Obsession - My Take (Spoilers)

 

CW: Pet death, self harm

I'm going to say I'm not the right audience for this film. It's really geared towards the same audience as "Iron Lung".

As I did not like "Iron Lung", I didn't like this movie either.

The premise is a fairly standard one and it's either an official or unofficial tagline: "Be Careful What You Wish For". There's nothing wrong with the premise. It's a good premise. But if you know the premise you know the entirety of the story.

This one has the more common variant of wishing for someone to love them. This is never a good idea. Anyone who has read/watched these knows it's a bad idea and why. This follows in that track. Imposing your wish on someone else leads to them being, shall we say, conflicted.

I will say that this movie does a decent job of hauling the story through beginning to end. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

This movie concerns a group of four friends: two guys and two girls. Because I don't care enough to look up and continue to try to remember their names I'll be using placeholers.

Guy 1 likes Girl 2 and is too hesitant to tell her. He's concerned that he'll lose the friendship that they've built over the years. Guy 2 is helping/pushing him to do it, except not at their weekly bar trivia night because he likes that night and doesn't want it to get weird. Great friend, I know.

Guy 1 goes home and finds his cat dead. The poor thing got into his meds somehow and that was that. He picks up the scattered pills and puts them back in the bottle, back in the medicine cabinet. *cough cough Chekov's Gun cough* He then puts the cat in a garbage bag and scrubs the floor where it was. Lovely.

Talking to Girl 1 on the phone she tells him she dropped her crystal necklace down the drain. They're casually chatting, as friends do. He goes to the local metaphysical shop (because I honestly do think every city has at least one of them - we do) and the uninterested clerk points him to a display of crystal necklaces. While he's trying to figure out one to buy he sees a display of "One Willow Wish" for $6.99. Abandoning the crystal necklace idea he buys one.

He doesn't want to go to trivia night but also won't tell his close friend group "Hey, my cat died today and I don't feel like going out for trivia" so he goes. He tries to tell Girl 1 what he's feeling and Guy 2 confession-blocks him. Guy 2 is a bit of a dick. Girl 2 is background at this point.

Guy 1 drives Girl 1 home. He's on edge and forgets to give her the wish that he was going to do. Instead of doing that he reads the box while she's walking from the car to her house. Break to get your wish, one wish per person. He makes the fateful wish for her to love him more than anyone else in the world. Oo. Mistake.

Now we get into her working through the mental changes as the wish settles in. She's swinging between herself and what he wants. Or at least what he said. They end up at his place for a platonic night. He gets up and looks at not-Reddit to find out if the wish thing is true. He gets mixed answers. It's not-Reddit. That happens.

M'kay. I'll tighten this up. She gets more and more obsessed with him and he realizes that obsession is, quite frankly, terrifying. She harms herself a few times as she tries to get him to say that he loves her as much as she loves him, being jealous, etc. The other friends are concerned.

One scene that stands out is when he goes into work and she doesn't. She stands, staring at the door with a rather creepy smile, and it's quite obvious that she pees herself while she simply stands. When Guy 1 gets home he finds her there and she's vomited on herself for some reason. He keeps looking down, saying he'll clean up the mess, and as he takes her to the bathroom to clean up they show that she's voided from all three holes as she stood there.

Oh. And she does things with the dead cat. Because obsession.

Guy 1 calls the number on the box to find out if he can change his wish. Nope. The only way to break the wish is for him to die because the wish centers on him. He tucks that one away.

Girl 2 gets him out of the house in the middle of the night to talk to him. She tells him that Guy 2 and Girl 1 have been hooking up occasionally for the last couple of years, while Guy 2 knew Guy 1 was infatuated with her. Then Girl 2 talks around that she's more suited to him. She really is, to be fair.

Girl 1 has followed him and the predictable happens after he leaves the car.

Guy 1 goes back to the store and buys another wish, after a brief moment of not finding them where he expected. He gets one and recognizes the voice from the phone to the new clerk he's talking to. He tries to use the wish but it won't break. It really is one to a customer. He goes to Guy 2 and begs him to make a wish that Guy 1 had never made his wish. Guy 2 shows who he is by wishing for a billion dollars and money starts raining from the ceiling.

Finale! Guy 1 goes home and finds Girl 1 has done .. things to Girl 2. Guy 2 shows up in excitement about his wish and catches a bullet in the forehead for being there. Guy 1 gets away to the bathroom and tries to screw up his courage to use said gun on himself. He can't but eventually does slam down the whole bottle of pills that killed his cat. *cough cough Chekov's Gun cough*

As he's sitting there his face smooths out and he eagerly goes back to Girl 1. She's found the second wish he bought and used it, obviously to make him love her as much as she loves him (her common wailing refrain). Alas, the pills take hold. Because he's dead she's free to remember everything she did while she was under the influence of his wish. Fade to black.

Her using the wish on him was a nice touch. I'll say that.

The acting carries this movie and they do a pretty good job of it. It's not as transcendent as the reviews are trying to say. The actress for Girl 1 does carry the crazy well but she's not a "Scream Queen" as she's being dubbed. It's one movie. The characters all project what they're supposed to project.

As I said earlier, once you know the story you know how it will unfold. The ending can vary and I think they chose a good one for the pace of the movie. It does build nicely and doesn't focus too much on gross things. Too much. But honestly it's not as good as the critics want it to be. But people for whom it's targeted seem to like it.

I have a feeling there's going to be more of these two kinds of YouTube movies in the near future. The two that are out have done oddly well. So we'll see more until the format crashes.