Bear (Michael Johnston) has had a crush on his friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette) for years. Too afraid to reveal his feelings, he instead decides on a different route to love - he makes a wish that she will love him more than anyone else in the world.
He gets what he wished for.
Will he live to regret it?
I used to love lo-fi, small-scale genre movies. I think my feelings are starting to change.
I hit a run of movies last year of genre movies with fun premises where it felt like they left something on the table - Companion and Novocaine were some more high-profile examples
I remember liking those movies but they felt unfinished, like proof of concepts, or short films.
That is my feeling about Obsession.
I liked how quickly the movie gets into gear, but then I started noticing an airlessness to the characters and the world they exist in.
Before this gets too dour, it has to be said:
Inde Navarrette is an instant star - a legitimate force of nature that gives this film its pulse.
Her performance - body language and timing - is so disconcerting, it feels like a special effect (there is a deeply unsettling moment toward the end of the movie where she darts out of the corner of the frame like a marionette).
To its credit, Obsession does not try to explain the wish, or what has happened to Nikki - we get some creepy hints (in one unsettling scene, the ‘real’ Nikki returns at night to plead with Bear to kill her).
Navarrette creates a clear distinction between the characters’ dueling personae, often juggling between them in a single scene.
The possessing entity is a liar, lacking in emotional maturity, or understanding of human behaviour. Navarrette makes this malicious entity feel terrifyingly real.
Main character Bear is despicable - the film seems to recognise this, but does not have much more use for him. Johnston does his best, but the character has no real growth or change.
Despite its flaws, I was plugged into this movie - until the film’s close, where it becomes clear the filmmakers have run out of ideas.
Early in the movie, Bear is looking for ways of its predicament. One of the options he is given is to take his own life (the alternative is to act as Nikki’s custodian for the rest of both their lives).
One would expect the film to then throw in another curveball, to send the characters on a different trajectory from what feels inevitable.
Nope.
This ending felt like a cop-out - and what makes it worse is that the film presents at as a punchline.
If it is meant as such, the set up was too long ago for it to count.
This is why the film ultimately feels like a short, a variation on ‘be careful what you wish for’.
The film does not flesh out its world or characters with enough life to make the journey interesting, or to give pathos to the ending.
We get a minor subplot involving Bear’s relationship with his friend Sarah (Megan Lawless), but this ends up being the set up to a particularly violent set-piece rather than a meaningful arc for our protagonist.
As a showcase for Navarrette, it is great. And the film’s breakout success is great news for movies, at a time when the commentariat has been despairing about the survival of the film industry.
But as a film in its own right, Obsession is lacking the imagination to match its star’s ferocious energy.
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