WNY Movies: Horror vehicle brings more than the gore

By Matthew Turner
(Image above: (L-R) Inde Navarette and Michael Johnston in ‘Obsession.’)

Obsession brings a horrifying glimpse of nice guys in the age of Reddit, and audiences could not be more obsessed.

As trauma-based horrors based around families being weird and how horrifying old people look nude come to a halt, I’m looking at you A24 (the studio); gore hounds have been eating. 

Toni Collette screaming and making her family (in Hereditary)? I’ll pass, but I’ll take some of the Monstro Elisasue (in The Substance) dousing a snooty theater full of colored corn starch. 

Luckily for the sickos out there, young oddball Curry Barker is one of us. Obsession is Barker’s first foray into theatrical filmmaking, following the wicked and promising YouTube films The Chair and Milk and Serial, and in its second weekend the film is still dominating the studio-backed competition. 

This can be due to its grounded dialogue, slick style or insane gore effects, but what keeps the viewer locked in is how uncompromising of a mirror the film is to Gen-Z dating. 

Gone are the days of asking your crush out on a date, or really even considering them a real person. Most of today’s young men, rather unfortunately, are surrounded within an echo chamber of desire and deserve. 

These men tragically cannot tell the difference between the two. Obsession follows one such “nice guy,” Bear (Michael Johnston), as he builds up the courage to ask out his crush. 

Nikki, played with effectively off-kilter mania by Inde Navarrette, is the poor victim of Bear’s reddit soaked goo-goo eyes who navigates the role with careful nuance as well as pounding bombasticism. 

Bear and Nikki, along with their two friends Ian and Sarah, work at a music store where Bear cannot seem to get a second alone with Nikki. Even when Sarah is staring him down and saying date me, Bear can only think about how much everything would be if he could get Nikki alone and show her how nice he is. 

A lesser film would have shown Nikki to be an object of desire that wouldn’t give Bear the time of day. Barker and Navarrette inject the role and arc with ingenuous pathos that shows Nikki as a relatable person, full of hopes and dreams that threaten Bear’s idyllic life with her. 

To quell this impending tragedy of Nikki’s ambitions, Bear decides to buy a novelty wish stick from the local spiritual shop. The One Wish Willow, seemingly a cheap trick for children, soon becomes an incel instrument of pure terror that transforms Nikki into a slack-jawed servant who would do anything to be alone with Bear. 

While this new Nikki is an icon of horror who drives audiences to their local multiplex in droves, it is really within Bear that the film reaches its shocking heights. Not because of how this character is written to treat women, but rather how toned down it is from the average Zoomer man. 

The guilt-tripping, the threats, the self-villainization and more make Bear one of the most insufferable and maddening leads in recent history. The real suspense is when Bear will get his comeuppance, and, SPOILER ALERT, he gets his way too late. 

The film ends on a shockingly somber note that drives it apart from most popular horror films and will cement it as one of the great horror successes of the early 21st century. Barker undoubtedly knows how to make a powderkeg that keeps the audience on their flexed toes, and Obsession proves that a successful career is guaranteed.

Matthew Turner is a scholar of all things film and a teacher of English.