The setup of the new film Obsession is a familiar one, but hear me out.
Yes, guy makes a wish, wish comes true, things go bad.
But what sets this twisted little movie apart is just how bad things go and how.
Now, much of that badness is rooted not in special effects but in the astonishing, terrifying performance of its lead actress, who is playing a woman so desperately in love that she becomes a danger to.
Well, pretty much everything.
I'm Glenn Weldon.
Joining me today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is Jordan Cruciola.
She's a writer and producer and the host of the podcast Feeling Seen on Maximum Fun.
Hey, Jordan.
So glad to be back on our summer kickoff horror run that we're on right now.
Yeah, it's a theme.
Also with us is Monica Castillo, film critic for the AV Club.
Welcome back, Monica.
So thrilled to be here for this one and many more spooky, scary movies.
We're running it back with this trio.
The gang's all here.
All right, let's do this.
So if you are a comedy nerd...
You've probably had Curry Barker come across your feet at some point in the past few years.
He's part of a comedy duo that made viral sketches on TikTok and YouTube.
Obsession is the first theatrical feature he's written and directed.
And while it's creepy as hell, he's also brought his serious comedy chops to the mix.
Obsession stars Michael Johnston as Bear, a schlubby music store employee who's in love with his co-worker Nikki, played by Indy Navarrete.
He can't summon the courage to confess his feelings, so he makes a wish on a cheap magic gag gift called a one-wish willow for her to fall in love with him.
Nikki does fall in love with him, but that love soon proves to be the kind that is jealous and all-consuming and that comes with a body count.
Obsession is in theaters now.
Jordan, kick us off.
What'd you think?
Really, really liked this one.
Really impressed by it.
I understand it was a pretty modestly budgeted movie and looks excellent.
It's a beautiful looking nighttime horror movie.
These people must not have slept in the night for a couple of weeks on end making this.
There's just so much about this movie that really fantastically skewers the tropes of like the longing rom-com behavior.
Best friend guy.
And like the sort of dream sassy, not quite manic pixie dream girl, but sort of like vision of this boy from right next to her.
Who's been longing for her.
And it just, it sends up.
So many tropes that I have talked about ad nauseum, about the things in movies that conditioned women to expect less and accept bare minimum.
He made a really good movie that on the surface is just going to make you so upset.
Like, I'll watch this again in three to five years.
Right.
But if you want to like really engage with like a metatextual read on like how narrative indoctrination got us to this point in pop culture, it can also be that.
So it's working on a lot of levels.
And like you said, indie Navarrete, oh my God.
Yeah.
We'll talk more about her.
But first, Monica, big picture thoughts.
What'd you make of this? three to five years.
I've already revisited this twice.
I loved it so much.
Oh, God.
Oh, that's a lot.
I really enjoyed it.
I was also really surprised because I wasn't familiar with Curry Barker's stuff heading into it.
Me neither.
And so this is my first sort of like jumping into the deep end of his work.
And wow, I was just so impressed just the way that he uses shadows and darkness.
But also there's a lot of color Right.
Thank God.
I was so, so impressed with Indy.
I know we're going to get to her in a bit, but wow, this is her show all the way.
She owns this movie.
She rocks.
I'm so, so thrilled for her.
And I can't wait to see what she does next.
In addition to Curry.
Absolutely.
I mean this thing starts off, it hits some very familiar narrative beats, the Tales from the Dark Side, the Twilight Zone, a tidy little morality play.
So we expect it to hit those beats.
It does take its time, I think it's fair to say, in the early going.
It's doing that for a reason.
It wants you to invest in these characters.
It wants these characters to register.
So you're there and you're nodding along.
And you're thinking this has to happen and this has to happen and this has to happen.
I know the arc of this.
But then there starts to be these little moments of weirdness, of just idiosyncrasy, of little bits of texture that set it apart, that signal to you okay, we're not just going to hit the beats.
We reserve the right to find these little pockets of weirdness.
Individuality, I guess.
And then they start piling up those moments, and it's stuff you haven't seen before.
We call them tropes, but it's making fun of romantic tropes.
It's also creating tropes.
Right now they're horror triggers because they haven't been done to death.
Like there's a scene where she carries a flower pot.
It's so creepy.
One of the most unsettling deployments of a flower pot you could possibly come across.
It's so weird because that's new.
And you know how, like whenever you see anybody in a horror film, do the upside down crab walking from The Exorcist.
Right.
It's creepy as hell.
It's always creepy as hell.
It's unnatural.
But your brain automatically slots it into this kind of preexisting groove that The Exorcist carved.
And you're like, OK, this movie is carving some new slots.
Yeah.
There's like cousins to that thing that happened that are really effective.
Yeah.
And I don't want to – we're going to talk about Indy Navarrete but, like you, have to give over so much of your pet project, your vision.
Yeah.
To give one actor to have this entire movie rest on her shoulders.
Like this movie doesn't work without this bravura, absolutely fearless performance.
Let's talk about Indy Navarrete here as Nikki, an interesting jumping off is, like the one thing I have heard Curry Barker say I didn't even seek it out.
It just popped up in front of me was he initially wrote her.
It's just like a pure little sweet girl that, like you, couldn't deny how sweet and wonderful she was.
And the way he said it was.
And the reason why I don't want to read anymore is because he was, like you know, just a girl that any guy could fall in love with.
But what Indy brought to the part was this sassiness, was this edge, this sharpness.
Because when I was watching it...
I was like, oh, she's slightly heckling guys.
She's giving as good as she gets.
She's giving money to the unhoused person.
But the moment she had me was when she looks at the bartender.
She's like, oh, yeah, close it out, babe.
I was like, okay, this girl's a nuclear bomb.
And he saw that and he embraced it so smart to work with this actor and collaborate her Right.
Mm-hmm. wild decision that Indy makes, that Nikki makes as the movie builds and builds and builds.
And the amount of just like horror inside the performance and the way that the movie tips us off to horror that is going on behind the scenes within the Nikki.
I thought was really smartly deployed.
I mean, put her on the cover of Andy Fair.
New now, next.
Like, this girl has arrived.
I really agree with Jordan's assessment of like the collaboration between Indy Navarrete and Curry Barker, because I think there's a level of trust that an actor has to put in her director.
There must have been like, we are mind melding on this.
You have to.
I mean because she goes in some really dark places and as well as some really just strange wild places, places in terms of just the intensity of her performances.
I've seen it twice, so I've seen an audience react to it a few times now.
And one of the parts that gets most people to jump is actually when she's laying next to Bear in bed and she screams at him at the top of her lungs to stay, to just keep him in bed.
I was wondering if you were going to say that part.
If there's a second of this movie, like some really graphically horrific things happen in this movie.
Oh yeah, plenty.
But like the thing that has pierced my nightmares is that screen.
Her eyes are closed.
It looks like she could be asleep, but he's barely inching away from her, about to leave the bed.
And she just yells that, stay!
Octaves, I didn't know possible.
And then everybody winces in the theater.
Like, oh my God, now you're scared for Bear.
Now things are really looking uncertain.
And it just crescendos from there.
Like she not only holds that intensity, she keeps building on it.
I'm just so impressed.
I mean, you do get that sense of who her character was beforehand.
You know, like you were saying, Jordan, like the sort of soft, gentle person, but also, you know, a sass and like the jokes, but also the care and everything.
The tenderness and vulnerability.
You get a sense of her relationship with Bear beforehand, her dynamics in the group ahead of that.
And that's all within just a few minutes of meeting her.
That rolls so quick.
It's really efficient how they handle that establishing.
And when things change, it is a marked difference.
Her body language changes.
The way she holds her head is different.
I also really love, Curry Barker does a lot of backlighting with her.
Once she kind of falls under the spell and you don't see her face and you don't see any part of her.
It's just her body is just her outline.
And she carries herself in such a different way that you already know like oh, this is not the Nikki that we met at the beginning of the movie.
This is not the Nikki that we saw five seconds ago.
But it is a way to show that Bear has fallen for this idea of her exactly.
It's not really her fullness, it's not who she is, It is the idea of her and he settles for that.
And for a while there, it looks like things might be okay, but then clearly things go horribly awry.
Yeah, and both director and actor are fully in control of the stuff.
That's happening is funny and horrifying.
But there is, as you both touched on, there is tragedy here.
I mean, the last time we got together to talk about Hokum –
Talked about how you know horror works on a metaphorical level.
Takes metaphors, makes them literal.
Here we're hitting on issues of consent at kind of an oblique angle, but we are definitely steering right into toxic relationships and mental illness.
And it doesn't feel cheap or exploitative, because those moments you're talking about And it's horrifying in a way that has nothing to do with blood and guts and violence.
It has everything to do with sudden, horrifying empathy, right?
And it's both director and really the actor who really bring that home.
Michael Johnston, I hated Bear, God, so much.
And I'm inclined to hate Bear.
I probably dislike Bear more than like the average Bear.
But I was still afraid for him.
Like what he was doing was like there was that oh, I'm just a passenger in my own story energy the entire time where, my God, ladies and gentlemen, the amount of opportunities that Bear is given to step up and just be honest.
And just like be somebody in that moment who will take responsibility for their feelings.
Be a grown up.
Yeah.
It was just like by the fourth time I looked at my friend who went to this with me and I just went.
I am going to explode.
I like, whispered it in his ear.
What the performance results in is such a perfect foil for what Nikki is doing.
This little ensemble does a very good job of not competing with each other.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, he's a ham who are having all this success Curry Barker Kane Parsons, the Philippo brothers that they are getting pulled out from a new pipeline, even if the kind of result of that pipeline is a bunch of people who look the same as the people who came before the new pipeline.
I appreciate at least that young people are being given the chance repeatedly.
We can handle budgets.
We can handle crews.
We know what we're doing.
You can't talk down to us and tell us that we don't know how, because your studio-sanctioned notion of what a professional filmmaker looks like is stuck at this strange level of experience that's impossible for people to get, and just runs people out of the industry before they're allowed to have this kind of success.
Yeah.
I mean this is a really good point Jordan, because I mean the pipeline used to be.
You go to film school, you spend a few years as a PA running coffee or schlepping a van around LA.
Now it can be.
Be funny.
Be smart.
Stand out on your own.
Get noticed.
Get an opportunity.
Knock it out of the park like this guy did.
Imagine if the world is a meritocracy forever. for a moment.
Imagine if that happens.
And I'm encouraged.
I don't know about this industry just yet.
But it's nice when it happens.
It's nice when it happens.
So much of Shiva Baby is the youthful energy of Senate and Seligman collaborating together.
And they got that right out of NYU.
And there's something to be said for yeah, when you have your eye on the ball of a certain kind of emotionally racked experience of like hey, I'm right in this phase of my life.
So let me tell you all about it in this really fun way.
We should give opportunities to that younger generational perspective to do so before they've like processed it and they're looking back and they're like reflecting on their time 10, 15 years ago.
This movie feels so immediately of like a heartbreak or a longing.
That's why it's such a brick to the face, as one could say.
Perhaps I'm not sure I have the right take on this, so check me on this.
But I think this movie is really smart about its premise, which is a guy wishes a woman loved him.
He wishes she loved him more than anyone in the world but he's still just making a wish, right?
And it is a wish that removes consent.
But he doesn't know that because he lives in our world, where wishes don't work.
Wishes don't do anything.
It is not a moral transgression to wish something.
The script knows that.
So it builds in for him those moments you mentioned of actual, really acute moral failure where he could.
This script gives him so many opportunities to tell Nikki how he feels in the real world before the wish happens.
Yes.
He doesn't do it.
Thankfully so.
Uh-huh.
He could realize what he's done and decide to end it, but he doesn't.
He bargains.
He normalizes in those moments where he destroys everything.
I think what's really fascinating about this it's not the he transgresses, so he gets his comeuppance.
That's not the classic horror infrastructure here.
It's...
He fails to take accountability for what is essentially an accident.
That's the thing.
That's the moral transgression.
And I think that's much chewier.
It's much more interesting.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
And I think Cooper Tomlinson has a really great moment where he kind of calls out Michael Johnson's character for continuing this sort of sham relationship that develops.
And he's like...
Things aren't going right and it kind of looks like you're taking advantage of her.
He's actually having the conversation that it's really uncomfortable and we probably don't see enough of in media.
So it's actually kind of surprising that there is another voice that's kind of...
At least calling him out for the fact that he is writing this coattails of the wish, even though he's freaked out by it.
Doesn't fully agree with it.
But hey, at the moment, it kind of benefits him and it works for him.
So he's going to enjoy that.
There's that moment that I think the first teaser maybe that was put out for the movie is Bear in the car calling the hotline for One Wish Willow.
And he's like, can you take it back?
I'd like I want to change my wish.
And they're just like, yeah.
Hi.
Like, how may I help you?
Bear's struggling with what he has done and he's trying to enumerate it clumsily.
And the guy says to him, just because you chose this for her doesn't make it less real.
And that I don't know.
That line just hit me so hard, like the bigness of it and the small preciseness of it was just so good.
And that notion of like hey man, just because you made, like you could just hear like a buddy telling that to him too, and like a in like over a beer being like hey dude bro, just because you pick this for her, doesn't make it fake, or something like that.
That notion of that socialized encouragement of how you can coax someone or coerce someone towards something And tell yourself you're still a good person the entire time.
And, getting to that, what Glenn said about the inability to just take responsibility and the number of opportunities that he has to do.
So that one line, I was like...
That was fire.
Like, Curry Barker slayed it right there.
Really the stuff about the wish and the gimmickry of the wish is some of the funniest parts in this movie.
Oh, it's so good.
That is where you can see the chops from his comedy troupe kind of kicking in.
If you're a comedian like me, you've been seeing this guy around for a long time.
I feel this kind of parasocial pride where I feel like, you know.
I told the director this the other day.
I was like, I'm just so happy for you as a millennial woman.
I'm just like, I feel so proud of you.
I get this.
I get this.
My indie band has just gone mainstream and I'm not mad at it.
I'm like, yes, more people should be listening to this band.
Well deserved.
Well, I mean, I think we agree this movie hits on writing.
It hits on directing and it has at its center an unforgettable horror performance.
Scratch that. an unforgettable performance period that is really worth checking out.
So you got your weekend planned.
Up next, what is making us happy this week?
Now it is time for our favorite segment of this week and every week.
What is making us happy this week?
Monica, what is making you happy this week?
So about a year ago I embarked on this really long project to finally get around to reading Robert Caro's The Power Broker.
And I am so happy to report that about a year later, I finally finished it.
The power burger.
It's the way that works.
Believe the hype.
It's actually really good.
It's also helped me appreciate a little bit more of my city's history.
But it also has opened the door to, you know, bigger conversations about how policy affects day to day life.
And especially as, you know, midterm elections are ramping up.
Attention to the local elections is just as important as it is the broader, bigger picture.
So I've also appreciated following the Instagram account segregation by design, which has a lot of videos kind of explaining Robert Moses's approach to public policy and what he did throughout the city.
So if you're not into reading over a thousand page book and don't want to carry it around, there are little shorter videos.
Learn a little bit about that whole side of the story, of both New York City history but also the effect of urban renewal throughout cities across the country.
That's great.
That is Robert Caro's The Power Broker, a book that has also been sitting on my virtual bedside, for I'm going to go for a decade now.
Is this thing like the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica?
It's definitely a doorstop.
Thank you very much.
Jordan, what is making you happy this week?
Well, what is making me happy this week?
I'm really enjoying Margot's Got Money Troubles on Apple TV as I sit in anticipation for the return of Silo Season 3 on Apple TV.
I am a sucker for Elle Fanning.
I am so happy to see Michelle Pfeiffer.
And I just have found the ways in which it handles these, very today and yet timeless, emotional slings and arrows of this young woman.
And there's just been so many moments where I, somebody who has not created an OnlyFans account, to Yeah, absolutely.
Isn't going to be the same going forward as it was in your past and like the heartbreak and the loss of that.
So, yeah, I just think it's doing so.
And Greg Kinnear has made me cry like three times.
Greg Kinnear, the most every man that has ever every man, a blessing that he is.
For like a 40-minute dramedy that watching every episode, I feel like it's packing in so much.
And I'm just really loving it.
It's making me very happy.
Thank you very much.
That is Margo's Got Money Troubles on Apple TV.
And we've got a terrific episode about that very show, which you can find a link to in our episode description.
What's making me happy this week?
Legends is a British series on Netflix that's kind of, what if the Brits did The Wire or Task?
I've been wondering what this is.
I've seen it pop up on my display.
Okay.
Yeah, it's about a small task force of customs officials who go undercover to infiltrate and bring down some drug gangs in the UK in the early 90s.
And the title Legends refers to the false identities that they have to adopt to go undercover.
And it's about the physical and emotional costs of living undercover, you know, and doing bad things.
And there is a really healthy British cynicism that keeps course correcting every time you think it's about to slop over into some of the kind of Pat moralization that many American cop shows do.
It reminds you of The Wire, because it's very clear that the thing driving all of these anti-drug efforts is politicians like Margaret Thatcher, who want to score points and improve their reelection chances.
And Steve Coogan plays the guy training the recruits, and he kind of runs the ship.
And this is one of those roles where he's playing it straight.
And he's also playing a tough guy.
You sold me on Steve Coogan.
Is this a period piece then set in the era of Maggie?
90s.
It's set in the early 90s, yeah.
And it's really, it's suspenseful.
It moves along.
That is Legends on...
Netflix, and that is what is making me happy this week.
And that brings us to the end of our show.
Jordan Cruciola, Monica Steele, thanks for being here.
We'll have you back the next time.
There is a really great little indie horror.
I look forward to it every time.
Oh yes, let's keep this going.
Great to have you.
And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio.
And you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free.
So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash happy hour or visit the link in our show notes.
This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and Mike Katziff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy.
And hello, Kim, improvise our theme music.
Thank you all for listening to Pop Culture.
Happy Hour from NPR are.
I am glenn weldon and we will see you all next week.
