“Wonder Woman 1984” is a weird movie.
The film begins with Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) wishing on a magic artifact for the person she loves to come back to life. But instead of bringing him back to life, the artifact goes the long way around, and makes him possess another, unwilling man’s body. So Wonder Woman has her romance, and a lot of sex, without ever getting one participant’s consent, and the movie never reckons with how completely horrifying that is.
Curry Barker’s supernatural nightmare “Obsession” is a better version of “Wonder Woman 1984.” You couldn’t call it a remake but it’s certainly playing with the same narrative toys.
The film stars Michael Johnston as Bear, a hapless music store employee with a crush on his co-worker, Nikki (Inde Navarette). Maybe she likes him too, maybe she doesn’t, but he’s too insecure to make his move. In an act of desperation Bear whips out a novelty toy called a “One Wish Willow” and wishes that Nikki would love him more than anyone else in the world.
It works. Instantly. Bear can’t believe his good fortune. Nikki adores him, respects him, supports him, wants to spend all her time with him, has sex with him and even makes horrifying altars with the corpse of his dead cat, which he’s a lot less into. There are moments when Nikki suddenly changes personality and looks shocked and horrified at what her life has become. But within seconds she always goes back to “normal,” where she’s so deliriously co-dependent that when Bear’s not home she just stands in one place, waiting for him to return, soiling herself because she’s nothing without him.
Lots of stories are about getting what you wished for and wishing you hadn’t. If the wishmaster is evil, like in the “Wishmaster” movies, the story is about innocent people getting tricked. But when the wisher is evil, or has even one evil thought, the story is about how despicable they are.
“Obsession” begins with a wish that could not be rationalized in a world where wishes were real, and Barker’s vicious screenplay makes a convincing case that even fantasizing about wishing someone else would love you, even though they don’t want to, is a moral failing whether your wish came true or not. How could you — yes, you — be so self-absorbed that you would alter the fabric of reality just to remove someone else’s free will?
When you watch “Wonder Woman 1984” from the perspective of the hapless victim, you experience that same visceral shudder, even though that film is oblivious to its own creepiness. “Obsession,” on the other hand, knows how profoundly wrong this is. And in Barker’s eagerness to make “Obsession” as scary as possible — and it’ll scare the bejeezus out of you — he makes uncomfortable choices. By telling the story from Bear’s perspective he invites you to sympathize with a person who’s done terrible things and, at least initially, is eager to profit from his sins. When Bear finally suffers as well, we’re invited to witness his plight from his perspective and pity him.
But it’s a nightmare of his own making so eventually we need to throw up our hands and say “screw him.” He’s not the real victim here. Bear is eventually horrified and guilt-ridden but that’s too little too late. “Obsession” argues that Bear deserves to suffer even when he thinks he doesn’t, but Nikki did nothing to deserve what we gradually learn is a fate worse than death. It’s genuinely grotesque watching her watch herself, possessed by an interloping spirit, do things she would never do, with a person she doesn’t love, who claims to love her but violates her mind and body.
Barker’s script gets away with a lot because it’s a horror movie and we’re supposed to feel uncomfortable. His filmmaking dials the discomfort up to 11. And then 12. And then 13. Taylor Clemens’ cinematography rides a very fine line, just above absolute darkness, so we barely make out the sheen in “Nikki’s” eyes within the shadows. It’s otherworldly, even though it probably won’t register as well outside a theater, in apartments that don’t have blackout curtains. Even so, this murkiness mirrors the film’s ethical grotesquery, and Barker’s editing smartly switches between disquieting long shots and sharp, piercing shocks.
Johnston is incredibly pathetic as Bear, which is probably the only way to play this character and evoke any emotional response besides rage. His portrayal of sanity dwindling deeper and deeper into nothingness would be perfect in a Lovecraft adaptation — which is fitting, since “Obsession” also has a lot in common with Lovecraft’s short story “The Thing on the Doorstep.”
But it’s Navarette’s movie and she takes, even more fittingly, full possession. She’s playing a multi-layered character, quite literally, and keeps all those facets alive, in conflict, in terror, in violence, in sorrow, with a combination of absolute stillness and facial contortions that would make Jim Carrey self-conscious about his abilities.
“Obsession” is a mean movie. It’s a hurtful movie. I’m not entirely convinced it’s a brilliant one. It’s hard to tell whether the humor is dark or merely cruel, and the world Barker creates is oddly unexplored, since everyone gets a wish and only this guy’s life is out of the ordinary. (Then again it’s 2026 and everything is terrible, so maybe “One Wish Willows” are to blame.) But Barker understands, if nothing else, that everything he’s doing is wrong and people need to suffer for trying to enjoy it. And if that includes the audience, well … it’s no wonder.
