Be Careful What You Wish For
Obsession takes the beaten-to-death “be careful what you wish for” story and electrifies it back into life—and then some.
Three and a half stars (out of four).
Have you ever wanted something (or someone) really, really badly, so badly that you daydream about a magic wand or a love potion or a genie-in-a-bottle that would allow you to effortlessly attain the object of your desires? Sure you have. And have you ever seen a movie or read a book or story where someone, through some kind of magic, gets what they want and, wouldn’t you know it!, it doesn’t work out very well, leaving you to think, “You know what? On second thought, maybe the magic wand/love potion thing wasn’t such a great idea after all?” Of course you have too.
That’s because we human beings have been using this story concept for as long as we’ve been telling each other stories. From Greek mythology (King Midas, ever think that maybe wanting everything you touch to turn to gold might have some downsides?) to German poetry (Doctor Faust, I get that you really want success, but maybe giving permission to the devil to fulfill your wish is not exactly the best idea either?!) to twentieth-century English literature (three words for you: “The Monkey’s Paw”), there have been few situations that writers have loved to explore more than the idea, “what could possibly go wrong when you have your most ardent wish fulfilled?”
Into this very, very well-trodden territory now steps Curry Barker, the Alabama-born YouTuber and director of the audacious new horror film Obsession. Set in a prototypical small town (well, in the San Fernando Valley in California, to be exact, but it looks like it could be Anywhere, USA—which is kind of the point), Obsession hones in on the life and mind of Bear (no relation to Carmy Berzatto), a young man who works at a music store and who is hopelessly in love with his coworker and childhood friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette). The only problem, of course, is that Nikki doesn’t love him back. Bear (played by Michael Johnston) doesn’t want to confess his feelings to her and thereby risk losing her friendship. But he also doesn’t want to keep his feelings to himself forever and thereby risk suffering from a lifetime of what-ifs. What a unique dilemma that precisely every person who’s ever been alive has experienced at one point or another…but it’s still quite the dilemma! Poor Bear. What’s a forlorn friend-zoned Zoomer to do?
Obsession enjoys playing around with the conventions of the genre, with your expectations for these kinds of movies, and with uncovering new possibilities for the be-careful-what-you-wish-for story that you didn’t think existed.
Fortunately for our not-very-heroic hero Bear, he’s stumbled into an easy way out. (Or so it would seem!) While ambling around one day in a novelty store that sells things like healing crystals (our first indication that this store is totally legit), he spots something called a “One Wish Willow,” a carrot-sized item that promises to grant any wish you have—but only one; it’s “single use only.” (So, it’s basically the disposable razor-version of the genie-in-a-bottle.) And “single use only” really means “single” and “only” in the strictest senses of the terms—you can only use one of these things once in your entire lifetime. So, if you have a wish that you want this thingamajig to grant, you better think really carefully about this wish!
Intrigued by this “One Wish Willow” (hey, you’d be too, so don’t blame him), he picks one up and heads back to his car to try it out. It’s kind of like a wishbone—you snap the willow branch apart, make your wish, and then wait. But unlike a wishbone, where you can be waiting a whole lifetime for your wish to be fulfilled (if it ever even is), the One Wish Willow fulfills your wish immediately. Like, really right away. So when Bear snaps the willow apart and wishes for Nikki to love him “more than anyone in the f—ing world,” to Bear’s astonishment delight, and fascinated stupefaction, Nikki immediately goes from being his longstanding unrequited love to his, umm…very much requited lover. Yay for Bear! His dreams have come true! His most ardent wish has finally been fulfilled! And, if four thousand years of magic-wish-fulfillment stories have taught us anything, nothing could possibly go wrong now!…right?
Now, before you say, “Okay we’ve seen this movie before,” allow me to just pause you right there to let you know that Obsession is not like the other magic-wish-fulfillment stories you’ve seen (and read) before. Obsession takes the beaten-to-death “be careful what you wish for” story and electrifies it back into life—and then some. It takes you to places and situations in this genre that you didn’t think were possible. What kinds of places and situations, you ask? Well, it’s pretty hard to talk about Obsession’s plot any further without dropping any spoilers, so just let me say that a big part of the fun of this movie is guessing along with it as the plot unfolds: “Wait, they’re not gonna go there?!, ARE they?!…” Yes they are!
Obsession is less about horror than it is about storytelling.
This is the aspect of the film that’s probably made Obsession the surprise hit of this summer: Yes, it’s a horror movie, so you’re in your right to expect certain standard shots, twists, musical cues, etc. But Obsession is a fun horror movie. I don’t exactly mean that it’s campy—though there is some of that, to be sure. What I mean is that it enjoys playing around with the conventions of the genre, with your expectations for these kinds of movies, and with uncovering new possibilities for the be-careful-what-you-wish-for story that you didn’t think existed. Horror fans and movie buffs will also appreciate Obsession’s homages to The Shining and The Exorcist. In fact, there’s a whole way—a really substantial way—in which, at a certain point, Obsession morphs from a be-careful-what-you-wish-for story into an extended Gen-Z Exorcist spinoff. But, once again, I had best not say too much about it here. You’ll know it when you see it.
Which leads me to my final point: Even if horror is not exactly your thing—or even if it had once been your thing but (like me) you’d soured on it for various reasons—you should see this movie. Or at least give it a chance. Because—and this might be the main reason I liked it so much—Obsession is a movie that’s less about horror than it is about storytelling. In the best horror movies, the blood, guts, and jump cuts serve the story, rather than the other way around. And it’s why Obsession will have a much longer life than the horror movies where the skeletally thin story is just an excuse to show blood and guts. If the plot of a horror movie can’t be retold as a traditional oral story—if the story itself doesn’t scare you and it needs gruesome visuals and frightening musical cues to do the trick—then it’s a horror movie that isn’t worth the film it’s projected on (or, to put it in today’s terms, it wouldn’t be worth the digital hardware space it’s saved in).
Obsession works so well and will last so long because you can imagine it as a story that kids tell each other late at night to scare the bejesus out of each other. As a ‘90s kid who grew up glued to SNICK on Saturday nights, it reminded me, in the best possible way, of an Are You Afraid of The Dark? episode—a tale that begins as a story told by kids around a campfire and only then proceeds into the visual part of the episode before we’re brought back to the campfire, where the Midnight Society storytellers wrap up the tale. Obsession isn’t told in this kind of frame-story format, but it’s because it could be that makes it so effective—and so deserving of its box-office achievements. And, if later we find out that this movie’s magical, incredible, almost supernatural success came about by way of Curry Barker’s own use of a One Wish Willow, well, it sounds like we have the plot for Obsession 2: The Reckoning!