Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - Obsession (2026)

Welcome back, Welcome back, midnight viewers to Father Malone's weekly round up. I am Father Malone, and with me, as always, is a dog whose wish came true. Mister ri Leg, you wanted the greatest dog dad of all time, and you gotta god damn you. What's been up everybody. It's been a couple of weeks.

I hope you've all been thriving, not just surviving. I am super thriving at the moment. I've had a lot of favorite jobs over the years. I think I'm currently doing my most favorite. But seriously, how are you all?

I'm not asking that idly. I mean, I know, as a nation, as a world, we're all pretty sick at the moment. There's lots of horror going on in every direction. So it's an understandable phenomenon to watch horror movies become so introspective of late. It's a fascinating terrain, to be sure.

David Cronenberg has been squatting in that particular corner of horror since the early seventies. But I'm asking because it's not just body horror like the Substance or us. It's also camped out in relationships of late, which includes us, come to think of it, but just recently we had hard eyes and those ready or not. Films. Relationships are murder, y'all, and of course they are.

It's so easy to pour your every thought, your every desire, your hope, your lust, your needs onto another. It's obsession. That's the film, and you all seem pretty obsessed with it so far. Here's the trailer. Do you ever actually like alerted with Nikki?

I'm gonna get some shops. I'll come with you if she means this much to you? And I know she does. To say, Nikki, I sink? Wh should grab a drink?

Sometimes? Nikki wait? I was gonna ask you what all? I lost my train of thought and why mm hmm one Ye'll get one? Lash.

I wish nicky freaming loving more than anyone in the entire world. I love you sucks socks, socks so so much. I love only the branch of a willow tree. Good God. It's weird how you two are dating all of a sudden, like super dating.

I think the gay is going through or something like that, Like why is she okay on her? Nikki? I love you? I love you, I love you. I was calling to see if there's a way I can cancel a wish.

I'm sorry, we don't really do that, So she's just stuck like this forever. Oh yeah, I mean as long as you f as long as I live. Okay, let me synopsize without egregiously spoiling anything. This isn't that kind of movie anyway. There are no twists to speak of.

Beer in his late twenties is a music store clerk who's been pining for fellow music store clerk Nikki forever, oblivious to the attraction that fellow music store clerk Sarah has for him. And there's a dickhead named Ian who also works at the music store. Let me just stop here for a moment and say that I watched this movie and completely bought that there was an unknown character actor playing their boss, and it was Andy Richter from Late Night with Conan O'Brien. So I'm gonna end up praising Indie Navaret quite a bit for her performance in a moment. But I'd be fucking a remiss if I didn't shoot a bunch of accolades in mister Richter's direction.

And if you don't listen to his podcast, you're missing out sincerely anyway, Nikki is gonna leave the store, the tiny music store in a podunk town that employs at least four people full time. Am I picking them? Nits? I am. It's just silly, that's all.

So they all go to trivia night together at a pub and this bear's moment to tell her how he feels, and he does not because he's a craven little twerp. That's not a judgment on his courage or the courage of anyone who falters in the face of rejection. I know it fucking well, I'm calling him that. And maybe I'm burying the lead here because our hero is our villain. You might enjoy the movie more than me knowing that before you watch See Before the Pub, we meet our lead in a parody of romantic comedies where he's auditioning his grand I've always loved you, Please love me speech that his friend Ian has insisted he do for his benefit.

To see if it's any good. Ian has asked a waitress at their diner to sit in for the prospective girlfriend. Isn't that writerly? By the way, Ian dismisses the waitress who he's asked to take time during her shift, where she earns a living to sit in as a proxy. My basically telling her to fuck off and get back to work.

Tells you everything you need to know about that guy, which makes our lead working up the courage to connect with his dream girl an affable, sad sack. He's like ducky with zero style. But then our lead gets home to find his cat dead and he's oh so sad, and at this moment, I fucking hated him more than his douchebag pal ian. His cat died because it ate medication that wasn't even his that had been left out near a discarded bag of cat food, So fuck that guy and whatever lesson this movie wants to teach him, but it's pub quiz night and Nicki has lost her favorite crystal necklace, so it's off to the new Age store, where stock uninterested new Age employee number one twenty two dismisses him enough that he finds a display stand for one wish Willow six ninety nine.

It says, you only get one wish, so instead of a necklace, he's going to give her that, but then he pusses out when she gives him opportunity After opportunity to ask her out, so he makes that wish love me more than anything on earth, and the effect is immediate and drastic and wildly all over the place. Nicki is obsessed and she can't get enough, and she gets a more and more sinister as the film goes on, although the sinister bits begin immediately and all involve that poor deceased feline Sandy. That's a pretty great part of the movie, admittedly, as is the aforementioned Miss Naborett. She gives easy and comfortable rom com vibes as the film begins, but when that wish is made, hoo boy, she fucking goes for it in every direction, and her every instinct is solid.

I'm glad the movie is a huge success. She needs to be in all the films and all the shows. I can't tell you the one particular moment where her performance crescendos, but it's fucking breathtaking. Now, before I continue to pile on thematically, let me just stop to say that this is truly an independent film. It feels it in the best fucking way possible.

It has a stark mid eighties paranoid vibe that sits on top of everything and the atmosphere is killer, as is the cinematography, because once that wish is made, Nikki is frequently enrobed in darkness, and she wears it seems to compliment it more and more breathtaking that the movie is capable of trafficking in. Okay, I like the movie. I just want to get that out there. And there are a couple of moments that gave me genuine creeping dread, not jump scare, not a wincing view of a grotesquerie, just dialogue and sound effects and the horrible, awful connotations that are still creeping me out even as I say this. I won't reveal it here, but if you get in touch with me, we can share our freaked outedness.

Links are in the show notes. That's right, I'll plug myself in the middle of a review, you fuckers. Here is where things get sticky as a horror fan, as a cinema fan, and not just the past ten or fifteen years of cinemon, which is what collectively we all seem to linger on. Ladies and gentlemen. This is a monkey's paw.

If you have an object you're wishing on, you may as well be hanging out in the Treehouse of Horror, or any of the literal dozens of episodes we've covered here on Midnight Viewing from Night Gallery, from Twilight Zone, from Tales from the Dark Side, Tales of the Unexpected, Tales from the Crypt. This is the oldest in creation, and I must say, having spent so much time in the anthological trenches as I have, there's a reason short format works in these cases. You can spread the effects of a careful what you wish for scenario over the course of two hours, but you, as an audience member, will know every move the story is going to make about twenty minutes in, and you won't be wrong. But that is the device he has chosen to examine.

What does a flick ultimately about toxic love and how we use it or endure it or run from it, basically fill in the blank. And that's the movie's greatest strength as a phenomenon as a meditation, but its ultimate failure as a movie. It never provides a baseline for what love means, not for bear, not for anyone. So the advantage as a meditation is that we as an audience are bringing our own fears of the terrors involved in giving your heart to another. That's what gets us on bare side momentarily, But it also allows every single audience member to plug in their own worse relationship on top of the plot of this film, and that makes the film easily about non consensual contact.

It makes it about being mired and anxious attachment and avoidant attachment. It makes it about a philanderer getting his comeuppance. It also functions as a hardcore breakup film and all the modern ways we can track and control others. But then again, if all of those viewpoints can be valid, then so can the queasiest take on the material. The film feels sometimes like that friend we all have, the serial dater, and when it comes time to sum up why the latest relationship has failed, it's always that girl was crazy.

Man, she did some fucking totally out there stuff. Man just whackadoo stocker shit, and we all know he's the fucking problem. But Nikki feels like the embodiment of that bullshit excuse brought to life. So basically, name the toxic relationship woe and you're not wrong about what this movie is about, which is fine but feels an awful lot like ambiguity. Masquerading as depth see also most of Nicholas Winding Refins films.

Because if you're watching a movie about Bear and the horrible fucking decision he's made against this human being in all the ways he dodges accountability, you're in for a terrible entertainment making you hate everyone involved other than Nicki. But then it's hard to embrace her while she's duct taping the front door shut. And the thing is, yeah, this works as a gent black comedy, if that's what it is, but there are too many instances where we're supposed to commiserate with Bear that it feels like it's instead really satisfied with itself, that it's made this subtle bait and switch where the hero becomes the villain. By the way, this is the third horror film in recent memory that features suicide as not just a potential solution, but potentially the only solution.

According to the film's logic speaking of this doesn't take place over one night. It's a series of days where Nicki is out and about interacting with people in the same fucking unhinged manner as she's doing at home with Bear, and at no point has anyone thought to call a mental health clinic. An hour and twenty minutes into the movie, someone finally says she needs therapy. At that point, No, she doesn't, she needs a fucking straight jacket and a padded room. Her actions aren't demonic their manic, which, by the way, could have been another interesting avenue discouraging growth in your partners so they don't leave you behind, and any and all of these scenarios.

By the way, i'd indoors if the movie had simply started from a different point of view. And I know I'm harping, but any baseline of what romance is supposed to mean to any of these people, so we can know where the boundaries are, would have been helpful. Overall, I like it as a comedy. I think it'll work much better the second go round, and I think it's better than most introspective horror we've been getting since that fucking Boba Duke. But I just wish they'd found the definition of love to exploit.

Mind you, no matter your interpretation, he doesn't wish for control or dominance. He wishes for love, And that's a moment we never actually get. There is no joy in their relationship at any moment in this film, and if there's love involved, then there has to be that at least a moment which justifies continuing the long, awful slog that some relationships can certainly b I think the last fifteen minutes are killer. By the way, if they maybe had only fifteen minutes of setup, I'd be praising it from the rafters on the regular show right now. As it is, it's a pretty good fright flick that I imagine will improve over time until then everyone can go back and watch Fatal Attraction or Swim Fan or Misery or The Crush or Gone Girl or Ingrid Goes West.

Fuck, that's the one. Everybody go watch, Ingrid Goes West, and that is going to be the round up for this week. I think links are in the show notes to the Patreon page where we're still plugging away with Step Off the White Wrapper podcast. That's me and HP, and I'm also continuing to explore the wastelands outside New Vegas with my co host Nuka Cota Quantum on our show Vault seven two, to the Fallout podcast. That Patreon page is also where you will hear a Year in Horror host Paul Waller and I discuss all things likenthrope with our show.

A little old lady got mutilated late last night were Wolves of London again for Ripley and I'm father alone. Try to enjoy the daylight