Obsession 2025/2026 by AverageMansReviews

Obsession 2025/2026 by AverageMansReviews

Review Time

Warning: there is coercive control consequently coercive behaviour consequently sexual assault/self-harm/bodily functions/domestic abuse/animal cruelty/drugs/suicide/ritual/face caving in consequently disfigurement/medical/references to cancer. Additional warning; I will be frank in this content that some people may find incredibly uncomfortable, there will be censored adult language references in this content

Is everyone feeling okay? This film is far from okay yet it is highly praised: briefly; Baron "Bear" Bailey [Michael Johnston:] he works at this music store, he has fancied one of his co-workers and friends for some time her name is Nikki Freeman [Inde Navarrette:] she is a novelist that is going to be leaving town soon, because she is struggling with her novel, I am paraphrasing here/but the sentiment is correct of; to write about life, you need to experience life,  Bear has tried and failed many times for whatever reason to tell her his feelings, he has already purchases this mystical item "One Wish Willow." So as a complete penis he makes the wish; that she falls madly in love with him, which I am sure nothing will go wrong.

Generally speaking: as it relates to the storyline/script, character developments and pretty much everything else; I hate the premise of this movie;It is just manure, I find it incredibly ironic that over these modern times we talk about the dangers of coercive control consequently, behaviour or/and in this case consequently in essence sexual assault and how bad it is, then we have this movie that comes out and instead of condemning it for not using one but all three and not only that visual harm to animals and other people of it really graphic nature and recommending it to other people and saying I am paraphrasing here broadly with it is brilliant.

I mean I have just realised that this film has all this nasty garbage, but has the audacity to stop at showing no period sex, which based on the premise of this film would have probably happened based on she wants his affection all the time, but it is perfectly fine to watch herself defecate and harm herself. I am not directly being sick or twisted; my point being is that I do find it, ever so slightly comical that this film would draw the line there; but everything else is just fine.

But I digress; what are we saying as a society when all of these bad things happen in this movie, we give it preys, but as a society broadly speaking we condemn it; this sends out mixed messages; I'd prefer to believe that; art imitates life, so that being said am I surprised that people have given this film high praise?... Not really, I should have known better to be honest... based on I need to keep this in mind; that the landscape as a society is always changing, which I have always known that, but the speed of how public perception changes on a week to week basis nowadays. The framework and pacing of this 109 minutes film is deliberately designed to be slow, because by doing so you can intensify the atmosphere or/and let it go to create the illusion of potentially impending scary moments or not, it depends on if they want to screw with your head at that time or not; so this is all good. 

Action and art; from these two perspectives only; their head smashing sequence from an action and simultaneous art perspective is; rapid anger and highly creative with the ending result

Character developments and performances; the character developments are basically a paint by numbers out late on what they were going for here, on a quick side note I can't stand the fact that our lead role was asked does he basically fancy her and like a coward he says no, I would have preferred them not to have this bit in, because then it works much more palatable if he did it under the fear of rejection and didn't want to leave things between them awkwardly. Likewise predominantly the performance are a reflection of their character types, but the only one that stands out for me is; Inde Navarrette as Nikki Freeman: she puts in so much energy, enthusiasm and blend in with being deeply psychotic and not actually being in control; you get this masterful performance.

This film receives: 2/10, this film is poor; yes I even added on an additional mark based on Freeman's performance, but there is so much about this film I don't like is that there is a massive counterbalance thing going on here, the person I watched some of this content with also did not think too highly of this project, they found it appalling and in bad taste; they did say that Freeman deserves an Oscar for his performance, I would agree that she deserves to be in the mix at minimum and there are ongoing sound effects around the closing credits to a certain point. Somehow this film has at this point [when this content was first created] already received quite a few awards in one way or another; 7 Winners which include but not limited to Astra Midseason Movie Awards 2026 Astra Midseason Award Best Actress Inde Navarrette and 11 Nominees would also include but not limited to from the same award ceremony/event Best Director Curry Barker Runner-up.