Anir

This is a great movie to watch when you’re sick and eating a lot of soup

Amazingly made horror movie with a super talented fresh actress who gave us the performance of a lifetime. Inde Navarette was absolutely charming and terrifying, and I’m looking forward to whatever she does next. Obsession is very technically good and knows how to build up tension, but I think the film plays its story a little too safe. It followed every beat I expected it to with no deviation whatsoever, and although it was very good at delivering on those beats, I can’t really give it a higher rating when it was outright predictable. I talked with a friend and they said the ending would be way more impactful if the entity that possessed Nikki broke the wishing willow Bear brought home, to make him equally obsessed with her as she is with him.* That* would be a way more interesting ending that would drive the theme of codependency and OBSESSION in abusive relationships home.

That ancestral-tree pisser guy freaking out bc of the midnight sun cracked me up bc that is really how it be during the summer in the arctic

Ok so the first time I saw this movie I was too busy oogling at its tits and ass like a caveman to really look for its personality but now I am back, I have seen it at a big screen with some friends, and its pride month so I have stuff about the story I actually want to say. Style, cinematography and amazing 90s music aside, I really enjoyed the intermingling of drug addiction and the obsession Lee has with Eugene, likening it to the same thing. I’ve heard the first hit of heroin be described as the most euphoric sensation you have ever known, like a warm blanket on your shoulders that makes you forget all your problems for a brief moment, and that is exactly the way the first sex scene between Eugene and Lee is filmed. It is warm, yeah, it is so intimate you almost feel like you are intruding on a private moment, and it is so brief. Another thing I’ve heard about heroin is that you never, ever, reach the same high again, no matter how desperately you try. And Lee tries. Lee follows that drug all the way to the fucking jungle and it changes everything.  Second of all, this movie is absolutely bonkers. I am still not over the fact we started off in a small gay hub in Mexico where this middle aged man is acting like a teenage girl with a crush, to the depths of some fucking jungle in South America where the same middle aged gay man is now heavily addicted to opiates and is in search for a telepathy drug that the Russians got their eyes on. And that’s not even mentioning the lynchian dreams that they both (???) keep having. That is not to say this movie is crazy for the hell of it. It is very sweet, as well, tender in the same way a bruise hurts when you push down on it. The relationship is not solely sexual, but that is the only form the time period and characters let it take. We see them dancing around each other, then the honeymoon phase, then Eugene pulling away when Lee clutches on harder, and we see them reach a transactional agreement akin to modern day sugaring, before it all shatters to pieces when they take the yage drug and merge minds or whatever, and neither of them are equipped to handle this level of intimacy. When you first meet Eugene, you immediately understand why Lee went through the efforts to get into his mind. I could not get a read on Eugene at all when I first saw the movie. He was very aloof, and vacillated between vaguely amused and vaguely mocking constantly. I think the most general take away is that he was bisexual but not into Lee beyond fucking occasionally, but after watching this movie a second time I just don’t buy it. Lee told him he could leave their trip whenever he wanted, and even got him a train trip to another place while Lee would continue searching after yage. What did Eugene do? He went to the jungle with Lee. He drank the yage drug that a bushy haired woman with a revolver made for them in the middle of nowhere. This is not something you do for a man you are not catastrophically down bad for. When Lee made it back to the Mexican gay hub two years later, he found out Eugene claimed to travel back down to South America to meet him, but that the guy he traveled with was sketchy, and not much else. We don’t really know what happened to him, but I think the story stands so much stronger if there was love reciprocated, but that it wasn’t enough to completely break through the stigma of being queer. It took Lee majority of his life coming to terms with his homosexuality without feeling shame, and Eugene had just started his own exploration journey. I have more to say about the dream sequences and the telepathy scene but my phone is overheating so I am leaving this review here. Beautiful film with a rich, emotional exterior which matches the interior, would watch again.