Joel on Film

Obsession is—quite obviously, once one learns the premise—a fable about the price of enduring what one wishes for, but in another way, it’s really cautionary tale about the lack of consumer protection laws. Take the item that causes all the trouble in writer/director Curry Barker’s debut feature: a small stick, called a “One Wish Willow,” which broken in half grants its owner a single wish, granted immediately. It’s on sale in a shop for the low, low price of $6.99 (plus tax), and although the shopkeeper tells Bear (Michael Johnston) that customers keep coming back to complain, that’s a bewildering understatement of what’s about to happen to this poor guy.

To be fair, Bear’s troubles seem to extend beyond his love life, which might actually be part of the reason the universe sends him the message that it does by way of the faux willow branch. As the film begins, his beloved cat dies, and for whatever reason, he doesn’t appear particularly comfortable revealing that fact to anyone except Sarah (Megan Lawless), one of his oldest friends, who is clearly and hopelessly pining for him. Bear, though, is smitten with Nikki Freeman, the hot, popular girl who inexplicably enjoys his company—and the one who, upon his single and impulsive wish, winds up loving him far, far more than she does, or should, love anyone else.

The entire film, by the way, lives in the performance by Inde Navarrette as Nikki, especially once the effects of the wish kick in, which are that she turns into a toxic, crazed and, yes, obsessed version of herself in an instant. Well, that’s not entirely true. At first, it’s almost as if a spirit of confusion has possessed Nikki, who just moments before Bear makes the wish resists the affections she seems to know might be coming: Before the wish, she just likes Bear as a co-worker and friend, and in those few moments leading up to the true fulfillment of the wish, she simply becomes a little odd.

That, though, is the secret weapon for Navarrette, who is a smart-enough performer to know exactly how to calibrate her take on this character. If the actress were to rush into the maniacal mode that does, eventually and inevitably, take over, the whole thing would just be a big, dumb cartoon of a movie making an easy and digestible point. As performed and written here, we can see some of the attributes Bear is looking for—an endearingly geeky quality, a genuine attention paid to a boyfriend by his new girlfriend—buried beneath several feet of sudden, clingy obsession.

The plot, of course, has Bear looking for a way out of this affair (pun fully intended) almost as soon as he gets himself into it, because he didn’t do an ounce of research into the willow branch before breaking it. A number on the back leads to a customer service representative who is comically unhelpful, and a quick internet search reveals everything he should have learned earlier. In a certain way, we have a limited amount of sympathy for a guy like this, with his all-consuming crush and nowhere useful to place the energy he puts into it, and the internal rules of the willow branch are vague enough that Barker barely has to pretend it holds up to any sort of scrutiny (there’s a pretty good chance it doesn’t in almost any sense of the term).

Still, the movie is wickedly funny when it’s working, and that’s especially true when the movie is at its most frightening—largely thanks to some of the visual trickery Barker employs to unsettle us. At her most dangerous, the altered Nikki is always captured in silhouette, so that only a glint in her eyes or the hint of a smile that feels very, very wrong are strongly suggested more than actually seen. A fun little get-together between friends (Cooper Tomlinson plays the fourth in the friend group, the foul-mouthed Ian, who clocks immediately that something’s wrong here) turns sickly uncomfortable with Nikki’s choice of reading material.

All of this escalates, of course, in a third-act scramble to find a solution to the problem of the willow branch, which involves a lot of graphic, bloody retribution on the part of the altered Nikki and some desperate moves from Bear. Some of this is a little predictable, such as the general hazard of being in a friend group with a loyalty-crazed spirit-possessed person (especially one with the relationship history of this group). All of it, though, is darkly funny, relying on a lot of cruel irony and a particularly ruthless attitude about who is valuable within this story.

All of it, too, relies on the sense of evolving surprise within the story, which means that much of it has gone unexplored here. Obsession might not be a particularly deep movie about anything it is itself exploring, but as a twisted game and a pretty good joke—with a solid set-up and pay-off—it’s a weird and worthwhile experience.

Rating: *** (out of ****)