‘Obsession’ is Lightning in a Bottle

Horror | Movies

‘Obsession’ is Lightning in a Bottle

An indie horror movie on a microscopic budget is making unprecedented box office history

Getting people excited to go out to the movies when streaming culture is so pervasive is a feat of its own.

Through word of mouth alone, in the two weeks since this movie’s debut, people’s excitement over Obsession is presently selling out theaters any day of the week all the way through closing time. Even my random AMC theater has this movie running in any room they can spare… and they’re selling tickets right until the last minute at the kiosks. On a minuscule budget range of $750K to around a million dollars, this movie has crossed 100 million dollars globally at the box office. It stands to make much more still.

A vast majority of that conversation and intrigue is due to the immense praise surrounding the performance of Inde Navarrette. Oscars-level buzz already.

Before you read this, go and see Obsession in the most crowded theater you can find first, if you haven’t already. The less you know, the better. This movie shines with an audience ready to fall right into Obsession’s deeply unsettling trap.

You only get one wish. Credit: Focus Features, Universal Pictures

Bear (Michael Johnston) has a crush on Nikki Freeman (Inde Navarrette), a lifelong friend, that he doesn’t know how to confess. Despite his many efforts and the advice offered by his friends, Bear just can’t get the words out. Time is running out as Nikki is about to quit her job at a music shop where she works with Bear and their friends Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) and Sarah (Megan Lawless).

Bear buys a gift for Nikki as a way to finally confess his feelings for her; an item called the “One Wish Willow” that will make any wish you make come true if you snap it in half. Nikki eventually asks how Bear feels, only for Bear to miss his last chance, served to him on a platter. Ignoring the warnings plastered across the Willow, Bear wishes for Nikki to love him more than anyone else in the world. In an instant, she does. The consequences are more than Bear can ever imagine.

The most interesting part of it all, for me, is seeing just how far this movie will go. The pieces working in its favor are boosting both its notoriety and the status of its crew practically overnight. Its worthiness of this mass praise is debated heavily, allowing for more eyes and curious minds to consider giving it a watch, skyrocketing a project that was never supposed to have this kind of demand. The budget was paper-thin, the crew had no major star-power names attached to run to the theaters for, and it is wiping the floor with other movies that are the exact opposite.

Inde Navarrette and director Curry Barker are the heavyweights powering Obsession’s success. Inde’s performance as Nikki is nothing short of fascinating. On screen, she is completely disheveled and unpredictable. You’re unnerved because she always seems a half-second away from doing something awful — until it happens. Everything about Nikki is uncanny like this, always on the edge. It sets up the foundation for Nikki to always be a scene stealer. You never know what she’ll do, where she’ll pop up next, or how she’ll react.

Nikki is constantly haunting a scene she’s not technically involved in at all. It’s a game of cat and mouse. Anywhere else, this is nothing too out of the ordinary. Here, it builds dread. All of it builds up the idea not of if, but when it will all go wrong.

Vacancy is the real horror lying underneath. There may not be any typical monsters you’d expect from a horror movie, but you’ll still feel all kinds of terror and dread from things that aren’t there at all — silhouettes and emptiness and anticipation. The magic isn’t what is there in front of you, but what isn’t until it makes itself known.

Scene blocking does a huge amount of work in keeping tensions high. You’re constantly on edge watching her. It becomes a thousand times worse when Nikki isn’t in view as the character becomes increasingly erratic. She always finds her way to Bear, whether he wants her around or not. In fact, he doesn’t have a choice anymore and neither does she.

After the wish, Nikki is often obscured in some way. It may be Nikki’s voice and her form, but there’s something wrong. Strange things happen to her, like the whites of her eyes look like they aren’t there at all, accompanied by unnatural flickers of light. Shadows will hide her face or her body where they don’t make sense, almost like they cling to her. All tricks of the light that tease something much more sinister underneath.

There are decent chunks of the movie where Nikki is off-camera, either lingering somewhere or not involved in a scene at all. You’ll hear her voice first before she reveals where she is. Other times, she’ll unexpectedly pop into a scene seemingly out of nowhere. She’ll be a blur in the background or a shadow in no rush to move into frame.

In a scene at a restaurant, Bear steps away to take a call. Nikki politely waits at their booth. The call takes a bad turn and Bear slinks behind a wall. The camera follows him behind it. This breaks Nikki’s line of sight with Bear and the viewer’s sight with Nikki. Until Nikki moves out of her seat back into frame in perfect view for the audience on the left-hand side of the screen. She doesn’t seek him out like you might expect her to do. She only stands and stares as a blurred background figure until he returns, as if her every move has to be connected to Bear somehow.

Bear, Sarah, and Ian. Credit: Focus Features, Universal Pictures

Michael Johnston give a noteworthy enough performance as Bear. It’s easy to buy how deeply awkward and uncomfortable the character is pretty much the entire time we know him. You could almost even feel bad for him, to a point, if only he were brave enough to act at all before he makes his wish. In retrospect, there are flashes of what his life could have been if he made other choices. If he wasn’t fixated on the easy solution: devotion at any cost. Instead, Bear fights the push-and-pull of knowing what he did was wrong and choosing to let it play out anyway.

The plot is purely an original idea from Barker. He also wrote the script, directed the film, and put it all together in the edit. Any deeply uncomfortable, lingering pause or painfully slow zoom-in is by his design. Small moments of humor provide bits of levity, but your mileage with it will vary.

The movie tries to position Bear as a tragic figure acting out of desperation to not be alone no matter what. Maybe he started out that way, but in the end it’s far from the truth. While he didn’t make the wish with any belief the Willow was anything but a novelty toy, he does push aside the ramifications of his wish after his suspicions are confirmed. Bear keeps Nikki completely against her will to stay by his side in the most extreme, terrible way possible. He chooses to keep Nikki as is. When faced with the moment he can fix it all, he chooses not to see it through. This gruesome, unsettling situation is still something he prefers to endure rather than not having someone constantly by his side.

Nikki is the true victim here. She is the focus of an obsession that she never wanted to take part in. Bear’s fixation is the cause of magically imbued takeover. Physically, she does everything and anything to be with Bear alone, but her mind is never truly part of it. Bear doesn’t care. He just wants the illusion.

The physicality of Nikki’s character is a terrifying element all its own. It’s downright disturbing and adds an important layer to an already tense atmosphere. Curry Barker uses light, shadows, and silhouettes to their fullest potential to hide Nikki. It never seems like she’s hiding or obscuring herself intentionally; this effect is simply part of her. Credit is due to Inde as well. She sells Nikki’s uncanniness entirely. This movie would suffer tremendously without what Inde Navarrette brought to the table.

You never quite know what she’ll do or where she’ll be next. She’ll be “fine” one moment, screaming the next, sobbing a second later, moving strangely, or lurking uncomfortably in a dark corner of the screen.

While never distinctly stated, whatever entity in control of Nikki or altering her actions against her will has an unstable hold over her. Lucid fragments of Nikki’s true self emerge fairly often. Each time is pure desperation to escape. In turn, the haunted version of Nikki will not do anything if it does not pertain to Bear somehow, or upon his request. Thinking about it now, I’m not sure she ever eats or drinks. She does sleep, or shut down, for a while long enough for the real Nikki to breakthrough, pleading for Bear to stop her torment. Instead, he makes it about himself as he wonders why being by his side is so awful.

The effects of the One Wish Willow never get much explanation, and the plot overall is better for it. The more the mystery is explained, the more it can be unraveled and picked apart. All we know for sure is that whatever wish is made is as literal as its phrasing allows. Bear chose his words poorly and selfishly.

Obsession has a small cast of characters. Their performances are enough to move the plot along and to heighten just how strange the situation is. Inde just completely steals the show, even when she isn’t there. The dread of wondering whether she’ll appear or what she’ll do next takes up an immense amount of mental space.

Scenes that would be innocuous on their own are utterly tense no matter what. Lingering shots that take their time to move on, only for a sharp cut into the next scene, never truly let the viewer settle in or get comfortable. You start looking around a character in center view of the screen, trying to mentally prepare for Nikki to pop up somewhere. It’s never obvious when or if she will. Masterful work through and through.

Nikki. Credit: Focus Features, Universal Pictures

Funnily enough, Obsession is titled perfectly. Seemingly overnight, the obsession over this movie is nearly overwhelming in its own right. I could have comfortably skipped this one if not for the excitement. I just had to know. And now we’re here. So, the cycle continues. If anything, getting the chance to see any breakout moment in an actor’s career like this doesn’t happen often, either.

Whether you loved it or hated it entirely, what this movie has achieved already is historical. It has brought people out to theaters in droves, engaged in its deeply uncomfortable story, and has them talking about it incessantly long after the credits roll. Theories, criticism, praise, deep-dives, and everything in-between are happening everywhere.

Word of mouth powerful enough to compel people to give this movie a shot, organically, doesn’t happen easily. Getting a box office increase in the second week, likely the third, and talks of pushing back a digital film release is practically unheard of for a project of this scale.

The electricity around this movie is unbelievable. Getting people talking and theorizing at this level is something money can’t buy, no matter what budget you have. The worst thing a movie can do is make you feel nothing at all. Obsession had people laughing, tensely glued to the screen, and gasping a little bit louder than they meant at a scary moment. The rest of us then laugh at that outburst because we’re right there with them.

Thank you for reading my review of Obsession!