Just finished watching Obsession (2026), written and directed by Curry Barker. What a twisted little film; loved it. One loose takeaway: it’s partly a productive misreading1 of the Faust legend, with Nikki suffering ruin in part because she is deprived of her own autonomy and existence — that is, a Gretchen, who was deprived of reputation, family, child, and her own interiority. Of course, it doesn’t totally hold up: Gretchen maintains dignity even in death, while Nikki is deprived of dignity as a severely overdetermined motif throughout the entire film (it is, after all, a horror film).
The Call Center Guy is the obvious Mephistophelean parallel, and yet Call Center Guy is as indifferent to Bear-Faust as Goethe’s Mephistopheles is invested in his. Indifference as a foil for obsession.
Using “misreading” here in Harold Bloom’s sense (per The Anxiety of Influence): a strong, productive swerve away from a precursor text, not an error or a loose analogy. ↩︎