We usually hear the phrases “careful what you wish for” sufficient instances in life that you just’d suppose, when you ever have been to be granted your coronary heart’s need by supernatural means, you’d not less than be actually specific in regards to the wording. However an impetuous request to an invisible genie-like entity has ruinous penalties for a number of folks in “Obsession,” a nifty, unnerving little horror movie from web comic and viral-video auteur Curry Barker that begins just like the premise of a joke — and ends with a far sicker punchline than you may count on. Just like the novelty reward that causes all the difficulty, “Obsession” initially appears simplistic, and even a bit foolish, in its rehash of the age-old monkey’s paw trope. Like the results of that ill-considered want, nonetheless, it proves eerily arduous to shake.
Focus Options spent a cool $14 million on buying “Obsession” following its buzzy Midnight Insanity premiere ultimately yr’s Toronto Movie Competition — a pricetag not less than 14 instances the scale of the movie’s price range, which itself was an unimaginably huge step up from the $800 that Barker spent on his eye-catching, hour-long and eventually YouTube-released debut “Milk & Serial” lower than two years in the past. Capturing has already wrapped on his Blumhouse-produced, Focus-acquired third characteristic “Anything but Ghosts”; a “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” transforming with A24 is now within the offing.
All of which is to say that the 26-year-old filmmaker is shifting by way of the ranks at a velocity that might recommend perhaps he obtained fortunate within the wish-granting division — if his mixture of style savvy, lo-fi manufacturing smarts and on-point GenZ commentary didn’t plainly communicate for itself. Closely dialogue-driven and principally confined to modest home interiors, “Obsession’s” story of a limerent crush flipped by magic right into a nightmarishly clingy relationship already works as a type of warped, excessive romantic comedy, perceptively keyed into fashionable codependency concept, earlier than it takes a tough flip into slasher territory. However Barker handles that swerve, too, with such brutal proficiency — the bounce scares leap, the kills kill — it’s not arduous to see why Jason Blum was sufficiently impressed to connect himself as govt producer.
“Obsession” isn’t only a coming-out occasion for its director, nonetheless, however for its younger star Inde Navarrette — hitherto greatest recognized for TV work in “13 Reasons Why” and “Superman & Lois,” and right here acing one of many extra bodily and emotionally taxing horror results in come down the pike shortly. She performs Nikki, longtime pal, colleague and mooned-over dream lady of protagonist Bear (a winningly neurotic Michael Johnston), a music-store employee with rather a lot going for him — good-looking, delicate, usually put-together — however a continual incapability to talk his emotions. As a buddy, Nikki is endlessly cheery and supportive, however her demeanor is so usually good that it’s arduous to inform if he’s getting particular remedy from her or not.
Alongside comes the One Want Willow to remove all doubt. Present in a new-age retailer, it’s an affordable, flimsy rod that guarantees to grant a want when damaged in half. No extra credible than a fortune cookie, then, however Bear is down so dangerous he’s keen to offer it a attempt. He snaps the willow, wishing for Nikki to like him “more than anything in the fucking world.” Dangerous concept, dude.
There can be no film right here if it didn’t work, and it does, instantly and alarmingly: Swiftly, Nikki is barely capable of be aside from him, between bouts of vigorous intercourse and mawkish couple discuss. It doesn’t take lengthy for Bear to understand that this alternately docile and aggressively dependent Nikki will not be the girl he wished to fall in love with him, and for his or her mutual mates Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) and Sarah (Megan Lawless) — a cool alt-girl who’s sizzling for Bear however sarcastically can’t make him see that — to clock that one thing may be very, very off. Who or what is that this simulated girlfriend expertise that has seemingly overridden Nikki, and the place is the real article?
Each variations glitch and flicker and struggle one another inside Navarrette’s terribly expressive efficiency, rising typically as a grinningly excellent, Zoomer-era Stepford facsimile, typically as a screamingly risky banshee, and typically as a depleted, scooped-out shell of a lady, stripped of company and bodily management. It’s her desolate, all-body unhappiness on this ultimate mode that lends “Obsession” an emotional weight past its neat payoff as a supremely nasty dating-culture allegory — and at the same time as an interrogation of misogynistic manosphere-era beliefs. To not point out the truth that Nikki’s cosmically compelled devotion to Bear feels about as real, and due to this fact as rewarding, as a relationship with an AI chatbot, solely an entire lot messier.
None of that, nonetheless, impedes the queasy enjoyable of “Obsession’s” more and more grisly fallout. The movie is engaged on too small a scale for mass carnage, however Barker chooses his shocks as rigorously as his yocks, timing them in order that they depend, and losing no power on pointless explanations and background lore. The One Want Willow works as a result of it really works, and we’d like no additional data than that: The unresolved senselessness of the premise lends the movie a long-lasting, quivery chill to match the dim, minty tones of Taylor Clemens’ lensing and the unsettled, inhuman rumble of Rock Burwell’s rating. There’s filmmaking polish right here past what Barker promised when he was working on-line with triple-figure budgets, however “Obsession” isn’t afraid to go away the odd clean house.
