1 of 5 | Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston star in “Obsession,” in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Focus Features
Obsession, in theaters Friday, adds disturbing complexity to the archetypal “be careful what you wish for” parable. It is creepy and graphic, but most effective at its moral horror.
Bear (Michael Johnston) is trying to tell his coworker Nikki (Inde Navarrette) he likes her romantically. But even when she gives him a direct opening, he chokes.
So Bear makes a wish in a One Wish Willow that Nikki loves him. And it works, unwaveringly.
The Monkey’s Paw warned us that wishes always had a dark side. Obsession honors that theme but shows it from both sides.
Nikki’s love is off-kilter at first. Not only does her demeanor suddenly change, but she periodically snaps out of it, only to return just as instantaneously.
Her devotion escalates gradually. Navarrette can use her expressions and body language to look just forced enough that a smile is unnerving. Holding flowers over her face, combined with the camera often framing out actors’ heads, contributes to a sense of hidden menace.
What’s most unsettling is the sense that this was done to her nonconsensually. Bear didn’t know the One Wish Willow really worked, but even hypothetically, his thought robbed her of agency.
Writer/director Curry Barker layers in suggestions of what happened to the real Nikki without over-explaining it. The film gives glimpses of the turmoil the Nikki from act 1 might be suffering.
Bear totally deserves what’s happening to him, though. It escalates to violence because it’s a horror movie, but it is a valid parable.
If you’re an adult who can’t tell someone how you feel about them, then you have abdicated the agency that comes with being an adult. It’s not about the bad advice his friend Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) gives him, but Bear doesn’t even tell the truth when asked directly how he feels.
In real life, there are unfortunately cultures targeting men who feel undervalued. Often, those lead to men committing violence.
Bear isn’t actively violent and he committed moral violence by accident, but it’s easy to read Obsession as a metaphor for what such disaffected male culture has wrought. The term “friend zone” comes up not as a form of entitlement to more, but a signifier of Nikki’s uncharacteristic shift.
Nikki’s behavior becomes more like a stalker than a girlfriend. When the wish itself is irrational, rational relationship talk becomes irrelevant.
Barker took a familiar premise and found unique ways to explore it. For Navarette, Obsession is a showcase for what a single actor can accomplish with a performance.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
