Movie Review: Obsession

 

Michael's Movie Grade: C+

A well-made but incredibly predictable horror movie. 

In this film, a young man has a massive crush on a close female friend but is too scared to tell her. One day he comes across an object called a One Wish Williow, which is said to grant one specific wish. Not believing that this will work he uses one and wishes that his friend loved him more than anyone else in the whole world. The wish comes true and at first seems like a dream come true, but her obsession with him gets darker and more twisted. 

The basic storyline is a great twist on the classic monkey paw storyline. It is instantly relatable as many of us might have wished for the same thing he did, only to regret making the wish shortly after. And if we ended up in the same situation he is in, we too would try to shift the blame from ourselves and try to live out our fantasy regardless of how creepy things become. That is the truly disturbing thing about this film. We see darker parts of ourselves that we often try to deny or suppress brought to the surface. This movie also delivers some great scares. The jump scares here are incredibly effective, and the first one definitely made me jump out of my seat. Many scenes revolving around the friend turned girlfriend, Nikki, are legitimately disturbing in the best way possible (though the scenes revolving around the cat were unnecessary). 

However, there are many things that keep this from being the great movie it should have been. The main fault is its predictability. You figure out how this film is going to end well before it happens. The last act can start to make an audience member grow impatient as it takes its time to get to this very predictable ending. Some other scenes that are supposed to be shocking are also incredibly predictable. The movie also tries to inject a lot of dark humor into its storyline, but this humor is very rarely funny. I also felt the whole movie could have been stronger if we knew more about who the main female character was before the wish was made. This could have given the movie a much stronger emotional connection. 

I enjoyed this movie, but I still don't think it fully lived up to the hype around it.