Given how much of our entertainment is about wish fulfillment or power fantasies, it’s kind of surprising how relatively few movies there are about good ol’ honest wishing. What was the last one, that Spider-Man “movie” where Dr. Strange ruins a boy’s life? These are always my favorite Twilight Zones, and, now that I think of it, this fascination goes way back to my childhood, when I countlessly watched the likes of Aladdin and DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp on repeat. Not only is it fun to see some lucky bastard get everything he ever wanted, only for it to blow up in their face; it’s even more fun to imagine your own wish, and how you’d legalese your way out of any monkey paw shenanigans. That’s especially true of Obsession, a movie where a bonehead thoughtlessly blurts out an ill-conceived wish and spends the rest of the movie making worse and worse decisions.
Bear (Michael Johnston) is one of at least four full-time employees at what appears to be the music store from Wayne’s World, now run by Andy Richter. He’s got a crush on his free-spirited coworker, Nikki (Inde Navarrette), who his best friend Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) encourages him to finally confess to at his beloved bar trivia night. Yeah, if you’re anything like me, it’s a little hard to pin down how old these characters are supposed to be: they act like high schoolers but at the same time they have their own houses and go to trivia night like they’re in their mid-late thirties. Let’s guess really early twenties? Anyway, planning to make a big romantic gesture, Bear goes to buy a crystal necklace to replace one Nikki lost but ends up buying a One Wish Willow, a toy with the power to grant a single wish when broken. Also his cat dies and that fucking sucks man.
So Bear goes out to the bar with Nikki, Ian, and Sarah (Megan Lawless), the fourth of the friends/co-workers, who by the way clearly has a crush on Bear. Oops! Bear drives Nikki home and it gets so awkward that she up and asks him if he has feelings for her. Unable to be honest, a flustered Bear mutters some pathetic response and she walks away. That’s when Bear grabs the One Wish Willow and hastily wishes that Nikki “loved him more than anyone in the fucking world.” She immediately one-eighties and asks to stay at Bear’s place that night in just about the most suspicious way possible. When they get there, she pleads he share the bed with her. They begin to kiss, but suddenly Nikki freaks out and pulls back. Uh oh!
I had expected Obsession would be a slower burn than it is. That classic unraveling of desire that exposes the underlying hollowness of superficial lust. This movie doesn’t have time for that. It’s pretty clear immediately that something is *really* wrong with Nikki and also Bear is actually a huge piece of shit, more than willing to overlook red flags for his own gratification. And the more I think about it, maybe that’s better? It leaves no room for ambiguity: this isn’t the story of Nikki suddenly realizing she loved Bear all along or that she was taking advantage of him in some way. This is the story of how Bear’s narcissism allows him to willingly torture Nikki and weird out everyone he knows just because that’s the easiest (red) pill to swallow.
That was actually the big twist to me. Despite having heard a lot about Obsession for the last six months, I still didn’t know that Nikki is clearly replaced with some sort of demon or entity or what have you. I knew there would be yelling and creepy facial expressions, I didn’t foresee how quickly this went full-on the end of Hereditary. And, like Ari Aster, director Curry Barker accomplishes a lot with framing and lighting and sound. Even more eerie than the violence and the big moments are all the shots of Nikki in the shadows or moving bizarrely or even just standing still when most people definitely wouldn’t be doing that. Even the decision to present the movie in the unusually tall 1.50:1 aspect ratio helps make this an intimate, claustrophobic, spooky experience.
But my favorite part of Obsession? How mundane it treats the supernatural and how blasé everyone is about it. One Wish Willows actually work, and the store selling them doesn’t think that’s a big deal. There’s even a really great misdirect about them not being sold out. And I love that they even have a support line, one that’s more than willing to connect Bear with the real Nikki who’s screaming in agony in hell or whatever that was. I especially enjoyed that Ian wishes for a billion dollars and then cash just starts pouring out of the ceiling in his home. You see Bear? You see how easy it is to not fuck this up? Give me a sequel about the detective who has to explain the traumatized woman, the multiple dead bodies, and the house with a billion, inexplicable dollars!