I saw Curry Barker’s Obsession (Focus, 5.15) last night. Over the last two weekends it’s become a massive, phenomenal hit, as we’ve all read. Except it’s not really good enough (it’s certainly not Weapons-level) to warrant this kind of social-earthquake response. Yes, it’s well acted and has an imaginatively out-there downscale vibe and it’s certainly bloody and gorey here and there…aahh, let me start over.
I didn’t hate Obsession. It’s Walmart-level, but tolerably so. I felt hugely repulsed by Michael Johnston’s male lead (a music store employee called “Bear” who behaves more like a greasy little cub), but I was down with (i.e., felt erotically stirred by) 25 year-old Inde Navarette, who plays Bear’s whackjob girlfriend, Nikki, with serious manic spunk. I felt aroused by her hair-trigger lunacy.
I’m not saying Obsession is crap. I didn’t feel at the end that two hours had been stolen from me. I felt a bit soiled but not burned. Call it marginally effective low-rent horror gruel with at least one excellent whambam jump scare.
My 9:25 pm screening was 90% to 95% filled, which is highly unusual for a Monday night…packed with moderately mulchy, none-too-sophisticated 20somethings who were behaving in an “animated” way…commenting or groaning (“Nice rack!” when Navarette pulled off her normcore sweatshirt…a general “yo!…we crave your bod” atmosphere) or otherwise talking back to the screen like black audiences used to do in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s.
Me and maybe three other guys were the only over-45 types. I was the only older dude with slightly longish hair and certainly the only viewer wearing pricey, Italian-made, black leather loafers, I can tell you that much.
What is Obsession, boiled down? It’s basically a serving of moody, splotchy, button-pushing, crazy-girlfriend garbage by way of anything-goes horror exploitation, but augmented with above-average, babygirl-Zoomer acting and Zoomer dialogue that felt reasonably honest or real-world as far as it went.
It’s a rehashing of “The Monkey’s Paw”, a 1902 horror short story by W.W. Jacobs, with a little spritz on the side of “Nick of Time”, that 1960 William Shatner Twilight Zone episode in which Shatner’s young newlywed becomes entranced by a wicked fortune-telling device.
Thematically or metaphorically, it’s about…uhm, be emotionally real and genuine with women, and don’t hide behind put-on games or pretentious posing or wimpy dodging…just be straight and sincere. But at the same time don’t be cringe-sensitive. Don’t secrete your icky hetero longings. Try to behave like a semi-normal, straight-from-the-shoulder type.
And that goes double if you’re Johnston’s “Bear”, a wimpy-voiced, babygirl-ish, kitten-mewing, totally candy-assed (read: anguished sensitivity) guy with greasy hair and standard five-day facial stubble…a guy who wears shitty normcore threads (as well as the butt-ugliest, light-gray, lace-up Foot Locker sneakers…don’t get me started).
Obsession starts with Bear in the throes of erotic whatever…emotionally enthralled by a pretty, dark-haired, agreeably bosom-y coworker (i.e., Navarette) who maybe stands 5’1” in heels. I was saying to myself “just let it go, bruh…you’re too mushy, too girlyman…she’s out of your league.”
Find the courage, the film is saying, to behave like a man of at least some substance and not like an emotionally intimidated three-year-old.
Like so many other lower-budgeted gloomy-spooky films, Obsession has that under-lighted, processed-in-lentil-soup palette (subdued amber-grayish colors, no real daylight to speak of, a Gordon Willis scheme but without the panache of Gordo’s super-rich blacks and occasional shafts of punctuating sunlight).
You can’t tell me “Curry” isn’t a funny-sounding first name. A spicy Indian sauce that rhymes with “furry” or more particularly Coury-brand cat food, which Elliot Gould’s Phillip Marlowe tried to buy at 3 am in a Hollywood market back in ‘73.
The overweight, Jim Belushi-ish Cooper Tomlinson, who plays Ian, another music-store employee who’s friendly with Bear and Nikki, holds up his end and then some. He’s the only normal-ish character in the whole film, and certainly the only relatable male. God, I so despised Johnston’s mealy-mouthed, chickenshit, greasy-faced performance!
As I was leaving I spotted a 20something Latin-x woman (gold-painted toenails) who seemed to be recovering from the trauma of watching the film. She was standing next to the exit door with an anguished expression. As I moved past her I almost ran into an equally traumatized, slightly younger girl who went “oh!!” as we suddenly faced each other. I tried for a little calm-down action by shrugging and saying “I’m just walking out…no worries…cool.”
