Review | ‘Obsession’ is an incel’s wet dream turned nightmare
Courtesy of Focus Features
“Obsession” is a fresh retelling of the timeless “be careful what you wish for” fable. Hopeless romantic Bear (Michael Johnston) bites off more than he can chew by wishing for his crush Nikki (Inde Navarrette) to fall in love with him. The film wastes no time diving into the horror after Bear breaks the magical “One Wish Willow,” and the relationship between Bear and Nikki spirals into a relentlessly terrifying co-dependency.
The film’s use of the supernatural was limited, explaining the curse placed on Nikki but not banking on its abilities after the reality-bending inciting incident. The result was a believable world constructed from the possibilities of reality, leaving the audience able to easily self-insert into its realistically frightening horrors.
“Obsession” ventures bravely into the psychological terrors of co-dependency without relying on external elements beyond the couple itself. True to its title, the diegetic restrictions of the world further creatively push the boundaries of how far an obsession can go.
The film opens with an apologetic perspective towards the lonely Bear, who is head over heels in love with his sweet coworker. To the feminist skeptics in the audience, Nikki’s character is not exactly fleshed out. Her main qualities are her flirtatious nature, generous heart and her irritating, selfish flaw of quietly friend-zoning our protagonist. But once Nikki is cursed to star in Bear’s fantasy, the film purposely exploits her character’s archetypal nature to its fullest extent.
Inde Navarrette gives an incredible breakout horror performance as Nikki, playing the “crazy girlfriend” caricature’s theatrics at 100%. Navarrette controls her malleable face with powerful precision, allowing her expressions to flip on a dime alongside her character’s oscillating tendencies. She’s hammered out a classic slasher scream, sound-designed strong enough to tear a hole through the screen. Her off-putting mannerisms creep around the corners of the frame, costumed in drooping sweaters and offering a practiced flexibility that bends her limbs.
The shadowy composition of the shots works in her favor, allowing her to hide in plain sight from the audience, the murkiness of her eye sockets soaking up all but a speck of eyelight. The balanced blend of Navarrette’s acting choices not only solidifies her as an upcoming horror starlet but also builds a starkly unique character. The crazy girlfriend caricature shakes out to be something of a possessed doll with a hell of a voice box.
The film does a great job of pushing Bear’s burden to the extreme. Much of the horror is derived from how Nikki uses the relationship to isolate Bear. His friends notice the co-dependency but rationalize it through Nikki’s potential mental illness.
Bear is living in a haunted house with a demon he can’t evict. He is tortured with the visceral horrors of having his own dead cat cooked into a sandwich, as well as the psychological torment of his friends not understanding his perspective.
One of the most notable scenes is when Bear brings Nikki to a party, and his friends finally get to witness Nikki’s extremities firsthand. Nikki recites her own creepy creative writing in the middle of a drinking game, laughs too hard at Bear’s jokes and scoots Sarah out of the way to sit next to him after a game forces him to kiss the person to his left. Nikki’s cartoonish pout dipping into frame and the well-captured awkwardness of the other partygoers is uncomfortably visceral.
Throughout the film, we’re reminded that Nikki is sharing space with a demon inside her own body. In moments of chilling authenticity, Nikki snaps out of her curse, confused, reminding audiences that her body is acting without her consent.
For female audiences, it’s more likely that “Obsession” was Nikki’s horror movie and the scariest question it presents is not: “What if someone was cursed to love you?” but, “What if you were cursed to love someone?”
The party scene ends with one of these lapses in character, as Nikki shrieks to the partygoers: “That’s not me!” smashing her head against a glass bottle. All of the dreadful secondhand embarrassment experienced in the party scene from Bear’s perspective becomes instantly amplified when we realize that Nikki was watching helplessly from inside her own body.
In arguably the most chilling scene, as Bear sneaks out of the house at night, Nikki begins to talk in her sleep. The entity haunting her body is asleep, and the real Nikki has found a way to communicate from inside her bodily cage. She begs Bear to kill her, reminding him that none of the obsession she’s exhibiting is authentic. Another reminder comes when Bear calls the complaint number on the back of the “One Wish Willow,” and the receptionist puts his line through to Nikki, a staticky, tortured scream crackling on the other end.
“Obsession” is a horror film with a sharp, double-edged sword intent on dissecting the fantasy of co-dependent relationships. It’s a heavy-handed moral lesson to men whose sexual deprivations cause them to Tweet: “Get you a girl that looks at you like this” under images of Sydney Sweeney. Likewise, it’s an exploration into the female fears surrounding a loss of bodily autonomy or self-sufficiency within the context of relationships. And to both audiences, it’s a cautionary tale towards weird couples baby-talking each other at social gatherings.
