Some movies just have the stuff. Watching them is like living for a day as Burt Reynolds in his prime. You’ve got the whole lifestyle at your disposal: the sex, the drugs, the tableside guacamole. All you have to do is sit down and enjoy the ride.
And, at some point, we all believe the only thing we’re missing is the stuff.
At our greenest, we imagine the life we want is one lucky break away. We know the only thing we lack is the shot. Open the velvet rope, hand us the keys, and we’re all set. The possibility that we might get exactly what we wanted and immediately prove unable to hang never really enters the prospectus.
The perspective that accompanies a few more years tends to mete out a certain self-honesty. That thing holding you back isn’t always a missing birthright. By then, you’ve popped the hood on your own—well, hood—and discovered a whole fucking chaotic family of Keebler elves running around upstairs. None of them are badass. They’re all tiny, single-purpose anxiety beasts pulling different levers at once.
And where are the goddamn cookies?
Director Curry Barker—all of 26 when Obsession hit theaters—understands that anxiety’s origin story has survived the last couple hundred years basically untouched: wanting something desperately and being terrified to ask for it. With that revelation under his belt, he grabs one of the oldest engines in horror and has the confidence to trust that the fun will come from what he does with it.
Obsession doesn’t waste time setting the board. We meet Bear rehearsing the declaration of love he lacks the constitution to actually deliver. Having just been dumped into this thing, we first think we’re watching the big swing. Then Barker reveals we’re just at batting practice.
But, masterfully, in those ninety seconds, we know where this thing is headed and exactly what kind of guy is driving. Bear can only think about the girl of his dreams, so naturally he hasn’t had any time to consider whether he’s a guy capable of even being an extra in hers.
And then—boom. Mid-exposition, Bear’s cat ODs on oxy.
It may not foreshadow a damn thing you can reasonably foreshadow, but it tells us exactly what Barker plans to do to our nervous system. Any time we start finding the movie’s rhythm, he’s going to kick the metronome off the piano.
As Barker packs up our overnight bag for the imminent descent into whatever this is going to be, he makes a stop at the ol’ voodoo emporium to ensure we’re appropriately provisioned to really get our freak on. Enter the only plot device we need: a $6.99 One Wish Willow stick, framed and lighted like the holy grail of budget visual metaphors it is. From the looks of it, I’m sure Mad Magazine is already preparing the cease and desist.
Bear eventually whiffs on his chance to tell Nikki how he really feels. Auspiciously, he remembers he no longer needs courage, charm or even linguistic cogency when he’s got $6.99 worth of ethically-calamitous lawn clippings in his pocket.
From there, it is—and always had to be—Inde Navarrette’s movie.
Playing the object of Bear’s affection turned S-tier psycho bitch, Navarrette’s Nikki becomes, at the snap of a stick, a one-woman repertory company of escalating insanity. She’s at once the lovestruck ingénue, the territorial apex predator, the lunatic in Bear’s bedroom and, in more than one scene, a Thing that seems capable of chewing through heavy-gauge steel if Bear’s phone lights up with the wrong name.
To get into the deets beyond that would tend to spoil a dish best enjoyed with two car batteries wired to your nipples. Suffice it to say that Navarrette becomes so convincingly unhinged that, if a sequel emerges to showcase some poor bastard watching NewNikki and thinking me likey before snapping his own Willow, I’ll be wearing Depends to the screening on principle.
Barker deserves credit in more ways than one. This is the filmmaking equivalent of pulling a 15-year-old driver out of the garage and proceeding to outdrive the PGA Tour with it. In fact, none of the equipment in his bag is new: unrequited love, magical voodoo nonsense, terrible consequences in the face of a dogshit return policy. Barker just knows exactly where to catch it.
None of what works for Barker is possible without Navarrette turning in a career-making performance capable of carrying the weight he puts on it. That’s the partnership at the center of the movie: Barker finds the sweet spot. Navarrette makes the whole thing fly.
Damn, it’s a good flick.
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