It was refreshing to walk into a full cinema for a film that was not attached to a video game or some 20th century property suffering through needless cannibalism. Alas, Blumhouse has managed to produce another hit with a small budget, slim cast of relative unknowns and a plot that revolved around theme and characters. I did not enjoy this movie, but that does not mean I do not recommend it.
Obsession, is being touted as a horror. I think it could pass for this, but it fits more into the psychological thriller category with extremes of gore. It is a slow burn, with needless exposition. For example, we will see things happen and then the next five minutes revolves around the characters explaining what had occurred. While this is not a verse, chorus, structure that modern double screening cinema is required to do for present audiences, ie those distracted by scrolling or who have the film on in the background while they game, cook or re-arrange their jars of stewed peaches. I feel in the case of Obsession, the writer wanted to reiterate elements that were occurring.
Spoilers ahead.
This movie is in some ways a layered litmus test. In the era of mental health to the point of identity obsession. This film reveals a strange disconnect for many who really don’t understand the deeper terrors for those enduring true trauma or who are prisoners against their will.
I suppose we need to address the plot and characters. Swear words follow.
Bear, is the protagonist. He is an insufferable cunt. Every sentence he speaks sounds like fingers drawing down a chalkboard and what words he spews tend to revolve around his own self interests. His cat dies early in the film, he is living in his grandmothers home who had also recently passed. Somehow, the feline managed to find her medication and in true Chekhov gun fashion, the pills killed the cat. And rest assured, there will be a real Chekhov gun to follow. Bear is upset that the cat is dead. Clearly he has emotions. We see him cry. So, the writers want us to know that he is not without emotions.
Bear also likes a girl, a member of his friend group, Nikki. She and two of his other friends went to school together and now work in a music shop. Ian and Sarah are the other two friends. The shop is owned by Sarah’s dad, who it seems generously hires her three friends. We know Bear likes Nikki because in the opening of the film, he is rehearsing what he will say to her while a waitress pretends to be her and Ian watches on. It’s sort of a lazy scene but gives us an idea of how, Bear feels about Nikki.
Bear is awkward and clumsy to the point of obnoxiousness. Nikki considers him as a sibling, perhaps her slightly dimwitted friend who she is protective over. Nothing about his character development suggests any charm, he is barely attentive and fixates on his wants, and while others talk to him, he seems to struggle with hearing them. But, he is infatuated with Nikki. And for some, this apparently is…sweet? Romantic?
Nikki we are shown is compassionate, this is framed with her empathy for a homeless person. She has ambition, she wants to be a writer and is filled with hopes and desires. She tells Bear about her intentions to leave their town and find something more, love, or passion that may help her with the book she is working on. She is trapped and wants to be free. Instead of being happy and supportive of his friend. Bear is frightened. This is a ticking clock for our narcissistic person, he wants her to stay and he now has a limited time frame to tell her his feelings.
During a conversation on the phone, Nikki mentions that she has lost her crystal necklace. Bear soon finds himself in an alternative lifestyle shop, the type to sell crystals and other metaphysical paraphernalia. In Blumhouse style, there is humour and with some Millennial writing imbued to remind us not to take things too seriously, and to even laugh at times, we have such dialogue. Bear finds a wishing willow, he blathers and molests the shop clerk with the sounds that come from his mouth. Later on, he drives Nikki home from work and the insufferable protagonist ends up meandering and mumbling, sputtering and losing and missing and fucking up for several minutes with Nikki. So, once she leaves him to stew inside of his car, he breaks the wishing willow and casts his evil, “I wish Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone in the entire world.”
Freeman. Nice work with that one writers.
Nikki is then standing on the porch, and this is where the independent, intelligent human being that she was, turns into a doll for audiences to squirm and point at her as though she is a freak. To see her actions, her presence, her expressions and so on as creepy, or freaky as she was apparently called in school. Freaky Nikki. A name she mentions not liking.
Nikki who was once a creative and vibrant human being, filled with energy and ambition. Hopes and dreams. Becomes a possession to Bear. His wish traps her and tortures her spirit and mind. She must love him. She has no choice and while the film’s title and trailer frames it that Bear is somehow a victim to her obsession, she being a villain or monster and he simple the innocent from his own tragic misstep. Perhaps, we should view it in the reverse.
It was his obsession with her. His infatuation and entitlement which deranged into a whimsical wish that now transformed her from a human being, into his kept doll. Over the days of their ‘relationship’, she barely leaves his side. We can see that it pains her when she is not with him. In one scene, when he leaves the house for most of the day for work, she remains standing with a frozen smile. Soiling herself, urinating and vomiting as she remains locked in place, waiting for his return.
“I told you not to be weird,” our uncaring cunt says. Her pain and indignity barely registering to his embarrassed need. She apologises and promises to clean up the mess, as she showers. What pride she once had, washes down the drain. While our selfish ‘hero’ stands outside moaning some dialogue to her.
During the night, as she sleeps when the real Nikki whispers and struggles, we have the East Asian depiction of ghost imagery, a slender dark figure of a girl standing, featureless and watching. It’s a trope in the West now, since The Ring. Nikki performs this for the audience. Because, to be creepy and weird is now horror. She stands there to watch him sleep, and moves awkwardly. Again, for the audience so we have those boxes ticked. But, alas, why would she be doing this, if not in turmoil and twisted inside a misery.
In another night time scene, Bear rapes his victim as she lays with a frozen smile, a tear on her cheek. For the rapist sympathisers in the audience, it’s his privilege to take her body while her mind remains imprisoned. He thrusts and takes his possession, once he has finished, thankfully for her, a minute at most, she says what needs to be said to placate her kidnapper. In earlier scenes we have moments where the real Nikki breaks free, screaming, scared. Again, token jump scares, or, a revelation as to who the actual monster in this film is.
Other weird things occur, moments of discomfort. Including while at a party, Nikki reciting prose expressing her peril. The drunk, stoned and illiterate friends roll their eyes or watch aghast. Bear, watches on, he is embarrassed. Then, as drama arises she smashes her face with a glass bottle cutting herself severely. Bear lays back watching. Poor me, the piece of shit thinks while the woman imprisoned by his wish self harms, and mutilates herself. For some reason he argues with someone at the hospital and takes her home. Never tending to her wounds. The piece of shit has shown he has the ability to use search engines, and seek information as to how one may apply first aid. Instead, she remains in pain and with cuts on her face. Poor Bear, doesn’t care. Her disfigurement encapsulates the ruination of her being.
Other things occur which continues to reveal how vile Bear is as a human being. And, the anguish of Nikki. At one point while she is asleep, she is talking to him as her true self, pleading with him. She wants it to end. Bear makes it about him and leaves his victim to suffer. No doubt after he had raped her again.
Sarah, the other friend likes Bear. No idea why. She shares a scene with him where she is hopeful that she will get accepted into university. Another character unlike Bear who has ambition. While his victim is at home in bed, he is sharing in an intimacy with Sarah and she reveals her feelings for him and he has a realisation that attraction and even love is something that should be consensual.
Then Nikki strikes, we need that jump scare, though was it? She bashes Sarah’s head into the steering wheel. Comically graphic, and putrid as a character we had come to know, is reduced to a pulped corpse. Nikki tells Bear he has to help her hide the body, he does so. Then, he goes to his friend Ian’s house and explains what we have seen. To return back home to Nikki. Who has stripped Sarah naked, is wearing her clothes and has inked her skin and pierced herself so that she may look like the corpse in the hopes of being like Sarah was, and thus more attractive for Bear.
A pistol that was mentioned earlier in the film, finds itself now in Nikki’s possession who shoots Ian the moment he walks through the door. Bear does what he should have done even before he made the wish and attempts to shoot himself. Again, he lacks any courage. So, he swallows the pills that killed his cat. Thankfully he dies. Hopefully painfully. Nikki, is now free of his curse.
What she ‘wakes’ to is sudden horror. Pain, her friends are dead and there is no way any investigators will believe her story. She is now likely to be imprisoned as a murderer or so traumatised that she becomes a prisoner of her experiences and memory. The end.
I did not want to review the movie and write out everything that happened, only to highlight some points. There were moments where people laughed at scenes when Nikki was doing something ‘weird’, I would like to put this down to that awkward release that occurs at time. Then, again, I feel some may see this as a movie where Bear is the victim. The obsession with unrequited love fills music and fiction to the point of accepted entitlement. Stalking and obsessive behaviour can be framed as romantic, depending on the perspective. If the love is not returned, such behaviour is eerie and unwelcome.
The tragedy of the movie, is not in the wisher getting what he wanted, and it turning out to be more complicated and terrible than he had hoped. It’s in the coercion of another, who is not viewed as a human being with self agency but simply as a thing to own and have. In 365 Days, our abuser kidnaps the woman he is infatuated with. Telling her that she has a year to fall in love with him. It only takes a few days because he is ‘hot’ but above all else rich. Tall dark, handsome, badboy (he is a child trafficker and drug dealer, but he owns a million dollar plus yacht, so hot.) The woman he kidnaps falls in love with him, naturally. She is an insert for the intended audience.
His wealth and lifestyle seduces her. Even if he kidnaps her and takes away her agency to begin with. This is nothing like that. Nikki has no choice. The very actions and motions her character makes during the movie are moments of degradation and the destruction of the human spirit. Because it’s a low budget horror movie, made to entertain and even give the audience some giggles, it’s also a mirror to how people view others. How they really think about trauma and abuse. We live in an age where mental health is a monetised commodity and used as a grandiose act of self interest, but sincerity tends to be lacking when it’s a very real thing. Because many victims hide in plain sight and, sometimes they may do things that appear ‘creepy’ or ‘weird’.
Nikki is the victim. Bear, is the monster. I recommend this movie in the same way that I do, The Housemaid, which may be advertised as a sexy film because, again our abuser is rich and hot. It shows a type of abuse and control that is often inflicted in plain sight. Power, wealth and the institutional ‘importance’ of the abuser tends to allow for it to continue on. While that is a film which is more than it at first seems, it is both entertaining, a little convenient at points, especially at the end but should leave one with lingering thoughts.
Obsession, was for me initially boring, then twisted into a layered character story concealed in schlock horror. I am glad I saw it. I felt a disdain and desire to rip Bear’s throat from his skull and empathy for Nikki. While in the latest Guy Ritchie action, I forget it’s name now. I felt nothing. In the Minecraft film, all I felt was my seat moving from the kicking feet of excited males-boys at every reference to a video game I have never played. I felt something from this movie and that is what cinema should be about, it’s not meant to be just entertainment or bubble gum chewing. It should invite us to think or experience discomfort. Go see it, or don’t. I hope movies like this give the audience an obsession for story telling again.
