Pan and Slam

Movie Review: Obsession

R 1h 48m

• Director
  • Curry Barker
• Writer
  • Curry Barker
• Stars
  • Michael Johnston
  • Inde Navarrette
  • Cooper Tomlinson

by Jason Koenigsberg

Obsession goes back to basics with horror. Made for less than a million dollars by a YouTuber, it is a lesson in how good storytelling can still overcome obstacles and make it to multiplexes. Writer-director Curry Barker understands writing, editing, lighting, and music, using them all to create a deeply unsettling and genuinely scary movie. Obsession has moments of suspense that are guaranteed to frighten even the most jaded horror aficionados. It is also one of the best-paced films in recent memory, clocking in at under two hours with fewer than ten speaking characters and only a handful of locations.

The movie opens rather unconventionally with a medium shot of the male lead talking directly to the camera. He is practicing what he wants to say to the girl he has had a crush on for years, hoping to escape the dreaded “friend zone.” The first twenty minutes of Obsession immediately pull the viewer in because the dialogue feels so natural. In a short amount of time, Curry Barker makes you genuinely care about these characters, and the performances feel authentic rather than stilted. At its core, Obsession is about a young man who lacks the courage to tell a girl how he truly feels, and the film captures that awkwardness remarkably well. As great as Michael Johnston is as the male lead, Inde Navarrette delivers a bravura performance as the female lead and object of the protagonist’s affection. She is bold, vulnerable, and compelling, making every one of her scenes believable when, in less capable hands, they could easily have slipped into parody.

The major themes of Obsession have been explored before, most notably in the classic campfire tale The Monkey’s Paw, which became especially familiar to many through The Simpsons. Yet this film never feels stale or derivative. It could have gone in several different directions and leaned more heavily on that familiar premise, but instead it stays the course, focusing on its characters, their motivations, and their relationships. As a result, the choices they make become not only scarier but also far more emotionally devastating. The ending plays with the audience in a way that is best experienced without prior knowledge. Obsession continues the trend of horror being the one genre over the past decade that has consistently evolved and improved while many others have begun to feel increasingly formulaic and fatigued.