OBSESSION WASN’T FOR ME
I almost walked out of the theater. That’s how bad I thought it was. This was a solid F for me, and I’ll explain why in a second. But nothing really worked for me here. The plot, the characters, the concept, the “horror” (yeah, there’s wasn’t much horror).
By the way, this review does have spoilers, so if you don’t want to know what this film is about, exit stage left – right now.
Quick summary here: Bear, your main character, is in love with his co-worker, Nikki. The only problem is that he’s a coward and has a habit of making the wrong decisions throughout the entire movie. He starts his bad decision-making journey by buying a magic willow stick and wishing that Nikki would love him more than anything in the world. It works, but predictably, she goes batshit crazy-obsessed-psycho and starts turning his world upside down. Bear is only good at making bad decisions, and at the end, his bad decisions gets his friend killed, a potential love interest killed, and oh yeah, he kills himself – and then ruins Nikki’s life. That’s it. Fade to black.
For 2.5 hours, you get Bear, an irritating douchbag, making stupid decisions. That’s doesn’t do it for me. I hate stupid people. Don’t you hate stupid people?
There’s no character development.
There’s no explanation on how the Willow Stick works, where it came from, who was working the call center. Did he call India?
You get no explanation on what’s possessing Nikki.
You get nothing!
You do get plotholes that go unexplained. I still don’t understand how Bear’s cat got into his medicine cabinet and opened his pill bottle. Still don’t understand how he could eat his two week or month old dead cat by mistake. I mean, couldn’t you smell a dead cat sandwich from a mile away? And why didn’t he call 911 – at all? And why help your devil-possessed girlfriend dispose of a body? The only explanation is that Bear is an idiot. I can keep going on and on.
I kept asking myself, “Did not one writer raise their hand and say, “Uhm, that doesn’t make any sense? I mean, do we really need willow sticks to make women go crazy, or to get unreasonably jealous? And what about these $7 wishing sticks that actually work? You would think demand would make it more expensive than a mocha frappuccino.”
I love horror movies. But horror movies have to be more than just a simple excuse to film gore. Great horror movies have great characters: Freddy Krueger, Jason, Michael Myers, Dracula, Pennywise, Frankenstein, Norman Bates, Hannibal Lecter, and just recently – Megan. But Obessed had zero memorable characters. We had Bear. We had a willow stick. A freaking stick.
This movie, by the way, was written from the antagonist’s point of view. Bear, your main character, was not a protagonist. His character didn’t grow throughout the movie; it got worse. That’s an antagonist. Now, I do enjoy movies that are written from an antagonist’s point of view, especially for its genesis release. But your antagonist has to be likable. Nothing about Bear is likable. Your protagonist, well, that was Nikki. Poor thing, she didn’t get much of a chance to grow, and we didn’t even get to learn more about her.
Since we’re on the subject of characters. Well, they all sounded the same. We didn’t learn of their fears, agendas, motivations, or backstories. Oh, Bear loved his cat, and he loved Nikki. They say over and over again throughout the film. At one point it sounded like bros sitting around a bar talking about relationships, and that’s what you got on screen.
The only silver lining about this movie is that the acting was quite superb. Direction – blah. A talented film school student couldn’t have done the same.
It’s an F.
GRADE: F
Steve Young
