For Bear, the first sign of Nikki’s metamorphosis comes when she whirls round at her front door after he drops her home. Ten seconds earlier she had said, “O.K., good-night,” and walked up her path, whereupon he had fished a fat-teaspoon-shaped metallic gizmo out of its box, snapped it in half, like a cylinder holding the fateful nuclear codes, and made his wish. “I wish Nikki would love me.” Earlier still the filmmakers set the signals alongside the track. She is cool on him; he pines after her. A minor drama which will seem daft in years to come.
“Obsession” (Universal), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse, is an ultra-low budget film which hovers between a home movie (of the TikTok variety) and a big-studio release. (Universal is the distributor; “Obsession” was made by three production companies on a reported budget of $750,000.) The camerawork is dark. Nikki’s face is often not lit at all. Bear’s apartment, in which most of the action takes place at night, is lit by bedside lamps. When I left the cinema I realised that I hadn’t noticed the windows at all. The film’s narrative, characters, and internal consistency will deconstruct.
But at first “Obsession” feels like yet another sloppy, irrational, high-drama-low-quality movie. Then, suddenly, at that line “I wish Nikki would love me,” the filmmakers flick the switch in their audience’s brains for grim hyper-alertness. The dopamine hits. And we admire what they have achieved with $750,000. It is so, so simple: a nightmare, yes, but based on the single premise that the “one-wish-willow” device has the power to transmutate Bear’s erotic dream into reality.
Bear tests his chat-up lines on best-pal Ian. “I feel like I’m coming apart,” he says. “I think about you all the time, Nikki. You’re in every song I listen to…” and so on. All or nothing. He’s the broody one and Ian is the classic jock. “Don’t tell her she’s too good,” Ian says. “You’ll lose her…Have you, like, ever flirted with Nikki?” Bear hasn’t. But then the film moves to his apartment and treats us to a preview of what is to come: Bear’s cat has taken an overdose. Bear shrugs it off and meets Ian, Nikki and another female friend at a bar after work. Nikki has a fantasy too: to leave her lowly cashier’s job in a record store and write a novel. “I feel like I need a big life change,” she says. “I need to feel love if I’m going to bring the story to life.” “You the only person I really get to talk to about this stuff,” she says to Bear. “You’re not a complete brick wall.” On the way home, Bear has his chance; “Do you like me?” Nikki asks him. “If you do, now is the time to tell me.” But he fluffs it: “I think we’re good friends,” he says.
When Bear risks the “one-wish willow” only the audience is in on it. One by one the characters will betray each another as they flail around to fix Nikki. She isn’t such a “special friend” after all. The free banter darkens into sullen, suspicious silence at a boozy house party. By now the terrible rom-com has intensified into a gripping horror. But still, we don’t know. Could it be a dream?
The filmmakers play with us. One minute, Bear is afraid to invite himself into the house; the next, Nikki eggs him on. “I mean I did just lose my cat, Bear,” she says. Say, what? “Oh, wait,” she says, “I mean you lost your cat. I’m so sorry…Why don’t you come inside and we can have some drinks and talk about your cat?” The camera moves in and the chords flatten a half-semitone as Nikki sways in and out of sanity. “I’m acting so weird”; “I don’t know if I can be alone all night now”; “My dad’s dying”; “I’m sorry I was weird”; “Can you sleep with me?” As she strips off her top, he turns away. It’s a sweet little move. But later he says, “You made me feel like I did something you didn’t like.” Did he “take advantage” of her? She weeps and weeps in the tricky light. Inde Navarrette, playing Nikki, of whom the film demands everything, makes a trademark of freezing her facial expression for a couple of seconds too long. This is particularly effective when the filmmakers demands a wedding-album grin or cartoon-clown downturned mouth. When it comes, her shrieking is of slasher-flick quality but pivots to “hi-honey”-style Americana without a breath. The switch is fabulous.
Next morning, Bear, played by an multi-layered Michael Johnston, rewrites events for Ian. “I can’t believe the crazy f night I just had, dude,” he says. “I think she’s having, like, a mental breakdown.” “She wanted me to cuddle and sleep with her.” “Do you think she was on molly again?” Ian asks. (The audience judges this to be unlikely.) But Bear is dishonest. He knows the reason for her behaviour all too well. Mr Johnston’s face develops a narcissistic serenity as Nikki unravels. It is the opposite of what we would expect. He is powerless, impotent, crushed by the heavy burden of his selfish secret. He and Nikki are locked into their perilous duel: he’s guilty and she’s possessed.
“Obsession” is demanding to pull off. Sure, there is a stumble or two (how did Bear’s cat take a child-proof bottle of pills out of the fridge, open it, and overdose?) and there is too much profanity. But it is one of the finer movies of the year.
When Bear picks up the “one-wish willow” he worries that, like other objects sold by the crystal store in which he finds it, it’s a scam. “Well,” the shopkeeper says, “they’re kind of collectibles.” Bear hands over the money. “You could write a review?” the shopkeeper says as Bear turns away and closes the door behind him.
Adam Poole
21st May 2026
If you are interested in viewing this screening, please book your tickets here
