I had a crush on a girl in my neighborhood when I was in high school. I’m certain she has a fulfilling enough life to not ever end up reading these words, but I’m still not gonna name names. All that needs to be known is that I was down really, really bad for this girl. Most days on the bus to and from home we would engage in that polite, awkward small talk that teenage acquaintances with little in common do, but once we got to school, we split off in our separate classes and friend groups and did not really interact much. But all my friends knew how I felt about her, even though I wouldn’t dare say anything to her about it. Eventually, I decided to ask her to prom in my junior year, but wanted to warm her up to the idea months ahead of time. So, with the few dollars I earned filming little league football games on the weekends, I bought her a giant Reeses in the shape of a heart and a bouquet of flowers to give to her on Valentines Day. It fell on a friday, so I planned on getting home from school, walking over to her house, and giving her the gifts. But she wasn’t at school that day. I tried walking down to her house, with both items in my backpack behind me, only to knock on the door and meet her dad, who did not know much English. I fumbled my way through a lie about wanting to borrow her textbook, but once it was clear she wasn’t home, I aborted the plan and went home. I placed those flowers in a cup of water, where they wilted and died completely within 2 weeks. After the flowers died, I eventually broke into the heart and snacked on it over the next few weeks. When prom came around, she ended up on Prom court, and went with the person she was nominated with. I never went to any high school prom.

I originally planned to see Obsession with friends, but as it was nearly out of theaters, and I didn’t make time to plan to see it, I impulsively bought a ticket to see it after work instead of packing for the family reunion I’d be driving to the next morning. Well, I think that cost was worth it because I am so glad I got on that ride. So much about this movie is brilliant, from how it uses shadow to make images you are already deeply familiar with seems otherworldly to how it portrays the terror of someone suffering from a supernatural phenomenon without using any magic sparkles or special effects. It’s wild how the film does indeed look low budget, with the manikin used for one kill being particularly obvious, but I never sensed the lack of budget in the moment as the performances and plot more than kept me engaged. Its killer hook eventually sprawls out into an actual plot that kept me on the edge of my seat, and I never could fully expect what would happen next, mainly because I was still a tightly wound ball of anxiety from the last scene.

When the credits began to roll on the viral horror hit, I felt like crying. Like the feeling I had in my stomach was a feeling I only recognized when my anxiety spiked so high that I did not have the energy to scream or swing wildly, only let it leak out of my eyes alongside pained exhales. Don’t get me wrong, the movie is really fucking good, but after these last few years of falling in love with the genre, I have never had a horror movie make me feel this way. I am absolutely the kind of person who writes a 47 page essay in the parking lot on Letterboxd if I really like a movie, but my desire to share my feelings did not manage to surpass the urge to weep. Instead, I turned on the car, drove home halfway in silence, and then I finally allowed the soothing melodies of Jenevieve and Reina to calm me down a bit. But still, on that drive, I tried guessing why that movie moved me to tears.

Either the summer after high school graduation, or the summer after that, I ran into my crush at a local grocery store while she was working. I hadn’t kept in contact much since we graduated, but she was still just as kind and appealing as ever to me. The county fair was in town later that summer, so after some aggressive encouragement from friends, I mustered up the courage to ask her to go there with me. She agreed, but as the night arrived, she asked if she could have some friends tag along with us. I hadn’t planned for this, but as I wanted nothing more than to make her happy, I agreed. I picked her and her friends up and we hit the booth to buy wristbands. I love the county fair, but between the nerves of actually being outside of school with a girl I had pined over for so long, and the fact that I had ridden every spinning, rotating, spiraling ride these girls wanted to (which was all of them), I fell more and more ill as the night went on. By the end of the night, I was effectively silent, choosing to divert my speaking energy into staying on my feet and keeping down the corn dog and lemonade I had earlier. At the end of the night, it seemed like the girls had a nice time, and my crush and I exchanged polite goodbyes, but I knew that my one true shot at her failed. 

I have a guess as to why this movie hit me so hard. A large reason why I’m only now getting into horror is that I falsely understood the entire genre as just gore porn. Not that every horror movie is as gratuitous as Saw or Hostel or Cannibal Holocaust, but I did think that the point of every horror movie is the spectacle of violence. The entire point of horror, so I thought, was to see what wild, creative ways someone can die. I’ve been playing horribly violent video games for years before I got into horror, so I knew plenty about how spectacular a gore firework could be. Gaining a critical hit in Fallout rewards you with a bloody mess full of loot. Defeating a boss in God of War rewards you with a spectacular display of disrespect for the human, or sometimes fantastical, body. Overcoming the thematically justified, yet unfair odds of Wolfenstein II rewards you with the sweet, blood soaked silence of a nazi, or KKK member if you play the side missions. And the violence in the Doom reboots is so constant, so encouraged, that triggering the most gruesome kills are literally the thing that heals you in the games. I might have grown up with a slightly conservative media diet, but for the last nearly 20 years, I have adored violence in games wholeheartedly, mainly because the violence always served as a logical, mechanical, purpose. But for some reason, when the bodies are actual humans, with names, motivations, and unmistakable human mannerisms that are clearly displayed in live action, I just couldn’t see the logic or function in harming them in such grotesque ways. It felt like human suffering on display for no reason, and that just felt inherently inhumane.

I think the first movie to truly make me question my stance was Midsommar. I saw it with friends ages ago and not only did I not like the movie, it pissed me off. The entire film was just wall to wall anxiety, but with few of the rhythms I expected out of a horror movie. Death wasn’t displayed in the darkness, but shown clearly in the light. There were next to no jumpscares, only the creeping dread of annihilation on the horizon. It made me feel like shit and didn’t let go for over 2 hours. So, as my initial Letterboxd review showed, I hated it. But after a few years, and a few other horror movies under my belt, I came to appreciate the movie for how effective it was at making me feel that unmistakably shitty feeling. However, it didn’t make me feel that feeling when it showed me a dissected human body. It didn’t make me feel that feeling when it showed me one longshot of the immediate aftermath of a murder suicide. It made me feel that dread through the performances. Florence Pugh’s depiction of extreme grief and depression made me feel the way I felt. The vacant smiles and unsettling kindness of Isabelle Grill and the other cult members are what made me feel the way I did. The humanity of all the characters involved, both good and bad, are the thing that moved me so deeply over what I had seen. For a genre that I assumed was inherently inhumane, recognizing the humanity in even the most gruesome of its stories is what finally made me connect with it.

Despite what felt like a clear fumble at romance, my crush would still Facebook Message me every now and then, just to keep up. Eventually, a local community restaurant taste testing event was happening in town. I saw another opening, so I asked if she wanted to go to it together. She agreed. This time, I was prepared. The event was at 11am, but I was dressed, showered, and ready to go several hours early. I was even about to go top off my gas tank with about 120 minutes left to spare, but then I got a phone call from my mom. My little brother has played football for 90% of his life, from little league to college for Kennesaw State. And because we didn’t move to any new cities after he entered grade school, he played all of those grade school years of football with nearly the same kids every year. So, at a certain point, the families of these kids, the ones we’ve seen for over a decade at every game and award ceremony, are considered our own family. Well, one of those family members, as my mom told me over the phone, needed some help. They had a flat tire, but realized their spare was also flat, so I had to pick them up and take them to a shop to buy a new tire, and take them back to change it. I had nearly 2 hours, and I knew exactly where the closest tire shop was, I could absolutely help him and make it in time for my date, right? Well, the first shop we go to does not carry the type of tire he needs. Neither does the second. Or the third. At this point, I’m texting my crush that I might be a little late to pick her up. The fourth shop, still no luck. The fifth one, way in the next county over, still no luck, but they hint that a tire for a model of car that old might be found in a nearby scrap yard. By the time we get to the scrap yard, it’s 12pm. My texts with updates on our situation end when I finally call it and I tell her I just can’t make it today. She understands and doesn’t protest, but internally, I knew that was really, truly it. I never spoke, or messaged, her again after that. But we eventually did find a spare tire in that scrapyard.

I think this is what Curry Barker seems to have displayed an acute understanding of with this movie: that true terror has humanity at its core. Obsession is not a movie about the spectacle of violence, though there is one particularly gruesome kill that fucked me up quite a bit. Instead, it is about the spectacle of human suffering, suffering that wouldn’t have felt authentic without excellent performances backing it. What is fascinating about this movie is the ways in which these characters are forced to deal with an impossible situation, because so many of their choices are painfully grounded in reality. The dismissive way his friends act about a situation they could never have known was so dire feels authentic. The befuddlement Nikki goes through as she tries to fit herself into the shape of Bear’s desires by any means necessary looks like someone genuinely suffering a psychotic break from reality. The quiet, bitter self resentment of Bear at having to stand by the choices that led to his fate, even in the midst of public humiliation, feels familiar as someone who…well, someone who has been in that headspace before.

I was honest about never having spoken to that crush ever again, but by complete chance, I did end up sitting next to her now husband a few years back in a college class we shared. I only found out who he was when I scrolled past pictures of them on my now deleted Facebook account, and just recognized him from that class. However, it was funny to get that roundabout bit of closure that I didn’t even really care to ask the universe for. I’ve not kept up with them at all, even online, but they both seemed like good people that will have great lives and a great family because of it. But I think I know why she ended up with him and not me. I don’t know shit about the guy, I don’t think I even remember his name anymore, but I bet he knows what her favorite color is. I bet he knows what her favorite movies are, what her deepest fears are, what her go-to snack is when she’s in need of an edible comfort, and he probably knows a lot more than that, too. The thing is though, he didn’t need to have multiple kids with her and put a ring on it to find all that out, all he had to be was curious about her. He had to want to know about her as a person first before he ever wanted to “acquire” her as a partner. Sure, that isn’t something you accomplish instantly, but it probably took a lot more than sleepy conversations about Biology homework at 6am on the bus. It probably took more than throwing a few jokes around in the 7 minutes it took to get from school to our old neighborhood. It probably took a lot more than polite waves as I saw her around school and, later, around town. It took…it takes genuine curiosity in the humanity of a person, not just interest in their physical presence, to build any kind of relationship with them.

I’m certain this is a cold take by now, but I think Obsession is an extreme cautionary tale of the perils of objectification. Bear never cared about Nikki as a person. Instead he was only satisfied to have her, not know her. I’ve been in Bear’s shoes, wanting so badly not to have your soul intertwined with another, but to acquire them as an item that you’ve put on a pedestal in your head for years. What Bear comes to learn is that the person he idealized is only a hollow imitation of the messy, complicated, fully detailed woman that he has made to suffer to satisfy his desires. Men have been dehumanizing women for hundreds of years for the sake of their own satisfaction, but Bear witness to get such a brutal depiction of that ripped my heart out. To recognize myself in that role of the dehumanizer, in the role of the villain of the film, tore me up real bad. But I don’t think I actually cried until I realized that Nikki’s shoes have graced my feet before as well.

This may be news to some, but black men are maybe the most sexualized group of people in America, and we are maybe only beaten by black women. The stereotypes that have carried over from the days of slavery, of black men being specimens designed for sexual pleasure and having a uniquely high sexdrive, is something I’ve felt impressed upon me. There have been times where I could feel this assumed ideal being, if not forced upon me, heavily assumed as a part of me already. And nearly every time this has been assumed of me, it has turned me off immediately. Even outside of those specific stereotypes, I’m very familiar with the way I talk, the way I look, or even prior knowledge of my friends or family leading to expectations being placed upon me that I never felt fit me. In these moments, I never feel like I am being seen for who I am, but instead for who someone wants me to be. Thankfully, the majority of these experiences have not come with the undertone of violence, as Nikki and other objectified women in real life face, but the unpleasant taste of these interactions matches close enough to identify similar ingredients.

One more thing I saw in Bear is how emotionally closed off he was to everyone around him. When his best friend reaches out in concern, he brushes it off instead of asking for help. When a different girl reaches out for the very type of connection he craves, he is blind to it and misses the opportunity. When Nikki embarrasses them both at a house party, he emotionally shuts down as he tries to swallow his shame not only at Nikki’s behavior, but at the fact that he still prefers it to not being loved by Nikki at all. So much of the film’s plot could have been avoided if Bear was just secure enough to say how he feels more often. Well, I’ve had a handful of women catch my eye in the many years since I met my crush’s husband. I’ve had some good times with them, and some bad, but what those times have taught me is that no one can truly fall in love with just the idea of a person. Not me, not Bear, not Nikki, not any other person with any kind of emotional depth at all. The only way to know more than that mere impression is to dive deep into the soul of another, but to do so, you must also leave your own soul open for a dip. Lately I’ve been trying to leave mine open more often, even if it is scary to do so and often leads to an empty pool. But maybe, if I leave it open long enough, and invite enough people in, I can come to know someone with the kind of fine detail that Bears’ perception of Nikki could never live up to.

Plus even if I had one of those twigs, I’d just wish for the death of like 12 specific CEOs and a few specific politicians instead.