Compulsive
Sometimes nice guys deserve to finish last, particularly when they throw a tantrum when a girl doesn’t pay attention.
Obsession
Director: Curry Barker • Writer: Curry Barker
Starring: Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless
USA • 1hr 51mins
Opens Hong Kong July 1 • III
Grade: A-
You know you have a zeitgeisty hit on your hands when you get whiny, butt-hurt manchildren shouting on Instagram about how all these movies about girls being mean to boys are getting out of hand, and/or fundamentally misinterpreting Inde Navarrette’s Nikki as the “villain” of the summer’s word-of-mouth juggernaut Obsession. Hate to tell you this boys, but she’s not. She’s the victim in the most definitely adult man Curry Barker’s debut feature (sorry, but I’m gonna be old school and point out that Milk & Serial at 60 minutes is not the industry standard 80 that qualifies as feature length) about a “nice” guy who feels entitled to the girlfriend of his choice, and when he doesn’t get his way compels her to love him via Big-style magic. Pundits says the kids are going mad for the film, but let’s face it. Any woman, anywhere of any age is going to recognise the sheer fucking entitled childishness so common in so many dudes like Michael Johnston’s Bear, and Barker’s graceful, jaundiced and horrifying cinematisation of this baffling phenomenon is also helping to power the film’s success.
Obsession is something like the fifth film to come down the pipe lately that’s tapped into the collective consciousness and become an organic hit thanks to creativity, strong storytelling and a sense of authenticity. You don’t have to like Obsession, or Backrooms, or Dear You, or Iron Lung to respect the middle fingers each raised to franchises and big studio bluster that reminded us why we go to the movies. Look, no one’s going to argue that bluster doesn’t have its place. Project Hail Mary won us over because it’s the year’s best human-alien buddy comedy (sorry, Mando and Grogu) and suggesting The Odyssey is going to be anything less than spectacular is delusional. It’s another reason we hit the cinema. But originality and singular voice goes a long way – like to nearly US$350 million on a wee US$750,000 budget. Box office returns are a bullshit metric for artistic success, but it does suggest a lot of us are buying in.
Can I get a refund?
When we meet Baron, or Bear (Johnston) he’s rehearsing a cringe-inducing declaration of love for unrequited crush Nikki (Navarrette, who broke out in 13 Reasons Why), his co-worker and long-time friend. It’s awkward and goofy, and their mutual friend Ian (Barker’s regular collaborator Cooper Tomlinson, perfectly toggling comedy and the voice of reason) tells him so. He also has to tell him when he should and shouldn’t say these things, because Bear is as clueless as he is immature, has few social graces and a casual-yet-healthy inconsideration of his friends. One of those is Sarah (Megan Lawless, The Hate U Give), the fourth of the music store quartet and for reasons that are never clear, she digs Bear.
The catch phrase most often used to describe Obsession is “Careful what you wish for,” and though that’s very much a major element of the story, it’s more about agency, identity and fragile power dynamics in modern relationships (het relationships at least). It’s also about the never-ending tension between what guys think they want in the perfect girlfriend and what happens when they get it, and the quest to be the “right” kind of girlfriend for too many women. These all float to the surface when a desperate Bear goes into a novelty shop and buys a One Wish Willow, a spellcasting thingy that look straight out of Aunt Gladys’s purse in Weapons, and wishes Nikki would love him more than anything in the world. It works, and she immediately does. Trouble is, Nikki is no longer Nikki – which is not what Bear wanted, thanks – and the spell dials her affection up to, like, 17. Bear now has the clingy, needy, demanding, hair-trigger girlfriend from hell – and she’s exactly what he deserves.
Barker wrote a sneakily simple script that hides a whole pile of themes and ideas in it when you scratch the surface. At times Obsession plays like a solidly constructed domestic horror film about a possessed partner, complete with some excellent and never overused jump scares (literally, maybe two) tucked into emolliently lit spaces by DOP Taylor Clemons. At others, it’s a pithy and heartbreaking psychological chiller about what happens when a woman is consumed by a man’s whims and winds up trapped by them. Fleeting moments where we realise Nikki knows exactly what’s happend to her are straight up gross; Bear knows it too. It makes his actions all the more reprehensible. When things go off the rails he tries to amend his wish, not reverse it. He pretends the “real” Nikki is truly gone when she feels romantic. He gaslights her friends. He’s a total dick, and if you still think he’s the hero you should probably be on a watch list.
There are moments when Barker comes dangerously close to crossing the line between commentary and collusion, and so a bit more of Nikki’s distress would have put paid to the argument, but he manages to right the ship each time. He gets a great deal of help from Johnston who, to his credit, makes Bear less of an overt threat than a lonely simp who’s so afraid of emotional risk he’d rather control her than sack up and take a risk. Navarrette, however, is the stealth weapon, pitch perfect in creating a vivid pre-spell independent young woman that’s relatable, charming, flawed, generous and human in a minutes, making her unravelling all the more gutting. In a just world she’s a movie star in 3… 2… But above all Obsession is emotionally mature (I bet Barker has no trouble with girls if that’s his jam), vicious and sad, and it effortlessly exploits genre tropes to subvert expectations and say something, if not new at least plainly about romance and desire, and how easily they can tip into, erm, obsession.