Cert – 18, Run-time – 1 hour 49 minutes, Director – Curry Barker
After using what he believes to be a novelty item to wish that his friend will love him more than anyone else in the world, Bear (Michael Johnston) finds himself trapped by Nikki’s (Inde Navarrette) desperate, increasingly manic, love.
Inde Navarrette’s turn in Obsession will undoubtedly be this year’s performance that we all point to as being undeservingly ignored and snubbed across the awards board simply because it’s in a horror film. Her character Nikki’s pained, manic devotion to Michael Johnston’s Bear grows into a red, jealous rage. Jealousy of anyone who gets the opportunity to speak, or even look, at him, and fury that he’s somehow able to not love her as much as she does him.
Her screams become more frequent and louder, creating a deafening fear throughout the room which echoes into the silences after. They’re often directed towards Bear, a consequence of him wishing on a One Wish Willow that his friend would love him more than anyone else in the world. However, what he believed to be a novelty product has real effects and takes over Nikki, who we see him struggling to ask out in the film’s opening stages, into a figure only recognisable on the outside – although, not to him; this is what he wished for, initially.
Bear’s own creepiness is somewhat intermittent. It’s certainly present as he falls into the control that his wish has taken over Nikki, and at various stages throughout where he appears more relaxed, but it perhaps isn’t as prominent as the film might want it to be – although themes of abuse and control are certainly present throughout. Much of the terror, however, comes from Nikki. The more intense her displays of love are, or it seems the real Nikki makes a brief appearance back in her own body, the more Navarrette dials her performance beyond eleven.
Yet, it’s also through this focus that Obsession’s biggest problem lies. It still has an effect, and works well – if I did half star ratings it would be a perfect example of a three-and-a-half star film – but after a while can start to feel slightly samey when it comes to how it views the central relationship, taking a while to properly start to escalate them, although doing so rather well in Bear’s third act panic. There’s less a feeling of repetition or cycling from the narrative and more that it’s at risk of becoming stagnant for a good chunk of the second act – with occasional unsettling bursts coming along to break out of this, although not entirely sustained.
It’s a shame because when Obsession strikes with its intensity, largely courtesy of Navarrette and the dark, looming score behind a number of her most sinister moments. There’s a loudness to Curry Barker’s film in terms of volume, intensity and just how it throws itself at you with a lot of intentionally in-your-face fear. Trapping you in a corner on a number of occasions with its frenzy. I just wish that those moments sometimes lasted a bit longer or leaked into the next moment, largely during the mid-section, slightly paddle-balling, but really popping at you after rebounding.
A film with truly fearful intensity, largely thanks to Inde Navarrette’s fantastically manic performance, Obsession may threaten to become stagnant around the middle, but still has bursts of threat and terror, and the tension of its ramped-up ending.
Just A Little Bit Random 