Curry Barker’s ‘Obsession’ has big ideas, but can’t quite land them
Unfortunately, it is the plot that will get “Obsession” into hassle. This is a film in regards to the sexes that wish to have their cake and eat it, too. The screenplay tries to say one thing about feminine autonomy and male selfishness, but the movie performs like an overlong, 108-minute riff on the previous dependable stand-up routine topic “girlfriends be crazy” that by no means subverts the trope. The depths that Nikki (Inde Navarrette) sinks into her obsessive quest to personal her beloved Bear (Michael Johnston from MTV’s “Teen Wolf”) aren’t for the faint-hearted (or for cat lovers, both — you’ve got been warned).
It’s truly not the true Nikki enacting such actions as duct-taping doorways to maintain her beloved inside, or going all “Titus Andronicus” on him with a sandwich full of a surprisingly nasty ingredient. It’s the entity Nikki was reworked into after unhappy sack incel Bear wished on an inexpensive novelty merchandise referred to as the “One Wish Willow.” (In a intelligent advertising transfer, Focus Features handed out “One Wish Willows” to critics on the New York City screening. Nobody needed to interrupt them!)
Apparently made by the identical firm that provided Aunt Gladys along with her killer twigs in “Weapons,” the “One Wish Willow” grants Bear’s want that the crush who has friend-zoned him will love him “more than anything else in the world.” What he in all probability meant was that he needs Nikki would immediately wish to have oodles of scorching intercourse with him, after which, to cite yet one more sexist stand-up comedy joke, she’d flip right into a six-pack and a pizza afterwards.
Only the primary a part of that situation occurs. Immediately, Nikki will get insatiably sexy for Bear. Then, she turns into possessive, earlier than turning into the literal embodiment of her want: she loves him greater than the rest on this planet. And no person’s going to face in her means, together with their mutual buddies, Ian (Barker’s “that’s a bad idea” YouTube comedy sketch companion, Cooper Tomlinson) and Sarah (Megan Lawless). They discover one thing suspicious about Nikki, particularly when she abruptly goes from friend-zoning Bear to leaping his bones with reckless abandon.
When Bear calls the “One Wish Willow” scorching line for assist after issues go horribly awry, he is routed to what appears like the identical name middle Demi Moore obtained despatched to when she referred to as for help in “The Substance.” As in that movie, there is no such thing as a sympathy on the opposite aspect of the telephone.
It’s to Barker’s credit score that he does not let Bear fully off the hook, or make him very likable regardless of Johnston’s perpetual hangdog look. But he additionally does not do a lot to make Nikki an actual individual, both. There are occasional reminders that the true Nikki is robbed of autonomy and trapped on this movie’s model of the Sunken Place from “Get Out” — her screams are bloodcurdling — but it is nonetheless visibly her committing the movie’s atrocities. “Obsession” actually journeys over itself within the final act because it tries to stability the viewers’s loyalties.
Navarrette offers a fearless efficiency, bouncing from one excessive to a different whereas making an attempt to remind us that she’s possessed by a pressure past her management. Even in case you agree with me that “Obsession” does not work, you will not neglect Navarrette. She’s a powerhouse from the earliest scenes of fake romantic comedy to the grim finale. The efficiency nearly saves the film.
Although the comparisons to “Fatal Attraction” are apt, the film “Obsession” jogged my memory of most was Takashi Miike’s 1999 horror shocker, “Audition.” That film additionally had a “nice guy” doing one thing lower than healthful so as to get a lady. If you’ve got seen that film, you understand what you are in for right here, though Miike’s movie feels extra sincere (and is much less of a crowd-pleaser) than this one.
If Curry Barker’s identify sounds acquainted, you might have seen his low-budget horror movie “Milk & Serial,” a discovered footage/serial killer film he and Tomlinson made for $800. I believed that was a intelligent director’s calling card for Barker, and I needed to see what he did subsequent. My “One Wish Willow” needs that it did not backfire as badly as Bear’s, as a result of “Obsession” is not an entire catastrophe.
★★½
OBSESSION
Written and directed by Curry Barker. Starring Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless. At Coolidge Corner, AMC Boston Common, Landmark Kendall Square, Alamo Drafthouse Seaport, AMC Causeway, suburbs. 108 min. R (issues get very, very nasty)
An earlier model of this story misstated which firm gave out willow twigs to advertise the movie. It was Focus Features. The Globe regrets the error.
Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe’s movie critic.