OBSESSION - An Observation (and Just That). *PLUS SPOILERS!

Hello one and all. Before you dive in - this is a "full of spoilers" analysis of Obsession, the horror hit movie by Curry Barker now in theaters, so it'd best to see it first before you read on. You have? Okay, proceed.

The sketch-comedy-to-horror-pipeline seems to be the 202os horror's biggest, reliable talent incubator. Jordan Peele's Get Out created supernatural dread out of racism and social anxiety. Zach Cregger made domestic horror like Barbarian and Weapons, into palpable nightmare fuel. The Philippou Brothers made Talk to Me and Bring Her Back and became underground horror darlings. Now, Curry Barker of That's a Bad Idea and Milk & Serial fame, enters the conversation with Obsession - his official feature debut. For my assessment, it's an effective psychological/supernatural horror film that has genuine atmosphere, an honest assuredness in its craft and boasts a terrific sense of humor. When it actually wants to show it.

After seeing it, I get its success and why it's on everyone's lips at the moment. It reminds me of the "most-talked-about" movie of the 1980s: Adrian Lyne's Fatal Attraction which shares this film's partial DNA. Obsession functions as moral lesson with deeply resonating material that's confident in its tonal shifts; balancing humor and creeping dread with impressive surgical precision.

But, I will still die on this hill when I say, discomfort doesn't automatically translate as scary.

Trailer

Let me explain. Scary for me, means "terrifying", but I will also concede that horror also elicits many emotions - disgust, dread, anxiety, discomfort and unease as well as fear. All valid responses that horror can legitimately pursue and then some. Obsession succeeds brilliantly at all these and the "quease" factor, but in my humble opinion, fails at creating genuine fear ne: horror.

At its best - the movie leaves deep questions unanswered. The basic premise of a man's crush allowing himself to get swept away by a wish-fulfillment tchotchke with supernatural capabilities that he breaks to win the love of his crush - only to go horribly awry, works on so many levels and has us thinking about many caveats: is Nikki (Inde Navarrette in a star-making performance equal to Toni Collette's performance in Hereditary) lucidly aware in her possessed state? Can the wish be reversed (we get a funny answer by way of Curry Barker's voiceover work as a customer service agent)? What responsibility does Bear/Barron (Michael Johnston) for destroying someone else's autonomy? These ambiguities create valid discussions but also suggests Barker fully thought through his premise's implications. These all fit a thriller or drama - very on point. But, did it elicit horror in me? Simple answer: no.

Will it in its other viewers? Perhaps. I do want to get to what works in the movie. It may be well-known that Barker took inspiration from a The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horrors II in Season 3: Episode 7 where Homer Simpson buys a monkey's paw that grants three wishes which, naturally, backfires in mostly funny ways. We, however, don't hear in reports that it's actually inspired by the W.W. Jacob's short horror story: The Monkey's Paw, where the protagonist makes a wish on a severed monkey's paw that causes more tragedy than wish-fulfillment. We feel for Bear and feel when he's threatened with permanent friend-zoning, until he breaks the tchotchke and suddenly, Nikki, looks blank-faced and falls head over heels with Bear - who at first seems to engage in the reciprocation, but is soon driven to extremes when Nikki begins increasingly obsessive (semi-title drop), controlling, manipulative, even self-harming in her demeanor. Personally, anyone in that condition would automatically get a 911/988 call from my end. But, Bear doesn't do that and therefore we lose sympathy fast as we see his wish unravel in real time.

As a horror enthusiast and essayist who loves horror movies as both mainstream and art, Obsession scratches the surface of its potential. Barker has genuine talent - the atmospheric control, tonal balance, the ability to coax committed performances from his cast - and succeeds admirably. I was genuinely uncomfortable and squirmed in my seat quite often. The performances crush it, but it's Navarrette's Nikki, who steals the film in all the right ways. She's sweet, likable, and we almost root for them to get together, until Nikki asserts her boundaries at the very beginning. And then, he breaks the One Wish Willow and makes the wish. Takers on whether free will is asked for Nikki in the wish.

Spoilers Begins Here.

Two things that caught my attention in some very key scenes. Nikki's autonomy comes to the surface in jarring moments. At a drunk Jenga game that Bear's friend, Ian, invites him to - not Nikki (Cooper Tomlinson plays his friend, Ian, and is also Curry Barker's friend and co-star in his sketch comedy bits), using a "boy's night" ruse. Nikki narrates a very perverse reading of an incestuous passage of Jacob Grimm's Hansel & Gretel which must've been the Jenga brick prompt to read something profound to someone who you like/love. A quick flash of lucidity finds Nikki trying to wake herself up with a broken glass bottle to the face - only to be thwarted again by "lovestruck" Nikki. Her prophetic words were, "It's not me!". It's clear, real Nikki is inside of "lovestruck" Nikki, desperately trying to get out.

A more telling scene is when Bear finally calls the customer service number and the seemingly stoned agent (voiced hilariously by director, Barker, himself) who tells him that the wish is irreversible unless he dies or perhaps Nikki does. A petrified Bear tries to implore the agent about Nikki's increasingly erratic behavior, only to have the agent ask Bear if he wants to talk to her - literally. We hear her piercing screams in the background, and we then know, Lovestruck Nikki is clearly not her human self.

In the movie's most heartbreaking moment, Sarah (Megan Lawless) is a mutual friend of Nikki's and Bear's, a fellow music store employee and also the daughter of the store owner (played by an almost unrecognizable Andy Richter), gets a letter from an art school possibly being rejected again. She and Bear share a tender moment as they hope to find out the letter's response. As the moment escalates, Nikki arrives with a cinder block, breaks the window and pummels Sarah's face into oblivion, killing her. Her almost teary confession tells Bear that he "wished this". This is an almost direct confession from human Nikki to Bear that these consequences were Bear's doing - and oddly enough - she's not wrong.

Bear's Mea Culpa.

So, speculation on both sides have argued that Bear's meek "simpiness" may have also been complicit in Nikki's altered personality after making the wish; but the question still remains, is he the villain? In a quick answer: no. I think people are misreading him despite being too weak or even scared to try to break the spell himself - but human beings are often overwhelmed when good or bad things happen to them and the fact that Nikki reciprocates his crush, regardless of how inauthentic it really is, can be seen as a massive stroke to his ego that backfires immensely and as I've stated previously, the real Nikki almost taunts him from beyond her trance to inform him of this karma. As the saying goes, karma always keeps receipts.

My Final Thoughts. (I Promise)

Curry Barker has a nice long future ahead of him - more than I do, considering I too write movie scripts and do these essays just for my love of movies and the horror genre - and Johnston and Navarrette are very much going places after this. Barker's in the frontlines for rebooting The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, which by my accounts, is just proof that when you're good, just wave cash around and join the IP Lazarus Assembly Line. I won't knock him or his past work. Milk & Serial; free on YouTube, is proof that Barker has a caustic voice, a sharp eye for human nature; their dynamics and can create strong tension and my hope is that his authentic voice doesn't get lost in some of his upcoming mainstream projects.

But, no, no, no, no, it's not scary. I remember when both Fatal Attraction and M. Night Shyamalan's 1999 breakthrough horror it, The Sixth Sense were released to glorious fanfare. Many found them to be truly horrific stories. My basic argument is they both create discomfort and unease and even to some degree sadness and invite conversations about their moral ambiguities and the consequences of mistakes that come back to haunt us, but they are not terrifying. Even despite Obsession having a supernatural arc, I think it functions more as elevated drama with some strong horror beats that makes it more of a psychological thriller than full-throttle horror.

I find movies like The Exorcist, Carrie, The Silence of the Lambs, Halloween, Jaws and even, Smile, and Weapons, to be true horror films in that the horror, unease, tension and shocks give way to something climatic. Obsession gets two-thirds of the job done; but I wasn't scared. Just jarred and in the end, sad.

"Obsession" is still currently in theaters.