OBSESSION

Rating 4.5 out of 5

Obsession is an absolutely mental horror film in the most deranged way possible, taking a simple premise and pushing it to the absolute extreme thanks to the wicked genius of writer and director Curry Barker, that when combined with a sensational performance from Inde Navarrette that in a single film cements her as an all time scream queen, results in a sinisterly unhinged and twistedly entertaining horror film.

With advancements in technology and readily available cameras on phones, anyone can make  a movie today… but this does not mean that everyone is a filmmaker. While anyone can shoot footage, developing an idea and supporting it with an artistic vision and evoking effective performances from actors separates the average person shooting footage and a filmmaker telling a story. Best known for his sketch comedy and short videos on YouTube with his partner Cooper Tomlinson, Curry Barker displays an innate sense of filmmaking in his feature film debut Obsession that he wrote, edited and directed, proving that with the right vision one can go from being social media famous to a serious filmmaker. Taking a simple premise and squeezing it for every bit of potential to deliver shocking, disturbing, and sometimes gory, moments of pure horror insanity, Barker with his two stars Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette deliver a nightmare inducing film that never for a second fails to entertain and mortify viewers to death.

There is a great tonal shift within Obsession that is a perfect tease of the uncomfortable terror that unfolds in this film. Barker’s screenplay for approximately the first fifteen minutes of the film plays out as a whimsical and enduring romantic comedy. You have the young man pining for his friend, the magical offering to improve his luck at getting out of the friend zone, and that wonderful car scene where you see Bear struggling to express his true feelings for Nikki. Apart from some heartbreaking loss faced by Bear, this first segment of the film has a certain charm that lulls audiences into a false sense of ease. But from the second he makes his wish; there is an undeniable shift within the screenplay that transforms the movie for the better and Barker unleashes his wicked vision on viewers. 

After Bear makes his wish, audiences know immediately that there is something wrong with Nikki. Gone is the bubbly girl, instead replaced by a soulless individual who is in a blink of an eye infatuated with Bear, despite very clearly not having any romantic feelings for him seconds before. While Bear may be wilfully blind to this, the warning bells are going off in viewers’ heads as the actions of Nikki get more concerning and disturbed. Barker knows that the audience is expecting some cringy moments as this relationship nightmare unfolds, injecting the film with some terribly hilarious moments in the most uncomfortable way possible, but the extent that he pushes the story to is beyond anything even the biggest horror fans could conjure up in their wildest nightmares. Especially that one scene which will burn itself into audiences’ minds and test the audience’s tolerance for blood curdling terror, before getting to that sinister but justified ending. It’s a shocking, bloody and absolutely bonkers film in the best way imaginable that can only be described as the horror version of Fatal Attraction, even featuring a surrogate for the bunny, making for an outstanding horror film that must be seen with the largest of crowds possible for the full effect.

To aid this twisted spiral into bloody chaos, Barker carefully crafts the film to toy with the audience. The cinematography often plunges characters into darkness, hiding their faces from the viewer to keep any indication of their true intent secret, or even purposefully framing the shot so that their heads are not in the frame. It’s an unsettling yet deeply effective visual choice, which makes many of the scenes with Nikki that are already disturbing enough based on the content alone somehow even more mortifying as you can’t see what she is up to. Bolstering this is the film’s sound design which utilizes an eerie quietness against the audience before walloping them with a wall of sound along with the terrifying image on screen to make them leap out of their seats. This is a smaller budget film without question, and it shows very much in one scene, but the craft and passion that Barker and his team bring to the table overwhelmingly makes up for this and still allows for these lower budget moments to come across as unhinged moments of terrifying insanity.

Making Barker’s vision come to life on screen are the two lead performances of Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette, both of whom are excellent. Johnston has the perfect sweet disposition that creates your everyday, lovestruck guy in Bear, but the wilful indifference and blindness of the situation Bear finds himself in is what makes Johnston’s performance so effective. In balancing the love struck, hopeful young man who thinks he has gotten what he has always dreamed of, with the freaked out anxiety of being in way over his head allows Johnston to make for a protagonist that you care for but at times can’t help to want him to face the consequences of his actions. Cooper Tomlinson and Megan Lawless are both great as Bear and Nikki’s friends Ian and Sarah respectively, with Tomlinson bringing some great moments of comedic relief to cut the unbearable tension in this film and Lawless being the much needed voice of reason that Bear needs to hear. 

But, this film belongs to Navarette as Nikki who cements herself as a bona fide scream queen with a tour de force performance. From the second Nikki is taken over by the dark forces behind Bear’s wish, Navarette revels in the terror that Nikki unleashes on screen. From the creepy facial expressions, childish-like delivery of her lines that adds something truly sinister to this girl madly in love, or the way that she runs around Bear’s house, Navarrette will send chills down your spine no matter the scene of the film, and when she starts screaming… my god, it is the stuff of nightmares (which is even more impressive when she was not a big screamer before taking on this role). Not only is it a performance from Navarrette that gives a whole new meaning to the label “stage five clinger”, but it is a masterful horror performance that will write her into the genre’s history books.

Giving a whole new meaning to relationship problems, Curry Barker’s feature film debut is nothing short of a show-stopping horror extravaganza that heralds the arrival of one of the newest and most exciting filmmakers in the genre. Exploiting the toxic relationship narrative and giving it a sinister horror twist, Curry Barker unleashes a devilishly fun and twisted horror romance that will have audiences gasping in fear, screaming in terror, and yelling “what the f***” by the film’s end. With a stellar scream queen performance from Inde Navarrette leading the film down a dark, twisted and shocking rabbit hole, Curry Barker’s feature film debut shatters all expectations and conjures up a terrifying and panic inducing horror film that with its great cinematography, use of sound, and a concept pushed to the extreme, ensures that Obsession is going to be a horror film that audiences won’t be able to stop talking about.