Obsession Review (And Why Horror Is the Most Honest Genre)

“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”

― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

I finally got to see Obsession, the gigantic horror hit, last night.

Of course I was going to go, because 1. I love horror movies. And 2. It was made for $750000 and made, as of this writing, over $440 million. Any movie that makes so much from so little is automatically interesting.

The review bit: I thought it was very well made, sharply written, occasionally very funny and very touching, solidly acted, and fueled by an insane, powerhouse, must-see performance by Inde Navarrette. 8/10.

(We’re writing bonus posts to celebrate the Kickstarter for our next game, Geneforge 3 - Detonation, doing very well. We still welcome all kind support.)

The movie inspires me to go on about why horror is such an unique, undying genre. It gives a product that no other genre reliably gives: Tolerable Honesty. Being the only person selling a valuable product is a great place to be.

(I will not be including more spoilers than what you would get from the trailer. Actually, the trailer has way, WAY more spoilers. Don’t watch it!!! Just see the movie!!!)

So What’s It About, With Minimal Spoilers?

This awkward guy has been in love with a friend forever, but he can’t work up the courage to tell her. He buys her an old novelty gift that supposedly gives you a wish. Then he gets frustrated and breaks it and wishes she loves him totally. He doesn’t think the magic is real. It is. Hilarity ensues.

Now here’s the thing. Five minutes into the movie, I guessed the sequence of events that would follow, and I was basically totally right. But this is fine. That just let me settle back and see how well the movie was made and enjoy the ride.

What gave me that amazing power? Simple. I am over 50 and see a lot of movies. I’m hard to surprise. (This was also my experience with Midsommar, another horror movie I highly recommend.)

I don’t require surprises. I go see Shakespeare, and I know how all those stories end. It’s just enough to enjoy the craft, man. (I wish this summer could have a huge, big-budget adaptation of some classic work I am intimately familiar with. That’d be cool!)

Also, Obsession gets incredibly creepy at times, but I found it free of gratuitous jump scares. It’s horrifying not because it startles you, but because it’s horrifying. Jump scares are dumb. Real horror goes slow enough to give you time to process just how bad things have gotten. Really making your skin crawl takes time and skill. Jump scares are for hacks.

Anyway, this movie really got under peoples’ skins (including mine) and inspired a bunch of the dreaded Discourse. But for me, it was a testimonial to the unique power of the Horror genre.

So why is horror so awesome, in a way that other genres (sci fi, romance, westerns, fantasy, mystery) can’t be?

Reason 1: Horror Is Honest.

Most genre fiction is generally fueled by wish fulfillment. What is the wish? It’s that we have control over our lives and the ability to affect the world around us.

How do we want to affect the world? Depends on the genre. War stories promise a meaningful struggle (usually victory as well, but meaning is the main product). Romances promise love. Science fiction, even of the dystopian variety, says that we actually get to choose our future and can deal with it when it comes.

Horror stands apart from all other genres on one key way:

Horror is fueled by injustice, by horrible things happening to people who don’t deserve it.

This is a phenomenon that happens in reality, every day. Everyone gets sick. Everyone dies. Wars destroy nations. As your parents probably told you, “Life isn’t fair.”

Do bad things appear in other sorts of genre fiction? Of course. But each genre has a set of general rules and guidelines, all of which indulge the fantasy of an orderly world. Detectives chase villains. Heroes fight evil kings. People have motivations. Things happen for reasons.

Even Game of Thrones, for all its darkness, takes place in a world of rules where we understand why the things that happened happened. We don’t like them, but they are understandable and even predictable, if only in hindsight.

Horror embraces the abandonment of sense. The unreliability of rules. Whatever is most unnerving about our society at any moment? What is really starting to bug people? Scary stories are a human outlet for comprehending and accepting chaos.

(Once the horror came from monsters. Then demons. Then serial killers. Now liminal spaces. Each says something about how people are processing changes in their world and how it scares them.)

The key to horror is senseless death. The machete killer only kills relative innocents. Vampires as well. Zombies kill everyone. Serial killers bring death at random. Horror brings death to all, without fairness, reason, or caring.

Just like real life.

Reason 2: Horror Is Free To Be Morally Ambiguous.

Not always, but far more often than in other genres. Horror is far more free than other genres to introduce characters who live between good and evil.

This is one of the reasons Obsession has stuck with people so hard: It is impossible to truly condemn anyone in it. The protagonist swings wildly between clueless and smart, brave and cowardly. The movie refuses to let you simply dismiss him as a bad guy. Marvel movies aren’t like that.

The villains in so much of horror are complex or impossible to completely dismiss as the Other. Vampires, zombies, and werewolves were all once human, and the cruel dream of restoring them never fades. Frankenstein is tormented by the way he was made. Jack Torrance of the Shining, while very different in the book and movie, is a tormented soul lost to madness in both. (Stephen King is great at this. Carrie and Annie Wilkes are very sympathetic. To a point.)

Observe that while fictional serial killers started out as unambiguously bad, it took about 7 minutes to introduce Dexter, the sensitive, gentle serial killer.

Also when someone does wrong in horror, they are often punished. Yet the punishment, as a rule, is far worse than the crime they committed. If it was otherwise, it wouldn’t be horror. It would be a police procedural or a fairy tale.

This outsize punishment introduces a layer of complexity and tough feelings. Everyone in Obsession gets a far, far worse fate than they deserve. It’s a cruel movie. That’s why it works.

(Horror digs into classic themes in a way that appeals to me. The destruction that comes from seeking revenge is a common one. Another one is the inability to escape your destiny. See: Final Destination.)

Reason 3: But Horror Is Far Enough Away From Reality To Make It Tolerable

So people are complex. Bad things happen to good people. So what? There are a million classics covering that ground, and it’s just depressing anyway.

That’s the magic of horror! It’s FAKE! It’s not real! Wishes don’t exist! The blood is corn syrup! In fact, it’s not just fake. It’s obviously, blatantly fake.

Horror constantly alienates you, keeping an intentional emotional distance. You can face the horror of living a fragile, fallible human life as much as you can handle. Then you can cover your eyes or go out for popcorn.

It’s kind of brilliant, really.

Hollywood product is so sanitized. So predictable. So determined to avoid ordinary humans with their ordinary issues. Instead we get heroes (of the Marvel or ancient Greek variety) looming above us. Death is easily undone or sanitized or heroic. Emotions and morals must be processed through a 2026 filter, to keep us from ever coping with societies and civilizations and moral codes different enough to make us uncomfortable.

For all the silliness of its plot and its microscopic budget, Obsession had more genuine human feeling than the last 10 big budget spectacles I’ve seen put together.

A Quick Example From Obsession

There is one scene in Obsession that really affected me.

It’s near the end of the movie. Two people are sitting in a car having a talk. They know that everything has gone wrong and disaster is coming. Yet they get a rare respite, where they can share a few moments of their old life. It won’t last, but they grab it and enjoy it as much as they can.

I’m sure some people around me were bored, but that bit really affected me. I thought Obsession captured a really delicate, fundamental, human thing there, and I’m glad the movie earned all that money.

A Few Recommendations As I Head Out the Door

Anyway, these are my fleeting art thoughts for today. Art is a vague thing. I’m sure everything I said can get nitpicked to death. Heck, I might even be wrong! But this is why horror is important to ME, and that can’t be disputed.

I’m tempted to recommend some Horror Movies For People Who Don’t Like Horror. I think sometimes not liking horror is the sign of a person who has already fully internalized and accepted all the cruelty and unfairness of life. So horror is redundant. That’s just an off the top of my head guess, though.

Anyway, it would mainly be a list of horror movies my wife, who hates horror, actually liked. This post is already to long. So maybe some point in the future.

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