Movie Review: Obsession

Welcome back one and all to a new movie review, this time featuring Curry Barker’s Obsession.

Now, fair warning, standard movie review fare follows in terms of spoilers, but I’m going to keep the plot summary a bit bare to save you from the major spoilers.

Alright, with that out of the way, let’s get into the plot. Obsession follows Baron and his friends, who are all seemingly college age-ish, and work together at a guitar store. While most of the group is happy with their lives or has plans for their future, Baron spends his time obsessing over his friend Nikki, and wants nothing more than her to be madly in love with him. As you may have guessed, he gets his wish after purchasing a mysterious wishing device named the One Wish Willow, and Nikki instantly becomes insanely obsessed. With her newfound obsession, insane is kind of her key descriptor, as Nikki tries to trap Baron in their home, she watches him sleep, lies to him, and gets incredibly jealous whenever he even comes close to just interacting with others, and she also begins acting erratically with some instances of her screaming and jumping away from Baron, almost as if she’s temporarily waking from a nightmare. Experiencing all this, Baron tries to alter his wish, finds himself unable to do so, and the movie ends with really no one getting what they want, and all our characters end in a worse place than where they started.

Ok, I know that was a bit skint on the details, but Obsession is such a fantastic movie that I don’t want to give away too much since I think this is very much worth a watch (especially in the theatre).

The main stand out in this movie is Inde Navarrette, which I’m sure you’ve already heard/seen, but her performance simply is phenomenal. She nails the physicality of a horror movie character perfectly, her performance is haunting, intimidating, and sympathetic, and she is by far the best part of Obsession.

Don’t get me wrong, the cast as a whole was great too, and I loved all the performances, but Inde Navarrette’s is just a league above, and her acting is easily the best performance I’ve seen all year.

Another thing I loved in Obsession was the blending of humor and horror. Curry Barker did an amazing job at balancing humor and horror, and I felt that both sides of that coin got enough attention, but maintained their autonomy. Thinking about this more, if I had to compare the style, flow, plot progression, and humorful elements to anything else, it would be Weapons. I think Weapons and Obsession have a similar vibe, and if you enjoyed Weapons at all, Obsession is the movie for you.

Another thing I want to say, I do not think Baron is the victim at all, and in fact, I think he’s the villain. I won’t go into this too much because I don’t want to give away spoilers, but in my opinion, Baron is the clear villain as his whole plan is to take away Nikki’s autonomy, he clearly can’t see past his own selfish desires, and he only thinks about how he can spin things to his advantage. I’ve seen the discourse online, and I think anything contrary to the thoughts above kind of misses the point of the movie, which I think is pretty clear.

Overall though, Obsession is amazing, it’s worth a watch, and my only negative about this movie is a cat died, which made me sad and worried about my cat, but is not an inherent problem in and of itself. This may just be movie of the year material, and I highly recommend you run to the theatre to see Obsession as soon as possible!

Because of this, I rated obsession as a 4 star on Letterboxd, and I gave it a like as well.

Looking Ahead

Well, there you have it, another movie in the books, and quite possibly the best movie of the year.

For my next blog, I’m going to publish Deep Water on Wednesday, and then Over Your Dead Body and Mother Mary next Monday and Wednesday, and the following weeks I’ll play catchup with In The Gray, Is God Is, and the new releases for this week.

All in all, there’s plenty of content on the horizon, and you’ll be seeing more from me soon!