Sixteen minutes into “Obsession” — the massively popular, shoestring-budget horror film breaking box office records and bucking expectations left and right — writer-director Curry Barker gives it all away. Driving home from bar trivia, best friends and coworkers Bear (Michael Johnston) and Nikki (Inde Navarrette) chat about life, and all the differences between where they are and where they want to be. Bear can barely hide the hearts in his eyes as Nikki speaks, wondering if this might finally be the time to confess his love for her, when she beats him to the emotional punch: She’s fed up with her job and has put in her two-week notice. Nikki wants to write full-time and believes that a lack of love in her life is stifling her manuscript. The word piques Bear’s curiosity, causing him to wonder aloud if Nikki’s writing a romance. “It’s not a romance, it’s a love story,” she immediately corrects him. Laughing, Bear replies: “Isn’t that the same thing?”
As “Obsession” so painstakingly reminds the viewer over the next 90-some minutes, a romance and a love story are not the same thing, and our ability to so easily confuse the two is Barker’s point. Love is overwhelming but can still be one-sided, an imbalance that love’s all-consuming nature disguises. Romance, on the other hand, implies a unique feeling two people share, a spark that can be nurtured together as their lives intertwine. “Obsession” is the former: a tale of love and all of its foibles and frailties, devoid of any actual romance — something that, given the extended pause after Bear’s question about their interchangeability, Barker clearly wants the audience to remember.
