I’ve seen a lot of movies about a shy guy having a crush on his dream woman, and trying to pull off an against-all-odds jailbreak from the friend zone. But none of those movies turned out like Obsession. This film comes from a director (Curry Barker) and stars four lead actors (Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, and Megan Lawless), none of whom I’d ever heard of before seeing this film. The biggest name in the cast, in a bit part, is Andy Richter. But all do outstanding work in one of the best horror movies this year.
Barker, who’s 26, has a background in comedy, and like so many young filmmakers these days, got his start working on YouTube. Obsession begins in a familiar way: Bear (Johnston) is a shy guy, presumably in his early-20s, who’s long been in love with Nikki (Navarrette), his childhood friend, and now his co-worker at a musical instrument store.
Trying to find a way in romantically and failing, Bear resorts to visiting the sort of shop that sells crystals and buys a vintage toy called a "One Wish Willow,” which allows him to make a wish. And because the rules from Aladdin’s genie about not being able to wish for anyone to fall in love don’t apply here, he makes the inevitable wish for Nikki to become obsessively in love with him.
This wish is the monkey’s paw of all monkey’s paws, and her new obsessive love turns out not great for Bear, or anyone else. Even more creepily, Nikki snaps out of the spell occasionally, which makes her behave like one of the Lodge spirits from Twin Peaks.
Inde Navarrette delivers a star-making turn, handling all of these complex emotional swings. Johnston is good as well, although he’s too handsome to be believable as a hopeless, lovelorn nerd. It gets grotesquely violent, including some disgusting business involving a dead cat. But in keeping with the filmmaker’s comedy background, there’s plenty of humor too.
Tomlinson plays Ian, Bear’s best friend, whose scumbaggery becomes more obvious as the plot unfolds, while Lawless plays Ian’s aspiring art student girlfriend, one with a not-so-surprising crush of her own. The story has a certain off-kilter timelessness. The characters all seem to be in their 20s, each with their own house, but they have jobs that are more teenager-style. It’s set in the present day, but there’s a lot of anachronistic technology lying around, like CDs and CRT TVs. There’s not the slightest hint of what city they might be in.
But at the same time, the characters react to Nikki’s bizarre behavior not the way they would in a 1990s movie—by declaring that she’s crazy—but rather the way they would in a present-day movie, by vocally worrying about her mental health. Last year’s Weapons, another horror movie that featured a magical stick, was also made by a comedy veteran. I could see Obsession breaking out this year, the way Weapons did last fall.