Film reviews: Obsession | The Christophers | Normal
In Curry Barker’s highly promising debut feature, the 26-year-old follows an elegantly simple premise through to its logical and grizzly end, writes Alistair Harkness
Obsession (18) ★★★★★
The Christophers (15) ★★★★
Normal (15) ★★★
Generating a bidding war at last autumn’s Toronto International Film Festival, Obsession marks its 26-year-old director Curry Barker out as a real-deal horror auteur. Having already built up a huge online following with his brilliant hour-long found footage YouTube film Milk & Serial, this be-careful-what-you-wish-for riff on the old monkey paw curse is the sort of film that should immediately put him in the big leagues alongside the likes of Zach Cregger (Weapons), Jordan Peele (Get Out) and Ari Aster (Hereditary).
Kicking proceedings off like a nerdy rom-com in which a shy twenty-something guy called Bear (Michael Johnston) struggles to confess his true feelings to his childhood friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette), Barker establishes his mastery of tone early on with rug-pulling reveals that show the fine line between Bear’s nice guy insecurity and his solipsistic inability to see Nikki as anything other than an idealised fantasy figure. Caught in a friend-zoned limbo where his determination not to come off like a creep is starting to make him seem like a creep, Bear’s unwillingness to risk ruining what might be by asking Nikki out takes a twisted turn when he stumbles across a novelty toy called the One Wish Willow and, in a moment of desperation, wishes for Nikki to love him “more than anyone”.
What follows gets pretty dark pretty quick as Nikki almost imperceptibly transforms into a kind of glitching Stepford girlfriend whose sudden romantic obsession with Bear is interspersed with terrifying moments of consciousness in which she doesn’t seem to know what’s going on. Like the aforementioned Ari Aster, Barker’s good here at using dark spaces within the frame to generate jump scares. Yet his own maturity as a filmmaker comes through in his ability to keeps this heightened premise grounded in the relatable reality of a relationship revealing itself to be more complicated than Hollywood movies generally allow.
As horrible things start happening with cats and masking tape and drinking games with friends, Navarette’s increasingly unhinged turn as Nikki becomes all the more scary for the poignancy and sympathy she elicits as the unwitting victim of Bear’s unchecked yearning. Bear’s dawning realisation of his own culpability, meanwhile, infuses every horror beat with a queasy moral dimension and creeping sense of existential dread, something that Barker keeps pushing as he follows his elegantly simple premise through to its logical and grizzly end point. What a debut.
The Christophers is Steven Soderbergh’s third feature in 18 months and finds the restless filmmaker on playfully reflective form with a deliciously barbed two-hander about artistic legacies and the monetary and emotional value of art. It stars Ian McKellen — on wonderfully irascible form — as Julian Sklar, a former big deal painter who hasn’t done anything of note in 30 years. Living in a ramshackle London townhouse filled with the detritus of his once glorious career, he’s a lion in winter, full of bitterness towards the establishment and resentful of his grown-up children (played by James Cordon and Baby Reindeer’s Jessica Gunning) as they hover like vultures waiting for him to die. Into this world comes Lori Butler (Michaela Coel), a talented but broke art restorer, ostensibly hired to be his new assistant, but really there to find and complete an unfinished set of paintings — the titular Christophers — that Julian’s offspring plan to sell for millions.
Working from a sharp script by regular collaborator Ed Solomon, Soderbergh takes this art-theft premise and subverts it immediately by having the well-matched McKellan and Coel spark off each other as they engage in a thrilling series of verbal contretemps about the the nature of art, all the while repeatedly turning the tables on Julian’s witless children. Working like a painter himself, Soderbergh keeps his camera close to his actors, moving freely with them. The end result is a movie about fraudulence in the art world that’s full of inspiration and originality.
Despite boasting Ben Wheatley as its director, the new action film Normal is very much the work of its co-writer Derek Kolstad, creator of both the John Wick and Nobody franchises. Starring Nobody’s Bob Odenkirk as an easy-going sheriff drafted in to temporarily oversee the eponymous Minnesota town after its own long-serving lawman dies suddenly, what should be an easy gig soon turns deadly when a failed bank robbery reveals a dark secret about the source of Normal’s surprising wealth and turns the town — and its huge arsenal of weaponry — against Odenkirk.
Though there are certainly similarities to Wheatley’s own Free Fire here, the vibe is more comic spin on Assault on Precinct 13, replete with yakuza gangs, bazookas, tooled-up pensioners and Henry Winkler as Normal’s not-so-nice-guy mayor. It’s a bit of a hoot in other words, an undemanding Friday night action movie that Wheatley is disciplined enough to keep to under 90 minutes to ensure it never outstays its welcome.
All films are on general release in UK cinemas from 15 May.
The Scotsman’s arts newsletter is now sent twice a week - subscribe today
Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.