There are few things scarier than approaching a crush and revealing your true feelings, especially when that crush is a friend who could be lost if you play that hand.
That’s the initial fear that lays the groundwork for Obsession by director Curry Barker.
The film opens as “Bear” (Michael Johnston) practices revealing his true feelings for his co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarette) at a restaurant while his best friend Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) gives him notes. Bear gets vulnerable and spills his heart out to his scene partner and is immediately confronted with his worst fear by Ian—the speech was cringe.
With that in mind, Bear’s intense aversion to revealing his feelings deepens. But when Nikki reveals she has turned in her two-week notice at Cassel’s Music, where the trio works—alongside their friend Sarah (Megan Lawless)— Bear decides he has no choice but to finally make his move.
But on his way to confess his love, he stops by a mystical shop, the kind where they sell crystal necklaces alongside other oddities, to get Nikki a gift. It is here that he finds the One-Wish Willow, which he purchases as a gift he thinks Nikki will appreciate more than something sappy.
Yet, when he drives Nikki to her home, Bear finds himself unable to confess his love to Nikki, even when she asks point-blank whether he likes her. Defeated, Bear snaps the One-Wish Willow and wishes that “Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone in the world.” Of course, from his perspective, this is a throwaway wish on a $7 novelty toy, but Nikki immediately begins to act strange—and totally in love with him.
From there, the movie explores the depth of insecurity longing from Bear and how far it will take him down this bad road while Nikki appears to suffer after having her agency robbed from her.
What’s fascinating about this premise is the way it interpolates victim and monster. Nikki is the true victim here, but plays the part of the monster. Bear is responsible for Nikki’s plight, but the film is from his perspective at the mercy of Nikki’s bizarre and unsettling lengths to show her newfound devotion.
That has sparked a lot of discussion about just how bad a character Bear is, but Baker walks the line just right. Bear, at his core, is really just pathetic and blinded by his desire for a relationship with Nikki. There’s actually a montage of several days where Bear and Nikki seem to have a relatively normal (albeit overly co-dependent) relationship after chalking up the first night’s bizarre behavior to drug use.
And of course, while Nikki’s odd behavior immediately has Bear questioning whether the wish worked, he doesn’t seriously consider it until later, when things begin to unravel. Even realizing the wish worked, Bear is still left unsure of whether Nikki’s love might be real. There are a few bits of information shared in this regard during the movie, but never from a reliable source (Nikki herself). And so it’s left ambiguous whether Nikki might actually have loved Bear.
The standout, as has been widely reported, is Inde Navarette as Nikki, who is not the lead but is the linchpin of this movie. Navarette has a short time to make the audience fall in love with her as a normal girl before going bizarre, which she pulls off. And then it’s full tilt from there with Navarette constantly commanding the screen and delivering a performance you can’t take your eyes off of, from cringe to horrifying and back to normal within seconds.
Tomlinson is Baker’s roommate and collaborator on their sketch channel That’s a Bad Idea, and he makes the transition to the big screen effortlessly here. His role is not asking him to do as dramatic work as his on-screen co-stars, but the character feels lived-in and true.
Baker joins the likes of Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger in the pipeline of YouTube comedians to theatrical horror directors, and cements himself as their true peer in his debut. Obsession in particular understands the thin line between comedy and horror, particularly cringe comedy and horror, and uses that to its advantage. It’s not as deep as something like Get Out, but then again, that’s not what this movie is set up to be.
There’s a scene here that is shocking, if not surprising—the most shocking horror scene I can remember since Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man a few years back. It had my audience’s heads in their hands. And that might not even be the best scene in the film, as I would lean towards a game of drunk Jenga that sees Navarette delivering one of the most unhinged monologues I’ve ever heard.
A second viewing solidified that this movie really kicks ass, with pacing that keeps you locked in from start to finish and serves the characters while delivering surprises despite a premise that has been used hundreds of times. I can’t wait to see what Baker does next.
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