Obsession Review: Fatal Attraction for the Man With Red Flags

Inde Navrrette is the one saving grace of this highly insufferable monkey's paw rip-off

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The unrequited romance has been a Hollywood staple since time began, and within that narrative is room for the conflict of forcing an ignorant paramour to fall for you. Love potion narratives, by their conceit, have always been problematic, generally focused on hapless men conjuring up magical ways to get uninterested women to become slavishly devoted to them. Tales From the Crypt and Buffy the Vampire Slayer did more than one episode in this vein which, mercifully, had the benefits of being shorter than Curry Barker's Obsession.

Obsession walks a similar path in its Monkey's Paw/"be careful what you wish for" misogynistic male fantasy that fails to give much empathy for its controlled female heroine. Excessively loud, reliant on gore and shock value, and generally feeling like a Fatal Attraction re-tread, Obsession is a movie worth showing a prospective partner and then running away if they tell you how its male character is misunderstood.

Bear (Michael Johnston) is a quiet, dorky young man in love with his best friend Nikki (Inde Navarette). Unfortunately, Nikki doesn't appear to see Bear as anything beyond a friend. When Bear gets his hand on a One Wish Willow, a branch that presumably grants wishes, he asks it to make Nikki "love me more than anything in the world." The wish comes true and Nikki can't see anything beyond Bear. But the wish starts to freak Bear out as Nikki becomes increasingly unhinged and obsessed with him.

There's an inherent awkwardness to Bear from the minute we meet him. He's a Good Guy on steroids, catering to Nikki and even committing to replacing a necklace she carelessly drops. His best friend, the hypermasculine and douchey Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) doesn't understand why Bear believes Nikki is that special. In fact, everyone seems to have a problem with Nikki, from critiquing her hard-partying ways to how she treats Bear.

So by the time Bear makes the wish for her love, the audience hasn't seen any particular reason to empathize with the girl. The wish immediately works and from there the movie becomes a series of moments wherein Nikki does something disgusting or horrific, proclaiming she's done it all for Bear, as he sits there traumatized. To her credit, Navarette is a star and what keeps the movie from becoming downright terrible is how committed she is to the role. Navarette's face is an expressive amalgamation of emotions. When the wish kicks in you see her standing in front of Bear, confusion, wonder, love, and terror flitting through her face. Even when she's smashing in someone's face or screaming about her love for Bear at a party, she's just so compellingly watchable. And she's definitely got a scream fit for a queen.

There is certainly an interesting conceit with the "One Wish Willow," the questionable "toy" whose advertisement opens the movie. Like any good drug ad, "One Wish Willow" has some disturbing side effects no one seems to think of, the ad quickly saying, "May cause self-mutilation." What little humor, outside of Nikki's cringe-inducing obsession, exists is in the unclear history behind the Willow. It's clear by the people who work in the store where Bear buys the willow that this has happened before, and yet it's a missed opportunity for the movie not to discuss whether this is just something men always seem to do with the willow or not.

To keep sympathy with Bear, though, means the movie doesn't have the interest (or the awareness) to critique what amounts to a narrative of assault and control. By its very title, and the commercials emphasis on Navarette's penchant for sinister smiles, Obsession is focused squarely on Bear and what happens when his dream girl becomes a living nightmare. She moves into his house, becomes clingy to the point of murder, and generally starts to harsh his buzz. The pair have crazy wild sex – while Nikki stares blankly into the void – which apparently is enough to make Bear overlook all manner of sins for awhile. There's a desire from Johnston's performance to make the viewer feel bad for him that he doesn't ever earn. Though, Johnston is certainly solid in the role.

There are moments wherein an attempt is made to show that Nikki is suffering, but these are fleeting. Nikki isn't given a ton of backstory and what exists is filtered through her relationship with Bear. She's so over-the-top and horrible in her behavior, post-wish, that it mutes any sympathy that does pop up. She's the requisite crazy bitch and the horror is in watching Bear suffer in a "be careful what you wish for" element. The sex sequence with Nikki is one brief moment of introspection, as is another where the "real" Nikki comes through and begs Bear to end her suffering to which Bear responds, "What's so wrong with spending your life with me?" This moment, in particular, is the one big of actual awareness that Bear isn't a hero, but it comes so early in the middle of the movie, before everything cranks up to 120%.

What results is a rather conventional horror movie. The sound mix definitely becomes grating, with characters spending much of the runtime either yelling, screaming, or yelling and screaming at each other. Barker's dialogue often sees characters answering questions with questions. The whole thing becomes repetitious and would have been better served as a short film. There's a feel bad quality to Obsession that, by its ending, you simultaneously want to flee the theater and maybe take a shower.

It's surprising how much goodwill Obsession has obtained, and this is definitely a movie where discussion is going to be very heated. As it stands, Inde Navarette is the one saving grace of Barker's feature and that's it. Obsession is a skin crawling male fantasy film in the worst way. A screeching, grating tale of misogyny that doesn't want to get in the weeds of its female character's suffering. For anyone who has said they're a Nice Guy this is the movie for you, and that's not a compliment.

Grade: D

Obsession hits theaters Friday.

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