste for absurd cruelty. Why give your characters even a moment of respite when you can twist the thumbscrews another quarter-turn? Barker also exhibits an impressive talent for the formal aspects of horror filmmaking, employing obfuscating gloom, skin-crawling sound design, and molasses-slow zooms and dollies to superbly sadistic ends. Rock Burwell’s ambient-flavored score is a particular standout, devilishly shifting between dreamy synth soundscapes and itchy, almost insectile electronic dissonance. Overall, it’s remarkably stylish work for a mainstream-ish horror feature with an elevator-pitch premise, adeptly illustrating that cinematic artfulness can elevate even a hoary adage like “Be careful what you wish for.”

Similar to Creggar, Barker is ultimately less focused on themes than on psychological tension and midnight-movie shocks. Obsession touches on ego, desire, and the fundamental inaccessibility of other people’s minds, but it never slows down to offer any real insight about such matters. That said, a sense of out-of-control momentum is key to the film’s potency, and Navarrette (13 Reasons Why, Superman & Lois) is the engine that keeps the roller coaster clattering along until it plunges straight into the abyss. Much has been made of the actress’s wild turn since the film’s premiere in Toronto last fall, and although it’s a stretch to call it a generational horror performance, it’s a prime example of understanding the assignment. Navarrette takes Barker’s screenplay and runs with it, delivering a herky-jerky, whole-body turn that dances manically at the intersection of hilarious, terrifying, and pitiable. It’s quite a trick to make the viewer not only scared of a 25-year-old woman who probably weighs 120 pounds soaking wet, but also equally terrified for her – even as she’s bashing someone’s face into goulash with a brick.