A lack of courage has prevented Bear (Michael Johnston) from asking out his co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarette) in “Obsession,” though she’s dropped hints that if he asked, she might say yes. As the only one at the guitar shop she says “isn’t completely blank wall,” Bear is nonetheless at a loss for words any time he tries to confess his longtime crush, to the point that their mutual friend Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) has set up a practice scenario with a waitress at a diner for Bear to try out before taking a real crack at it. He needs the boost, if for no other reason than his cat died recently and some company would be nice, but looking for any way out of actually making the first move to get what he wants, he resorts to “One Wish Willow,” a novelty item from a magic shop that is thought by some to make one’s wildest desire come to pass while the majority on Reddit boards say don’t waste the cash.
In Curry Barker’s phenomenal horror film, it’s Bear’s bad luck that the willow works like a charm, with Nikki leaving no uncertainty about her undying devotion to Bear after he snaps the twig in two. However, having his wish granted sparks even more agony as it deepens Bear’s insecurities when he has to wonder if anything about Nikki’s attraction towards him were real in the first place as her declarations of love grow more and more over the top, to the point of growing grotesque well before Barker judiciously throws some gory stuff into the mix. After making the feature “Milk and Honey” on a budget of no more than $800 to release on the YouTube channel That’s A Bad Idea that he and his creative partner Tomlinson have racked up millions of views for their inspired, darkly comic shorts, Barker shows even more ingenuity with greater resources as he reworks a relationship drama into first-rate terror.
Anchored by a chameleonic turn from Navarette, whose Nikki is prone to wild mood swings after she’s desperately infatuated with Bear, the film always seems just out of reach as far as where you think it will go when Bear’s own handle on the situation seems slippery at best and while the lead suffers from a crisis of confidence, Barker shows absolutely none with a distinctive style of his own, full of offbeat cuts and spooky scenes that linger in discomfort leaving one unsure whether to laugh or cringe in their seats. With “Obsession” set to make a major splash as part of Midnight Madness in Toronto only days after the director’s follow-up at Blumhouse has already been announced, Barker spoke about some of the savvy choices he made on the chiller and having his own dreams come true with a premiere to a packed house in Toronto.
It seems like such an inspired foundation for a story to learn that these characters you assume are friends are really co-workers, so there’s a slightly different dynamic there as this unfolds. Was that there from the start?
Yeah, it’s just interesting how humans are when we’re forced to work with certain people. It’s like your class in high school. You don’t choose the people that you go to school with, but you are inevitably going to either become friends with those people or have to learn how to coexist with them, and that’s the setting for a realistic and natural dynamic of a modern friend group.
How did this all get off the ground?
James Harris, a producer at T-Shop Productions, reached out because he saw the short film I did called “The Chair,” and he really liked “The Chair,” and he actually asked me if I had a feature version of “The Chair” written, and I actually did at the time, but I was like, “Hey, I’m actually working on this really cool idea called “Obsession.” Would you be open to listening to that? And he was, so I pitched him the movie, and then we went from there.
You have such a great couple in all these ways at the center of this. What sold you on Inde and Michael to play these characters?
It was a really hard casting process because I was going for super-natural, and we had so many people audition and some people were really good at the scary stuff, but they couldn’t get the crazy stuff quite right, or they were really good at the crazy stuff, but they couldn’t get the natural stuff quite right and that was a journey to find someone that could nail both those worlds, and Inde just nailed it. Then Michael was someone that, after a long process, we found and we did a chemistry read and he just has this naturalness to him. He has a voice that I was really attracted to, and he’s really a handsome guy, which [was interesting because] we were looking for all sorts of different types of people to play Bear, and [Michael’s] a very confident person in real life and he’s very strong about his opinions, but he plays that awkwardness really well, so in the chemistry read, it was a no-brainer.
Obviously, the actors brought it, but I was really impressed with how you must have facilitated these performances because there’s a lot of acting directly to camera. What it was like to figure out the balance between getting what you wanted visually and what you wanted out of the performances?
This is my first big movie, so I was also trying to figure those things out. I do a lot of content online, and sometimes Cooper [Tomlinson] and I just have the two of us, so we’re forced to pick an eye line staring at a lamp or a wall and in my own work, it’s something that I’m used to doing, but it was a little nerve-wracking to ask these actors to do that. Sometimes their eye line was so close to camera that we just had them looking at a piece of tape, but when you have people that are talented, you still have the other actor giving their lines off camera, and it is an interesting balance between what’s more important, performance or getting the shot that you want and it’s just about finding it.
What was it like to create Bear’s apartment?
It was so fun and it was interesting because I’ve never had a chance or a budget to really customize a house. You don’t want it to be boring and you want the house to have depth to it, so that was definitely the first time I’ve done something like that and we found this real house down the street really from where I live. It needed a lot of work, but the layout was nice and [it was great] to explain what I wanted, being able to pick out the wallpaper and the couch with Vivian, our set decorator and set designer. She’s so talented, I’ll definitely be working with her again.
Because it’s both such a cool prop and this idea that completely came out of your head with the One Wish Willow box, what it was like to hold for the first time?
Yeah, my mom actually helped me design that. She’s a graphic art designer, and I told her I wanted it to look kind of timeless, like it’s from the ’50s or the ’80s, and I wanted it to have this very retro feel, like it’s been around forever and you can’t really pinpoint when it was made. I also wanted it to look inviting, and almost creepy in the way that it looks so friendly, like it couldn’t hurt anything, and it all came from the [same idea of] finding a monkey paw and making a wish. After contemplating a lot about what this device should be — and I did a lot of research about different devices, like there’s a wishbone and wishing wells — and I just wanted a simple idea that [Bear] can make a wish off of, and there’s nothing really like this, so I just had to make it up.
Was there anything that you might not have anticipated during filming or, even once you got it back to the edit that made it into the film now and you really like about it?
So many things. They say you make a movie three times when you write it, when you shoot it, and then when you edit it, and the movie’s been completely rewritten in the editing room. The opening, for example, is complete reshoots — the original opening of this movie was actually at Bear’s house [when he found] the dead cat, and you’re just thrown in and you don’t really know what’s going on, but then we decided to open it up at the diner instead.
I liked how you still keep things off-balance with the editing style. You’ll end a scene or start one before what would seem to be a natural point of entry or exit. What was it like getting the right rhythm?
It’s just my style. I did edit this movie, and like things to cut abruptly and have this offbeat unpredictable type of cutting that doesn’t feel choppy necessarily, but purposefully jarring sometimes. That’s by design.
What’s it like to have a feature going to TIFF?
It’s insane. Just being a part of TIFF is such a pleasure, and I’ve never actually been to a big festival like that and I’ve never actually left the country, so it’ll be my first time out of the United States. I’m just a kid from Alabama that got really lucky, and it’s surreal. There’s going to be a thousand people in the theater in one room, so I’m just really excited.
“Obsession” will screen again at the Toronto Film Festival on September 6th at 6:15 pm at the Scotiabank and September 11th at 6 pm at the Scotiabank.