Wish stories are about as old as speech because the motive is. The three wish model operates like this: first one proves the power, the second is disastrous and the third undoes the second. Curry Barker, whose YouTube hit Milk and Serial (please watch it) punched above its weight at serial killer and found footage movies, is only interested in the first wish and puts it in the hands of an emotionally vulnerable person who won't be able to handle even a mild granting of it.
If Nikki swung on her heel and rapped on the passenger seat of his car professing boundless love it would be an 'eighties black comedy. The Gen Zeds in this story have already streamed those movies. The one they play is tougher and scarier. There are laughs but most of it is constantly unsettling as people who are not prepared to have their wishes granted face an earthly torment.
Milk and Serial puts a lot of plot into an hour of running time. Obsession runs forty minutes longer. Apart from moments when I felt this was staying too long on its plateau I understood why the plot is meagre by comparision for more screen time. Barker and crew's film craft is impeccable but his real purpose here is to bring his notion to life through rigourous performance.
This is Inde Navarette's film. Her Nikki handles fast and often dense dialogue as though it were occuring to her in the moment and her physicality is played against appearance. A prolonged smile goes from funny to unnerving. Her vocal riches take her from a sweet young woman to a banshee. Speaking from the corner shadows, moving into light and retreating from it while speaking violence as though it were mundanity renders a tired horror trope fresh. She is a monster.
But she is a monster created by a boy in a man's body, one to whom the idea of commanding allconsuming love from another might seem a throwaway notion but is too ill-equipped to think it through. This is his obsession, not Nikki's; she's its victim. One of the threads in this tale is consent, a thing that vanishes with anythning resembling a wish. Bear is old enough to know; he restrains himself from taking advantage of the situation at first but only at first. This film has the fortitude and depth to keep Nikki scary but identifiably wronged.
Curry Barker is one of the generation of YouTube brats who have plied their craft and had it tested in the unforgiving public arena online and made first features that look like the work of veterans. It occured to me that the power of the narrative and the naturalness of the yojng adults in it was reminiscent of the teenagers in Talk to Me by the Philipou brothers. We'll be seeing more cinema arrived at by this route. It's already feeling fresher than the general fare and carries a sense of daring. With the cinema sound system blaring out the rumbles and drones of this movie's electronic score and the odd aspect ratio a noticeably claustrophobic 1.50: 1, this is a movie made and presented on its own terms. All that and it's good. Really good.
Viewing notes: I saw this in a Hoyts cinema with recliners and beds. I have a lumbar region that whinges about recliners but also a thick beanie that serves as support. The beds were understandably poepled by couples. There were two: one kept the talking to whipers, the other enjoyed the freedom to pollute the darkness of the auditorium with phone screen light. Neither bothered me that much, the well attended session was one were the audience were with the movie which always feels good. I'd seriously consider getting this film on physical media if it appears post cinema.
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