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"Obsession" Movie Review

Fell a little behind on this. Sorry for the delay. Summer is my busy season right now, but we might start doing some bloggier things on this in addition to the reviews as well. Not 100% sure, but I like the newsletter format! Thanks for reading, guys.

The latest summer smash at the box office, Curry Barker’s Obsession, is a story simpler than it seems. The 26 year-old Barker, freshly deemed a filmmaking wunderkind, cut his teeth as an actor in studio project bit parts and by making his own comedy shorts with friends and posting them to YouTube. More than almost anyone in the movie business from his generation, Barker can claim to be “self-made,” as far as that idea goes for anybody. This movie was appropriately financed by the low-budget horror company Blumhouse (of Paranormal Activity fame), and has produced a 200-300x return on its budget. It’s an exciting story for Barker, who is not the first young man to find early success in showbusiness, but his debut movie does reveal some fascinating things about the current media landscape.

Obsession is the story of Bear, a young man who wishes upon a curio that his friend Nikki would love him “more than anyone in the whole world.” The wish is actually granted, and Nikki predictably becomes a little too involved with Bear. Without spoiling anything, this wish ruins Bear’s life. It’s a pithy concept – the kind of thing Hollywood studios love to buy. And even if it seems like something audiences might’ve seen before, horror is the most reliable genre at the box office. Why? Who knows. The theatre I saw it in was certainly full.

And this movie is a success. It’s gotten great press. Hip 20-somethings home from school on summer vacation really want to see it. It’s made a truckload of money. But here’s the catch. It’s not that good. And I’m not trying to be a guy who hates something for the sake of being contrarian, or because Curry Barker is young and working. I’ll give the movie its due credit. There are basically no “name” actors in this film. And all the performances are good! The scares are pretty scary. And there are surprises in the film. Maybe only one or two, but some movies have none. And cinematography is good. This thing looks like a horror film. So the movie is working on a lot of superficial levels.

But Barker and Blumhouse want this movie to play in theatres in the summer, and they want it to make money. So I’m not going to be satisfied to critique it with kid gloves on. If you want to be in the kitchen, you need to be ready for the heat that comes with it. So here goes…

This movie is basically a comedy sketch expanded to an inexcusable length. Allow me to explain. Classic sketch comedy operates on an idea called “game theory.” The short version of sketch comedy game theory is that a set of circumstances will be introduced, then an incident – called the game – should occur. Then the game escalates. Then the game is explored and played with. And then the game ends, usually tied off with a button joke or some other clever endnote. Here’s a classic Mr. Show sketch a comedian once used to teach me about game theory.

Pretty straightforward, right? It’s fun and amusing, and results in a pretty good time. But it’s predictable. And if you stretched it out to 95 minutes, it’d be insufferably predictable. Which is to say that if you’ve seen a three act movie, you can accurately predict 90% of the plot of Obsession. Once you know that Nikki loves Bear a little too much, you can start to imagine all the ways that would be a problem for a young man. It’s not a bad idea for a sketch. But in my opinion, it’s not enough for a movie.

And a decent bit of the film is styled as comedy. There are scenes that are overly long and cringey. In general, if a movie scene is over 2 minutes long, it needs a good reason to justify that time. There are several scenes in the first act of the film that need to be trimmed. They’re difficult to sit through. There were laughs in the audience I was in. Uncomfortable ones. I bet Barker and company would say those are intentional, but they didn’t fit with the genre or tone of the rest of the film. It’s a movie that is, in style, all over the place. It works at times. In others, I’m not so sure. Should I be the only person in the theatre laughing during the film’s best scene? Probably not.

And I know it was written by a young person, but Obsession is one of the least mature movies I’ve seen in decades. I mean that as a dig, because the subtext of the film deserves it. If you buy into the idea that horror stories reflect the fears of the society that produces them, the implications about Obsession are sadly grim.

Bear struggles to be sincere and vulnerable when doing so should be the most important thing in his life. He’s not ambitious. He has a shitty job. He has no apparent family. He’s lonely. The guy can’t even keep a cat alive. He has basically nothing to lose by telling Nikki he likes her. Yet he cannot muster the gumption to do it. Then he wishes his fantasy into realization, and it becomes his worst nightmare. On an unconscious level, Obsession presents the Wonka’s Wonderland version of having a girlfriend. It’s something most young men want, but being inside the situation proves a candy-coated horror show. Which is to say that it’s stupid. By wishing Nikki into a sex/love slave, Bear creates an evil automaton.

As soon as Bear makes his wish, the actress portraying Nikki no longer plays a person. She plays a force that ruins any situation for Bear. You could replace Nikki with a sex doll that has chlamydia and steals your credit card information, and it’d be an upgrade — and something closer to resembling a real human woman. Nikki is one of the most thoughtless characters to exist in decades. She makes me long for a time when Hollywood executives would’ve made some mention about considering the female perspective in this movie. For better or worse, the woke is gone in Tinseltown.

Not to mention the fact that seemingly without a thought, Barker gave the surname Freeman – a name often taken on by liberated former slaves in the United States – to Nikki, the character in the movie who literally becomes a sex slave. There are certainly white girls with that last name Freeman in this country, but as a choice, it’s dumb.

Especially when Barker was very thoughtful in naming the pub his characters drink at after himself. You’ll see it in stained glass for at least 10 seconds at the beginning of the film. Priorities, huh?

The debut of a writer or director can be viewed as a window into the soul of the person who put it together. In previous generations, these softboys often chose to bare their souls. Will Hunting is a fairly immature character. But he’s honest. Damon and Affleck probably thought it would be cool to be Will Hunting. Barry Jenkins laid a lot of himself out in Medicine for Melancholy. Even Tarantino showed us his obsessions in the script for True Romance. Say what you will about these guys, but at least they were sincere. I don’t see enough of Barker’s soul in Obsession. And what I do see seems to be concerned with things too superficial to praise.

3 Stars.