You Ca(n)'t Always Get What You Want.......
Obsession joins films like The Backrooms and Hokum at the cool kids' table, clad in a blood-stained cheerleader's outfit and eager for prom night. It's quite popular, is what I'm getting at, and as much as I've tried to resist the urge to say it, the horror community is obsessing over Obsession. Nasty comments and loud eye-rolls welcome after that cliched line, but that aside, what stands good and true is the level of intrigue that this film's trailer generated, although it pails in comparison to the insanity that unfolds over the entirety of its run time, as it rightfully should. Director Curry Barker most likely drew from a well-established table of inspiration set by similar titles of the past, titles that had expertly dealt with themes of love, lust, and excessive desire. A nod of respect to pioneers such as Glenn Close of Fatal Attraction, Kathy Bates of Misery, and even Robin McLeavy of The Loved Ones. All solid offerings for those looking for a similar experience that Obsession delivers. However, what sets this current offering apart is the inclusion of the supernatural, eerily foreshadowed by the death of a household cat, a member of a species long believed to have had a particularly strong connection to the afterlife...in ancient Egypt, anyway.
When You Wish Upon a Star.....Or Stick
I suppose we had more to learn from Jiminy Cricket than we realised when he told us what it is to wish upon a star, and it's precisely on the business of wishing that this film hinges. Bear is our main character who positions himself as the quintessential nice guy with a crush. The object of his affection is a pretty young lady named Nikki, who, like most women, can smell the distinct stench of a "nice guy" from a mile away, parallel parking Bear so far into the friend zone that he may as well whip out a welcome mat and call it home. In a moment of frustrated desperation brought on by the failure to spit out his feelings to Nikki, Bear makes an absurd wish on a novelty Wish Willow, speaking out his desire for Nikki to love him more than anything in the world before snapping it in two, thus triggering powerful wish juju in the universe that gets our roller coaster slowly lurching up a precarious loop in preparation for the deep plunge. What comes to pass is a gradual journey of discovery between two love-struck puppies who can't keep their hands off each other. And while all seems right in the universe, and our main dog appears to have had his day, Nikki starts to exhibit erratic, unpredictable, and disturbing behaviour, which gives Bear pause to consider the nature of their relationship, and the state of affairs that brought it to be.
The Tricky Business of Love
Curry Barker does an excellent job of crafting an effort that is patient in its approach. Nikki's infatuation is not some immediate response to the power of the stick (or Bear's, for that matter, Hehehe), but a steady exploration of the acting out of feelings that she has for him. This lends a plausibility to her affections for Bear, taking away suspicion of ulterior motives, and certainly taking away from any absurd possibility that her newfound feelings are the doing of some novelty voodoo toy (Occam's Razor and all that). This is precisely what makes the film eerily intriguing, not merely the consequence of the wish, but the business, and indeed, the nature of wishes and wish-making.
What indeed does happen when one makes a wish? We can say that it is the hope that the laws of nature can be momentarily suspended so that our desires can be fulfilled without fuss. Yet, insofar as we know that this is not possible, wish-making may be said to make a double movement: the initial wish itself and an understated, almost unconscious desire that the world would allow for a state of affairs where wishes could be granted. However, from Aladdin in the Lamp all the way to Bruce Almighty, wish-making has, and indeed, had to incur a cost of some kind, with free will often being one dimension that was always off limits, even to the almighty Morgan Freeman. Yet, for the one wish willow, it appears that no such boundaries exist, and it is thus forced to fulfil any request, or at least die trying.
If free will cannot be affected, then it appears that the voodoo powers had to invoke the collective wills of malevolent spirits to organise their collective energies around the parameters of the wish, and as such, it is not Nikki that comes to love Bear, but rather a multi-consciousness that strives for dominance within the vessel that is Nikki. This plays out interestingly, as Nikki seems to be able to emerge at the odd interval in a desperate attempt to either make sense of this newfound madness or communicate with Bear, only to be smacked back into her holding cell with a blunt object, evidenced in moments like the awkward party scene. However, it isn't only Nikki who is forced into a push and pull for full grasp of her being, but Bear must also navigate between a belief that he is worthy of love from someone like Nikki, and the real alternative possibilities, both of the natural and supernatural kind.
Better To Have Loved and Lost?
Saliva sang it best when they said, "I love you, I hate you, I can't live without." An appropriate line for this tragic cinematic offering. Tragic indeed when we consider not only the fate that awaited all of Bear's chums, but also the fact that Bear couldn't have known that a wish would work, not to mention the fact that he didn't even get what he wished for. Whip out your philosophy caps, folks, because we have a little conceptual analysing to do here. One could put forward a strong argument, perhaps not have to argue at all, that the unhinged infatuation that Nikki had for Bear was not love at all. It was merely the darker, inferior elements that often attempt to moonlight as love. Flesh desires, insecurity, and selfishness do not come close at all to representing the true nature of that mysterious property/event/phenomena/thing called Love. The Elrick brothers from Fullmetal Alchemist gave us our free lesson in the law of equivalent exchange, and if Nikki's free will was compromised, then Bear paid for it with his freedom. Yet, while Obsession speaks to love, loving and being loved, it's also a poignant exploration of why we shouldn't always get what we want, mostly because we don't have the faintest clue what it is that we do indeed want in the first place (thanks, Mr. Freeman). Inde Navarrette puts in a five-star performance, and really steals the show as Nikki, impressing with a commitment to her role that reminds me of Jennifer Carpenter's performance in The Exorcism of Emily Rose.
In a word, Curry Barker knocked it out of the ballpark with this, his second directorial effort. He does a great job of communicating to us that the good things in life are worth waiting for, that there are no shortcuts to said good things, and that closed doors often present the best opportunities for developing resilience, gratitude, courage, and overall growth. And if you don't believe any of that, then this will scare the socks off of your LEGO Crocs, or whatever ridiculous footwear people are wearing these days. Happy viewing, folks :).
