Hear Me Out: ‘Obsession’ Is Kind of a Drag [Devil’s Advocate]
Welcome to Devil’s Advocate, a space where we go against the grain. Each piece here spotlights a horror movie, good or bad, that we felt differently about than most people. See why, and please – don’t condemn us.
I thought Obsession was kind of a drag. Now, I’m still excited to see what Curry Barker manages with a property as storied as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and there’s no denying the chronically online (kindly) Gen-Z filmmaking acolyte has some serious sauce – Obsession is leagues ahead of most debuts, and despite my own tepid feelings, I both understand and welcome the way he’s been embraced unabashedly by genre fans. Yet, echoing the shallow friendships at Obsession’s core, Obsession wants to be about character but lacks any meaningful interest in exploring who they are beyond archetypal, bold-typeface names.
Consider, for instance, the ongoing (and misguided, Christ) debate about whether Bear is really a villain. It’s not subtext, not fertile ground for polysemic reading—the text, quite explicitly, portrays him as such. Amy Dunne of Gone Girl fame (to use an example) endures as an exemplar of literary characters because she’s so measured, textured, and dynamic, it’s fascinating to explore her distinctly feminine evil alongside our collective cultural desire to cut her slack because she’s a woman. There’s text and subtext, and Gone Girl as art allows for disparate, yet no less convincing, readings of what it endeavors to say. See also: Bong Joon Ho’s Mother, Ari Aster’s Hereditary (to which Obsession is regularly compared), everything about The Substance, and infinitely more.
Those are some personal favorites, though this century’s genre cinema is abounding with complicated characterizations we love to talk about. Debate their ethos and motives, unpack their rights and wrongs, onward and onward. It’s what makes art, well… art. Obsession, despite its acclaim, doesn’t really invite that depth, even if it’s confoundingly happening anyway (I think it’s simply misogyny, but what do I know).
Obsession, shot for less than a million dollars, is a baby movie. Yes, that’s still a profound amount of resources most filmmakers would eat a cat for, but it’s comparatively small considering, say, Sinners’ budget of nearly $100 million. As a result, it lives or dies on its characters. When the scale is small, the personalities need to be big. Barker, who also wrote the script, imbued Nikki’s transformation and titular obsession with enough genre ick to give the impression of something, but it’s all surface-level, Degrassi High School antics glossed up as something it’s not.
There’s a version of Obsession that lands better with me, and it’s one whose script makes even a modicum of an effort to define Bear (Michael Johnston), Nikki (Inde Navarrette), Ian (Cooper Tomlinson), and Sarah (Megan Lawless) beyond the horror they endure. A kind reading would parallel their shallowness with the real-world chronic isolation of Gen-Z and their inability to establish and maintain real, meaningful relationships. Please, just drive your friends to the airport. But if your movie has sexual assault as its core theme, you can’t pantomime real people and preserve any and all texture for the ostensibly “crazy girlfriend.”
And that’s, really, Obsession’s greatest fault. The premise’s innate shallowness and Barker’s struggle to probe any and all characters render what could otherwise have been a formative piece of horror cinema merely fine. The clerks of a mystic shop yield more personality and layers than any of the main players. For a movie about control within the larger context of a toxic patriarchy—one that makes use of, if not outright naming, zeitgeist language like incel and toxic masculinity— Barker loses control, letting gonzo genre thrills overcompensate for a shallowness that mars everything it touches.
To Barker’s credit, the opening beats do accomplish something remarkable. Nikki, in particular, is framed exclusively through Bear’s point of view. The shallowness there, really, is the point. She’s not so much a person as an object for Bear to covet and, ultimately, possess. It’s harrowing and horrifying—especially for anyone who’s been in a relationship where the transaction is more and more of oneself—but once the titular Obsession grows, I grew less accommodating of that reading.
Neither Ian nor Sarah, for instance, are imbued with any subsequent depth. There are third-act reveals meant to characterize their supporting arcs more—Sarah is in love with Bear, Ian has been secretly hooking up with Nikki—and again, a kinder reading would argue that’s done deliberately. Locked in Bear’s POV, he and the audience don’t see that because all eyes are on Nikki, everywhere, all the time.
But that’s the kinder reading. Mine, unfortunately, couldn’t see them beyond genre chess pieces moved around, so Barker could get to the gore and savagery he’s been waiting to exploit since the entire thing started. It’s tacked on, an arbitrary horror quotient that’s never meaningfully earned. They’re not people so much as they are means to a face-smashing end.
And none of that, really, is explicitly bad. To use Gen-Z language Barker would likely celebrate, it’s simply mid. It’s choices that exist arbitrarily. Cruelty that never feels earned beyond a marketing gimmick. Obsession is a pastiche of horror filmmakers whose traditional routes (see: Ari Aster, Damien McCarthy, Arkasha Stevenson) elevated their seminal debuts. Which, sure, the new generation is online, and there’s a ton of talent there waiting to be unearthed. Obsession is certainly no Shelby Oaks, and to distance myself from the general naysayers, I don’t think Obsession heralds the death of horror or whatever other embellished take has cred these days.
I do, however, think that being just fine, maybe, isn’t enough. I’m willing to accept Barker getting another step up to bat. But, if this really is the future, and if said future all hail from filmmakers who are exactly the same, I’d hope for more than just good enough. After all, if Obsession does show us one thing rather potently, it’s that treating people with baby gloves is really the most insidious thing we can do. Bear no doubt had an entire life of excuses made for him. Maybe that’s something worth bearing in mind.
Obsession is now available on Video on Demand.
Categorized:Editorials