<em>Obsession</em> Knows What the TikTok Generation Fears Most
· The Atlantic
The following contains spoilers for the film Obsession.
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The premise of the hit horror movie Obsession may sound relatable: What if you had a totally debilitating crush on someone but were too afraid to confess your feelings to them? In the early scenes of the director Curry Barker’s feature debut, a 20-something record-store employee named Bear (played by Michael Johnston) can’t work up the nerve to ask out his co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarrette)—even when she demands to know, point-blank, whether he likes her. Instead of confirming that he does and dealing with the consequences, he opts for a different way into her heart. He snaps a magical tchotchke (called a “One Wish Willow”) in half with the hope that Nikki will love him more than anything in the world.
That desire becomes more than Bear ever bargained for. Nikki transforms from a free-spirited girl next-door into a woman possessed by jealousy who duct-tapes Bear’s front door shut, puts flesh from his dead cat into his sandwiches, and lurks in dark corners watching him sleep. She loves Bear above all else, sure, but that “love” comes at the cost of her selfhood. From there, the “Be careful what you wish for” trope is taken to an extreme, dramatizing a particular kind of Gen Z anxiety spiral: the feeling of being trapped by their own social fears.
At 26 years old, Barker is speaking directly to his own generation—the moviegoing Zoomers—by making a meal out of their most pressing interpersonal crises. Obsession doesn’t seem so interested in concerns such as intimate-partner abuse, although it could easily be interpreted as an allegory for it. Instead, Barker uses the story of a boy magically convincing a girl that she’s in love with him as a way to explore social angst. Researchers have scrutinized young people’s supposed aversion to dating, sex, and human connection in general; the idea tends to be that these feelings are exacerbated by the surveillance-state-like world of social media and the instant-gratification culture offered by smartphones. Indeed, people Bear and Nikki’s age sometimes view instances of potential interpersonal friction—asking a friend why they ghosted them, telling a roommate to quit leaving their dirty dishes in the sink—as occasions for immense emotional discomfort; rather than engage, they might be more seduced by the idea of a quick fix, even if that fix is making a wish on a novelty toy.
[Read: The great Gen Z dividing line]
Obsession uses the fear of confrontation to its advantage, translating that anxiety into genuine scares. It begins with Bear sweatily rehearsing his planned declaration of love to Nikki with another friend, hyperconscious of every potential pitfall that could come from being honest with her. Yet later, when Nikki asks him directly wether he likes her, Bear freezes in place, saying nothing. Freaking out in his car as she walks off, he doesn’t even stop to consider whether Nikki would have rejected him—he simply wishes the possibility away. In doing so, he forces her to act against her nature and turns his own life into a nightmare. But at least no one has to be vulnerable or have any hard conversations about their feelings—whew!
In Bear’s defense, the film doesn’t reward honesty either. One pivotal scene has Sarah (Megan Lawless), another of his co-workers, about to tell Bear that she actually likes him. The pair sits together in Sarah’s car to avoid Nikki, who has proved to be dangerously protective about her relationship with Bear. But they’re not hidden well enough; suddenly, Nikki appears with a brick, breaking the window and smashing Sarah’s face against the steering wheel until she’s dead. This and other acts of nihilism show how well Barker understands the neuroses of his own age group: He gets what’s so scary about taking a chance.
Obsession’s willingness to mirror young people’s fears back at them has certainly resonated with its audience. In the three weeks since it debuted, the movie has become a phenomenon: It’s made more than $100 million (on a budget of less than $1 million), and sent viewers home arguing on social media over who the “real villain” is and the nature of Nikki’s possession, as well as what the rules of the One-Wish Willow are in the first place. The film is ripe for the type of close-read analysis that plays well on social media: Is Bear a narcissist aware that he’s torturing the girl he thinks he loves? Is Nikki possessed by an evil, demonic version of herself intent on punishing Bear for his mistake? Or perhaps the real demon is the terror of romantic failure.
[Read: The new auteur of the hallucinated hellscape]
That a film by a 26-year-old director has traveled so well online makes sense. And Barker’s Gen Z sensibility manifests in other ways. Obsession includes more than a few IYKYK tidbits of online culture, seemingly modeling Navarrette’s special-effects makeup after an “uncanny valley” trend, and choosing a song from a popular TikTok audio clip, the Little Dippers’ croony 1960 ballad “Forever,” to play over the credits. Even Barker’s filmmaking background is typical of his generation: He cut his teeth on YouTube, acting in and directing comedic shorts with friends. You can see hints of this experience in his feature debut, in the moments of levity injected between the scares.
Barker’s generation of worriers may continue to fixate on the question of “What’s the worst that could happen?,” but Obsession offers an answer in no uncertain terms. Telling someone else about your feelings can be one of the most terrifying moments of a young person’s life: What if they don’t like you back? What if they like you too much? Maybe acting on it will save you from a world of pain, the film suggests. But at the same time, maybe doing so isn’t worth the risk—maybe it’s safer to stay quiet and keep scrolling.