Obsession | Curry Barker
I’m seeing something interesting about how people discuss this movie, which is a lot of “Ahem. Well, as you know, I am extremely media literate and let me tell you that this real villain of this movie is Baron, the feckless abuser.” Then a lot of people go on to make the case that Baron is monstrous from beginning to end and top to bottom and that this is the true skeleton key of the film.
But I think what you’re describing there is a worse a movie. Obsession is really good because Baron (I just…refuse to call him “Bear,” it makes me nauseous) could be your best friend. Or he could be you. The anxiety of the film is designed to play on your own fears of relationships.
Yes, there are key moments in the movie where he is forced to confront what he’s done and chooses the most self-serving path. But for most of the movie, what he’s doing is choosing the path of least resistance. He has cognitive dissonance about the situation and he does some mental flips to reconcile everything in his own mind.
That’s not a secret movie monster. That’s everyone. And while Baron is the villain of Nikki’s story, he’s not just the protagonist of this story. He *is* the hero, upon whom it’s incumbent to either find a solution or for whom failure would mean ultimate tragedy.
And he succeeds! He undoes his mistake, even as Barker and crew give him one more moment of cowardice when he almost pukes up the pills.
Baron does many shitty things in this movie that lead up to a point where he does make choices that are arguably irredeemable. A big part of the horror of Obsession is that all sorts of people in their early twenties are vulnerable to this kind of moral failure. Luckily, for most of us, it usually doesn’t lead to actual lifelong trauma for our crushes, the death of our closest friends, and life’s ultimate cancellation.
But it probably dose make your skin crawl when you watch a guy dig himself into a cycle of codependency. That’s almost as scary as the weird makeup on Inde Navarrette in the middle of the night, what the hell was up with that??
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