{"id":411,"date":"2026-06-12T07:39:46","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T07:39:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=411"},"modified":"2026-06-12T07:39:46","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T07:39:46","slug":"movie-review-obsession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=411","title":{"rendered":"Movie Review: \u2018Obsession\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In 26-year-old Curry Barker\u2019s hit movie Obsession<\/em>, the ironically named Bear (Michael Johnston) is a young man who works in a music store and is too shy to ask Nikki (Inde Navarrette), his pretty co-worker, to go out with him. Instead, he buys a sort of magic wand or stick called a \u201cOne Wish Willow,\u201d which claims on its packaging that, if you break it while making a wish, the wish comes true. \u201cI wish,\u201d says Bear, breaking the stick, \u201cthat Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone in the f-cking world.<\/p>\n

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Those who are familiar with fairy tales\u2014or movies with supernatural characters and events\u2014can pretty much guess what happens next. So here\u2019s Bear on the phone some time later with the One Wish Willow help line, whose number he finds on the box it came in.<\/p>\n

Helpline: <\/strong>If you have any questions about how the wish works, or if you read the back of the box . . .<\/p>\n

Bear:<\/strong> I mean, is it even real?<\/p>\n

Helpline: <\/strong>Yeah, it\u2019s real.<\/p>\n

Bear: <\/strong>No, I know that the . . . Is her love real?<\/p>\n

Helpline:<\/strong> Just because you chose this for her doesn\u2019t make it less real.<\/p>\n

Bear: <\/strong>Okay, then I would like to cancel.<\/p>\n

Helpline:<\/strong> You\u2019d like to file a cancel request?<\/p>\n

Bear: <\/strong>Yes, yeah, a cancel request.<\/p>\n

Helpline:<\/strong> We don\u2019t really do that.<\/p>\n

Bear:<\/strong> What?<\/p>\n

Helpline:<\/strong> We don\u2019t really do that.<\/p>\n

Bear: <\/strong>You were just making it sound like I could put in a request.<\/p>\n

Helpline: <\/strong>I was just guessing your intentions, man.<\/p>\n

Bear: <\/strong>What the\u2014? How\u2014? What would the\u2014? What can I do, then?<\/p>\n

Helpline:<\/strong> Nothing really.<\/p>\n

The words \u201creal\u201d and \u201creally\u201d<\/em> in this mocking, ironical sense ring like a chiming clock throughout the movie Obsession<\/em>, which is said to be far outearning the latest Star Wars<\/em> sequel at the box office these days. As it does here, the word sometimes pops up in a question\u2014\u201cIs it real?\u201d\u2014and sometimes as a statement: \u201cIt is real,\u201d for this is the question and this the answer that the classic horror film strives to keep always in the forefront of the viewer\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n

But there are no more classic horror films being made today. Now the trick has been performed too often for the audience not to be on to it. We know it\u2019s not real\u2014what is anymore? \u2014which is why contemporary horror has to be done at least semi-playfully and mixed with comedy, either intentionally, as in the bit of dialogue above, or unintentionally. Elsewhere in Obsession<\/em>, I think it\u2019s a mixture of both.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, the film\u2019s young, fresh-from-YouTube director seems to want to preserve something of the mystery of the supernatural forces at work both in the all-consuming simulacrum of a love affair between Bear and Nikki and behind the scenes; on the other end of the One Wish Willow help line. On the other hand, the means that Bear hits upon to make Nikki his own without hitting on her are too cheesy not to be a deliberate self-parody.<\/p>\n

The box the magic comes in, for example, is made to look like one of those old-fashioned, \u201cAmaze Your Friends\u201d novelty items, like a whoopee cushion or a dribbling water glass. The One Wish Willow itself is supposed to operate like Brang\u00e4ne\u2019s love potion in Richard Wagner\u2019s tragic music drama Tristan und Isolde<\/em>, but in this context it looks more like the gypsy Madam Rue\u2019s \u201cLove Potion Number 9\u201d in the Lieber and Stoller song that was a hit for The Searchers in 1963:<\/p>\n

I told her that I was a flop with chicks;<\/p>\n

I\u2019d been this way since 1956.<\/p>\n

She looked at my palm, and she made a magic sign;<\/p>\n

She said, \u201cWhat you need is\u2014Love Potion Number Nine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, another character in Obsession<\/em> uses a One Wish Willow to wish himself a billion dollars, and the money promptly pours down upon him like a tropical rain. There\u2019s no more mystery about it than there is about Madam Rue. Or a vending machine.<\/p>\n

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Of course, there are other archetypal themes at work here, and the short story from 1902 by W. W. Jacobs called \u201cThe Monkey\u2019s Paw\u201d is said to have been in Mr. Barker\u2019s mind when he wrote the screenplay. But these boil down to your mother\u2019s injunction to \u201cbe careful what you wish for.\u201d In any case, it\u2019s hard to take the deeper moral meaning any more seriously than the horrific transformation in Nikki, who, so the film itself tells us, is not really Nikki anyway. The guy on the help line hints that the real<\/em> Nikki is with him<\/em>, not Bear, and undergoing some kind of torture, as Bear is being tortured by her Doppelg\u00e4nger. Later, she seems to be hovering in the air somewhere above the sleeping zombie-Nikki, asking Bear to kill her.<\/p>\n

Some commentators, however\u2014notably Matthew Schmitz of Compact<\/em>\u2014find a larger, social significance in the film. Mr. Schmitz calls it \u201cheteropessimist horror,\u201d by which he means that young people of Mr. Barker\u2019s age and younger are inclined to see in it the very image of what frightens them half to death about marriage or, indeed, any kind of romantic entanglement. Curry Barker is the voice on the other end of the One Wish Willow helpline who says, \u201cIf you die, the wish will go away.\u201d<\/p>\n

What price now for \u201ctill death do you part\u201d? Bear then asks in his typically wheedling way: \u201cYou\u2019re sure there\u2019s nothing else I can do?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I mean, as long as you live. Sounds to me like you have a moral obligation to be there for her.\u201d Or, at any rate, to be there for the insanely, murderously jealous automaton she\u2019s been turned into by your regrettable wish to possess her.<\/p>\n

In other words, no romance, please; we\u2019re Gen Z. Supposedly. I\u2019m sure this cannot be true for a whole generation and that those for whom it is true may still grow out of a fear that must threaten the survival of the species. But I think it is true to say that one side in the so-called \u201cculture war\u201d in which we in America and elsewhere have been long engaged has an interest in fostering such a fear, just as it does in encouraging women to abort their babies.<\/p>\n

The movie-poster tag line on Obsession<\/em>\u2019s release in France reads, \u201cVotre relation est toxique? Le leur est mortelle.<\/em>\u201d Which means, \u201c[You think] your relationship is toxic? Theirs is deadly.\u201d That puts it in a nutshell. People who have been taught by the therapeutic culture they\u2019ve grown up in to see relationships that no longer please them as \u201ctoxic\u201d are likely to be all too easily persuadable that their very survival is at stake if they make the kind of commitment to one another that their parents were expected to make as a matter of course. Here\u2019s just one more item in the bill of goods that the progressive Left has sold them in recent years.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

James Bowman is a Resident Scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the media columnist of\u00a0<\/em>The New Criterion,\u00a0and the author of\u00a0<\/em>Honor, A History\u00a0(Encounter, 2006).<\/em><\/p>\n

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In 26-year-old Curry Barker\u2019s hit movie Obsession, the ironically named Bear (Michael Johnston) is a young man who works in a music store and is too shy to ask\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies"],"yoast_head":"\nMovie Review: \u2018Obsession\u2019 - Urban Economy news<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=411\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Movie Review: \u2018Obsession\u2019 - Urban Economy news\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In 26-year-old Curry Barker\u2019s hit movie Obsession, the ironically named Bear (Michael Johnston) is a young man who works in a music store and is too shy to ask\u2026\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=411\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Urban Economy news\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-12T07:39:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=411#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=411\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/be7753cb687f443815cc81e8407f68ad\"},\"headline\":\"Movie Review: \u2018Obsession\u2019\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-12T07:39:46+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=411\"},\"wordCount\":1261,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=411#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/774a842cbdc92eb1e99baae754697300.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Movies\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=411#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=411\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=411\",\"name\":\"Movie Review: \u2018Obsession\u2019 - 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