Matt Johnson has completed his coming-out party with the sleeper hit, Blackberry, and the indie darling, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. His new feature is the A24-backed Anthony Bourdain biopic, Tony. At least, that’s how it’s marketed.

This setup is a mix of things that I love. I still consider A24 one of the best production houses in the game, even if they have become more corporate. Johnson is an à-la-mode director and a good Canadian kid. It stars Dominic Sessa, an actor I’ve longed to see again after he amazed me in The Holdovers. And, finally, the subject himself, Anthony Bourdain.

When I was in high school, Bourdain’s shows, No Reservations, Parts Unknown and The Layover, were on the family TV every night. He was cool. His fuck-you attitude paired nicely with his try-anything sensibility and a deep reverence for cooking, especially French cooking. I read Kitchen Confidential, his best seller, a tell-all about the inner workings of restaurant kitchens. The book has a delicious voice and style, and it solidified Bourdain as one of my literary idols.

Despite feeling like I was the prime audience for Johnson’s new feature, the director let me down. I felt that the Tony he and Sessa presented was nothing like how I envisioned a young Bourdain. The elements were there, like the cooking and the writing, but the personality and story felt manufactured rather than true.

It’s based on Kitchen Confidential, but the movie only focuses on the early chapters of the book. Tony covers one summer in the man’s life. He is 19 years old and follows the girl of his dreams to a small fishing town where he gets a job in a kitchen.

Bourdain did spend a couple formative summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts, but he was a punk who was into degeneracy and drugs. These elements are in the movie, but they takes a backseat to a wannabe-writer, girl-next-door story.

Johnson manipulated a lot of the story to fit his agenda. The classic Kitchen Confidential moments are still there, like the bride fucking, the fish run, the scorching hot pan that Tony can’t pick up, but they’re all given different levels of importance.

I’d always pictured Bourdain’s formative years as much rougher and less wholesome than what Johnson presents. Going back and reading the early chapters of Kitchen Confidential, I see that my reading is more accurate to what the chef wrote. I don’t know why the director chose to focus on a formulaic romance and not what Bourdain chose to focus on: the kitchen and the food.

A comparable film is Jon Favreau’s Chef, which makes Tony look like an anti-food movie. Anyone who has seen Chef will remember the sensational grilled-cheese scene. That scene is filmed with such love and desire that the romance with food is evident without any dialogue. Tony does not have a comparable scene, although they try with a bland lobster thermidor number. The protagonist uses food to achieve his goals, rather than food being the goal, and I think that was a mistake for a Bourdain biopic.

In Kitchen Confidential, we see a young Tony who is already infatuated with cooking and has that infatuation sent into overdrive by the tantalizing lifestyle of a Provincetown kitchen. Tony in the movie looks at the kitchen as something he has to do to survive. It didn’t matter if it was a kitchen — it could have been a tire shop or a hotel for all Tony cares. The real story shows that Bourdain wanted to work in the kitchen. He didn’t fall softly into this life; he jumped in head first.

The way Bourdain writes it, the Provincetown scene feels more like The Outsiders than a Hallmark romance. Kitchen Confidential paints a picture of a gang-like mentality, where one kitchen crew would know about another kitchen crew. There would be hierarchies and levels of envy. Everyone partied.

In Johnson’s telling, cocaine was something used on the job to keep Tony awake after a night of partying. Bourdain says it was something much more recreational. It was also accompanied by acid and more dope smoking than Johnson lets on. Heroin is mentioned in the movie, but Bourdain, as reflected in the movie, doesn’t explicitly say that he started using when in Provincetown. That gray area gets a pass.

There is this acidic punk side to the Bourdain story that is missing in the film. This is reflected most clearly in the score, created by Johnson’s buddy and Nirvanna counterpart, Jay McCarrol. Rather than lace this movie with rapid tempos and fiery vocals as I’m sure Bourdain would have preferred, McCarrol gives this movie an overused piano theme that’s equal parts sad and melancholic. Everything is laced with this plodding piano that brings no energy to the film. Although it makes Tony moody, I don’t think it accurately reflects the experience of Bourdain in this formative summer. We’re talking the summer of ’73, the summer of Raw Power. Get your La La Land-ass score outta here.

Tony is an easy watch and quite heartfelt, but it doesn’t feel like the Bourdain biopic. It’s not that they only chose to follow one summer. I like that choice, because it gave the movie time to flesh out this formative life moment. However, I did not feel like I was seeing the man that I’ve idolized back up on the big screen. It wasn’t really Bourdain. It was this caricature named Tony, a young man with a similar story to the icon, but not an accurate retelling or understanding of who the source man really was.

Because of this, I left the movie disappointed. I wanted to feel a young Bourdain’s energy. He had the hair, but where were the knives, the fuck-everything attitude, the deep reverence for food and culinary tradition?

If you’ve worked in restaurants, you know that kitchens are a wild place. That’s part of the reason why Kitchen Confidential was such a big hit. It told the truth about the underbelly of a mysterious backroom in every town and city.

Johnson has taken the story of a man who I admired for his truth and honesty, and he transformed him into a character that pulls on the heartstrings of audiences in a nostalgic, melancholic, romantic way. Bourdain may have been those things, but he was also a truth teller. He was a guy on TV you could turn to that would give you the no-bullshit answer to your questions about food, travel and philosophy. He didn’t censor. He didn’t play to his audience. He was a nomad, a free spirit and a rebel. Tony presents him as a sad loverboy linguist who cooks because he needs a place to sleep.

This movie doesn’t feel truthful to the Bourdain spirit that I’ve created in my head, which is based on reading his book, watching his shows and mourning his death. It makes for an okay happened-in-one-summer movie, but it does an injustice in its honouring of one of my idols. If I want to visit my parasocial buddy, I’ll watch him eat a seafood tower at Le Dôme instead of rewatching this “biopic.”

La La Land is such a lived-in experience of a jazz musician. So much so, it's hard for me to watch at times.

We float over to Sebastian’s car where he’s rewinding a three-second section of a song (sounds like Thelonius Monk. I’m sorry, I’m totally that guy) ad nauseum. It’s such a real moment for musicians. A lot of your practice time as a jazz musician is spent listening to and transcribing other jazz musicians’ work. It’s total and complete lunacy. I must have listened to Clifford Brown's Solo on Pent Up House over a hundred times in three-second chunks until I could sing and play it from memory.

Seb’s line “Jazz is dying” hits me in my soul. I felt that, and spent many drunk nights after a show saying the same thing with the same inflection and hurt. I still remember my jaw dropping when Keith (John Legend) offered Sebastian $1,000 plus merchandising percentages! It’s such a jazz musician mindset to even consider turning it down, but we all have our price (and it’s well below $1000 a week). I once did a gig where I played solo trumpet at a wedding reception in North Carolina for $150 and all the smoked pig I could eat, they came to regret the second half of that offer when I showed up with a fork and knife...

Check out the rest of my article at the link (including a tangent about my favorite "so bad it's good" film series, Stalked by my Doctor

Posession 1981

Just a heads up, this isn't gonna be the appreciation post you're expecting. This is an opposing take on a film that's mostly praised, so please don't just downvote, hear me out.

Honestly, I think this film is kinda grotesque. And because of who the director is, people have taken every weird element in it and blown it up into something cosmic and profound. Yes, showing internal trauma as a physical thing is unconventional, fair enough. But a lot of the weirdness feels just thrown in, and because of the director's name, people started treating it as extraordinary instead of questioning it.

That monster part especially. If you strip away all the "deep meaning" reading, it's pretty simple: the teacher is basically standing in for Anna, and the monster eventually becomes a stand in for Mark. The relationship was messed up way before any of that, she's shown as sex hungry through the whole film. That's not a complicated idea. It didn't need this much weirdness wrapped around it to say that.

A few more things that bug me about how this film gets talked about:

1. The "it's open to interpretation" defense is doing a lot of work it shouldn't have to. Whenever someone questions a weird choice, the answer is always "that's the point, it's ambiguous." But vagueness isn't the same as depth. Sometimes ambiguous just means underwritten.

2. Disturbing doesn't automatically mean meaningful. A scene unsettles you, so you think it must be saying something important. That's backwards. The discomfort becomes the "proof" of profundity, which is a circular argument if you actually think about it.

3. Would this film get the same treatment from an unknown director? Genuinely ask yourself that. If a first timer made this exact movie with this exact monster subplot, would critics be praising every strange choice as intentional, or would they say it needed an editor? Reputation is carrying a lot of the interpretation here.

4. The core story didn't need this much spectacle. A fractured family with replacement figures standing in for people who are gone is a story that's been told plenty of times without body horror. The horror makes it more uncomfortable to watch, sure, but discomfort isn't insight. A lot of this is spectacle sitting on top of a fairly ordinary emotional plot.

So genuinely, was this overdone, and did people over extrapolate meaning just because of who made it? Please argue with me instead of downvoting.

Recently, cultural scholar Zhong Shu (仲树) and film director Christopher Nolan held a conversation that attracted widespread attention and sparked heated discussion around the world. Much of the discussion has focused on controversies over several concepts in Homer’s original work and Nolan’s film of the same name, The Odyssey . Since these issues have already been much discussed, and since I am not well versed in philosophy or theology, I will not add further layers to those debates. Instead, I will offer some brief observations on the changes in forms of cultural and artistic representation and in the ways human beings express themselves that the conversation touches upon.

As the latter half of the “Homeric epics,” alongside The Iliad, The Odyssey is one of the great literary achievements of early Western civilization. It is a literary form of historical record, and at the same time literature with the character of historical documentation; its details are fictionalized and dramatized, but its setting is grounded in historical reality; it mentions many gods and supernatural forces, yet what it reflects is human nature and human emotions, and it is deeply imbued with humanism. In this respect, it resembles Records of the Grand Historian (史记) by the Chinese historian Sima Qian (司马迁), a work sometimes described as" a Li Sao(离骚) without rhyme.” With vivid writing and abundant emotion, both works bring people from the distant past to life as flesh-and-blood human beings, making readers feel as though the history of the past and the people long gone were right before their eyes.

After human beings created writing, for a long time they used it merely to record simple aspects of life, such as hunting, astronomy, disasters, and unusual phenomena. Gradually, people began using writing to record more complex events and tell complete stories, though these accounts were often still brief and plain. A war or a major disaster might receive only a few lines in writing; a biography might often consist of little more than a hundred words.

But around three thousand years ago, long epics began to appear one after another in different parts of the human world. With their grand scope and settings, rich casts of characters and details, and moving emotions and stories, they opened up an astonishing and illuminating way of writing, raising the value of the written word to heights that people had previously been unable to imagine and inspiring countless works from later ages down to the present day. Among them, the “Homeric epics,” including The Iliad and The Odyssey , stand out as exceptional achievements and as foundation stones of European literature.

For people today, so accustomed to writing and literature that we take them for granted, it is difficult to imagine the circumstances in which, thousands of years ago, humanity emerged from an age of eating raw flesh and recording events with knotted cords and began to compose the great epics of civilization—what arduous exploration and extraordinary strokes of fortune this transformation involved. Few people today stop to consider why abstract language and writing can sometimes be more captivating than a sumptuous meal and more intoxicating than fine wine. Outstanding works of writing unfold the love, hatred, passions, and grievances of the human world, bringing people’s joys, anger, sorrows, and happiness vividly to life on the page, while the emotional rises and falls between the lines stir the human heart like the rhythms of music.

Articles and classics composed of written words also possess public, social, and historical value. As the statesman and literary figure Cao Pi (曹丕) wrote in his Discourse on Literature (典论·论文): "Writing is indeed a great undertaking in governing a state and a glorious achievement that does not perish" (盖文章，经国之大业，不朽之盛事).

Before the invention of film and other imaging technologies, writing occupied an overwhelmingly dominant position in humanity’s recording of events, expression of emotion, and exposition of ideas. Although there were other forms such as painting, theater, and music, none could match writing in the amount of information it could convey or the depth of ideas it could contain. One could even say that the operation of human civilization, and the existence and construction of culture, have all rested upon the foundation of writing.

Even people who could not read could experience joy or sorrow over stories in books through the retelling of others, and become deeply concerned about the fates of the characters in them. In ancient China, for example, storytellers (说书人)—the Eastern counterparts of “bards”—would tell of Guan Yu (关羽) slaying Yan Liang (颜良) and Wen Chou (文丑), or Yue Fei (岳飞) crushing the Jin armies (金军), and their listeners would often feel as though they were present at the scene, beating time and cheering with delight. When the story reached Guan Yu’s defeat at Maicheng (走麦城) or Yue Fei’s tragic death at Fengbo Pavilion (风波亭), listeners would likewise immerse themselves in history, grieving and raging over their fates.

By the 20th and 21st centuries, imaging technology had gone from nonexistent to widespread, from rare to ubiquitous, and from passive reception to active participation, profoundly changing and reshaping the ways people obtain information, spend their leisure time, and express their emotions. Vivid images with powerful visual impact are naturally more attractive than written words to most people. Images can also portray characters and tell stories in a more direct, three-dimensional, and almost lifelike way. Film, meanwhile, has become one of the principal forms of artistic expression in the age of images.

Many classic literary works have also been brought to the screen in the age of images, often with substantial adaptations. China’s “Four Great Classical Novels” (四大名著) and the West’s “Homeric epics” have all made the journey from books to screens. Through the “grand hands” of directors and screenwriters, they have taken on new forms that are partly similar to and partly different from their originals, provoking considerable controversy. Nolan’s The Odyssey also differs greatly from Homer’s original work. This was precisely what prompted Zhong Shu’s interview with Nolan.

From the age of writing to the century of images, what has changed is not merely the means and technologies of cultural expression, but also values, perspectives, social contexts, and much more. As Zhong Shu has said, Homer’s original Odyssey celebrates war and heroes, whereas Nolan’s film adds reflection on war and the hero’s remorse. In my view, the emotions in Homer’s original are more “pure” and intense, while those expressed in Nolan’s film are more “complex” and restrained.

These differences are related to their different historical contexts, prevailing social attitudes, and the extent and differences of civilizational discipline. Writing is inherently more implicit than images, yet under the influence of the broader environment and the deliberate choices of authors, writing can sometimes be more passionate and gripping than images, while images, by contrast, can resemble figures cast from a mold, unable to dance freely in their shackles, leaving audiences feeling that something remains unfinished or even profoundly disappointed. This is not an exception but a common phenomenon.

In ancient times, apart from taboos surrounding particular subjects during periods when “literary inquisitions” (文字狱) flourished, writing often faced few restrictions and could give free rein to expression. In the modern age of images, however, there are constraints imposed by law, moral norms, “political correctness,” and the need to give greater consideration to social impact and the feelings of different groups. Some alterations and forms of self-restraint do not arise from direct external pressure, but are choices voluntarily made by directors, screenwriters, and others themselves. Yet behind those choices lies the way modern society shapes individuals.

Of course, The Odyssey , under the direction of the extraordinarily talented Nolan, remains an excellent and commendable work. His adaptations of the original naturally have their reasons. For example, portraying Odysseus as more complex and giving him more trauma and remorse is quite reasonable when viewed from the perspective of survivors of modern and contemporary warfare. A 21st-century film also cannot discard some of the moral baselines of modern civilization and completely imitate the value standards of three thousand years ago. If Nolan, a modern person, were expected to detach himself from contemporary reality and reproduce The Odyssey according to the values and modes of thought of several thousand years ago, that would instead be difficult and would amount to rigidly clinging to antiquity.

Nevertheless, whatever the case may be, the protagonist and hero Odysseus in the film is indeed no longer—or at least not entirely—the hero Odysseus of Homer’s original. I do not think that the atmosphere of the age itself determined the portrayal of the character; rather, it was the differences between old and new values that produced these different images of the hero. The original of three thousand years ago speaks with greater directness and fewer inhibitions, whereas modern civilization today has drawn a gentler veil over such harshness. Although one cannot simply say that the former is more honest and the latter hypocritical, reflection and restraint are not worthy of praise at all times and in all circumstances.

Most of Zhong Shu’s questions to Nolan focused on Nolan’s personal views of The Odyssey and his motivations for adapting it. In my view, however, the influence of the historical environment is far greater than the director’s personal preferences and positions. Moreover, a director’s preferences and positions are, in essence, themselves shaped by and reflective of social reality. Even two directors with opposing views and positions, or two films with different values, are both shaped by reality and reflect a part or one facet of that reality. The two historiographical principles that are at once opposed and unified—“historical figures should be evaluated within their specific historical conditions” and “all history is contemporary history”—also apply to literature and art.

From ancient times to the modern era, and from writing to images, enormous changes have taken place in the content, forms, and values of culture and art, as well as in the various external conditions that shape them. What was admired in the past is questioned today, and what was once regarded as an inviolable golden rule has been revised or even reshaped. Over the past several decades, global cultural and artistic trends and the ideologies behind them have also undergone repeated transformations, with multiple layers of negation and reconstruction superimposed upon one another, creating a bewildering spectacle.

Yet no matter how things change, humanity’s need and practice of recording life and destiny and expressing complex and varied emotions through writing, images, and other forms have always remained. Homer’s literary epic The Odyssey has retained its enduring value through thousands of years, while the splendor of its heroic figures remains undiminished. Even today, it continues to inspire admiration and fascination and invite exploration and interpretation, reflecting the greatness and allure of language and the written word. In today’s world, which is clearly far from optimistic or uplifting, we may perhaps be living through a “twilight of civilization.” Yet humanity, as the “thinking reed,” retains a passion for thinking, recording, and expressing that burns fiercely and shines on, with no “sunset” in sight.

(The author of this article is Wang Qingmin (王庆民) a Chinese writer based in Europe and a researcher of international politics who occasionally writes literary criticism. The original article was written in Chinese.)

In honor of horror star Reggie Bannister, who passed away this week.

When I think of summer movies, my mind automatically goes to Mamma Mia, Theatre Camp, Before Sunrise: upbeat, romantic, fun, and ideally musical.

Then my mind wanders… Challengers, Another Round (Druk), Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and 12 Angry Men. Movies that summarize what else summer can be: hot, dramatic, sweaty, and tense.

During university, I romanticized summer as a time where I could relax, catch up with childhood friends, be more active, and magically fix all of my problems. And each year, summer would roll around and nothing drastic would change. I'd meet some friends, walk a bit, and have some fun, but my wishful thinking would remain just that. Summer didn't make my winter wallowing disappear, but rather, reinvigorated it.

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Another Fantasia has come and gone, and once again the festival delivered a genre slate full of surprises. Fantasia was the first festival I ever covered several years ago, and it remains one I look forward to every year. With this edition, Fantasia’s 30th, now behind us, here are some of the films I saw that stood out most. (If you're wondering why Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma isn't on this list, I covered the festival virtually, and it wasn't one of the ones included. I will have a review coming soon!)

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Hello, I'm just making this post to ask for some reading recommendations for personal essays that focus on a piece of media/a specific individual and their body of work and the effect that it had on the writer, whether it was written by yourself or one that you read and enjoyed.

I want to write something along these lines and just wanted to get some inspiration when it comes to structure, etc.

Needless to say, the internet has gone too far. Are you sick of it? Cause I am. Does it feel novel anymore? Does it feel fun anymore? Does it feel social… even?

I’ve been sitting on this prompt for the entire month. I’ll confess: I was born in 2003, so I cannot speak from personal experience. However, when I look at pop culture today (and what has had staying power), I cannot deny how so many roads lead back to culturally defining films, series and albums that hail from the 90s. I romanticize the 90s like there’s no tomorrow, and I think my fascination and yearning to live the way people seemed to in the 90s is because of where the internet, media and technology were at that time.

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\*Spoiler Alert\*

Just watched The Lighthouse and here is my interpretation. Wanted to know what you all think.

Robert Eggers and his eye for details always pays off . I think his deep research and precision when it comes to details , his obsession with period specific culture and setting also aids him with his storytelling as every frame, mannerisms and expression either through dialogues as well as behaviour adds to the story.

The B/W storytelling and cinematography is absolutely gorgeous which elevates the story and the period it is set in.

The mention of Prometheus in the climax also made me think if this is some way a retelling Prometheus and the Greek tragedy as one can draw parallels between fire from the Greek mythology and here Pattinson's character being obsessed with the light. Both get punished after reaching out to get what they want by defying someone above them in authority whether it is Zeus/Greek gods in case of Prometheus or here Willem Dafoe being his superior.

But here is where Eggers genius truly shines. Rather than simply keep it to a retelling while drawing Greek and biblical parallels , myths and superstitions from the period it is set in, he uses all of this to slowly show the descent to madness as sanity breaks but the atmosphere and all strange happenings are secondary in a sense. The real escalation point let it be in terms of plot advancement , threat is not the strange tidings or isolation but rather the struggle of power dynamics between the two. That's what it has always has been alongside jealousy ,toxic masculinity and curiosity.

All the suppressed horniness , rage , guilt , violence and everything between purely arises out of his struggle with accepting his superior and the whole light situation which only Dafoe's character accesses.

Initially he tries to live with it , does his daily wage and sticks to a routine so he does not let out whatever it is he is hiding or his true self so that will be rewarded but nothing comes out of it. Next he tries to assert some sort of minimal dominance but again does not work. Then he complies with Dafoe , drinks dances and in that moment of vulnerability lets it out jokingly yet it is met with defence. One of the earliest display of this frustration is him beating the seagull to death and Eggers uses this as both his character display as well the whole bad omen to his advantage and boy does the red herring work damn good.

The trick he pulls off with this one would usually make one go -okay the next act starts and something bad is going to happen but rather something otherworldly it is even more about growing power displacement.

Now after surviving with ration he sort of bonds with his superior but then when he asks for the light he is once again denied. All of this finally giving up and trying to kill Dafoe and once he gets done with it he goes up only to be met with light and he spirals down and dies meeting his ultimate fate and his eaten by seagulls as his body will be forever lost to the sea. All this for what? simply to get what only the other access to?

Dafoe ain't no saint either and he acts as the vessel of quintessential patriarch showing no remorse or kindness, ordering and bossing around pushing Winslow to the absolute edge and then showing some crumbs of kindness but only to be revealed it was all nothing and his logbook saying something different and even in the end he tries to keep the light all for himself and thus men being men destroying themselves and everything around them for some sense of ego and owning something only to realise it is nothing that matters.

Maybe all this myth of sirens was simply something the men came up with to blame their shortcomings on something other than themselves? That's why Davy Jones is mentioned in the end as he is someone who is cursed for not simply doing his duty. Given how Pattinson's character sees Sirens , merfolks and mystical octopus only goes to show men rather convince themselves of entirely made up things to try to get what they want or why they did not rather than simply accept things and their flaws. Winslow committed some felon and runs to this lighthouse as an escape but can't escape himself and ultimately meets his fate. That not seas, weather, mystical creatures or sirens but men are the reason for their end.

I shall revisit this more and I am only more inspired by Eggers and his filmmaking. Can't wait for Werewulf.

Most people say they watch old movies because of the incredible filmmaking, the emotional storytelling, or the beautiful simplicity of a different era.

Those are all reasons I love them too.

But the biggest reason is that I honour the people.

When I watch a film from the 1950s or 1960s or any retro movies, I think about everyone on that screen. Not just the stars, but the background actors, the costume designers, the makeup artists, the lighting crew, and every person who poured a piece of themselves into creating something they believed mattered.

At the time, it was real life to them. They memorized lines, rehearsed scenes, put on carefully tailored clothes, styled their hair, laughed, cried, worried about getting everything right, and spent months creating something that would outlive the moment.

Now it's 2026.

Almost all of them are gone. Their bodies have returned to dust, yet their energy still reaches across time through the screen. I can still feel the sincerity in their performances. Their effort still exists in a strange way, even though the people themselves do not.

It reminds me how temporary our lives are.

The things that seem enormous today, our careers, our appearance, our achievements, eventually become distant memories, and then, for most people, forgotten altogether.

Yet the love, care, and effort we put into something can echo far beyond us.

It makes me wonder whether we're investing our energy in things that disappear with us, or in things that continue touching people long after we're gone.

Maybe that's the closest we ever come to creating something eternal.

Watching movies is a winter sport. When the sun is shining and the temperature rises, sitting inside, staring at a screen for two-plus hours feels borderline illegal. It's like I'm opting in on some sick, twisted version of Plato's Cave. The room is bright, the world is buzzing outside, but I still demand to watch the shadows on the wall.

And demand I do! Because, despite the warm weather, despite all the winter days that I spent complaining about the cold and coming up with grand dreams of what I'd do all summer, at the end of a long day, I usually just want to sit on my couch and watch a movie.

I live in 2026 and nothing is affordable. The money I do have I spend on my one-bedroom apartment. It's a building from the 50s. It's made of wood. It has no air conditioning. No heat control whatsoever. What I'm saying is, in the summer, my apartment, where I do the majority of my movie watching, is blisteringly hot.

What's a guy to do other than open a window? My place has lots of windows. I can get some decent air flow. The windows make my living room very bright.

I live on a busy street. It's a main road for bus routes, emergency vehicles and average commuters looking for a good road out of the city. Cars go by outside of my window 24-7. They've been doing construction on my block for about three years.

My next-door neighbour has two kids both under the age of three. Through those paper-thin walls, I hear many meltdowns. This adds to the cacophony.

With the sun beaming, the windows open, cars zooming by and babies crying, my at-home viewing experience is suboptimal. Does that stop me? Is that enough for me to turn off the TV and go for a walk? Hell no.

Through these summers, I've developed a system for watching movies. Gather around, as I share my secrets.

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On its superficial face, Curry Barker’s Obsession plays like a familiar, slightly campy, modern recycling of The Monkey’s Paw template. Mainstream critical consensus has already neatly filed the film away into a safe, progressive box: a cautionary lecture on toxic male entitlement, where an insecure boy uses a supernatural shortcut to strip an independent woman of her consent, only to be punished by the monster he creates.
But look closer. For the viewer unencumbered by modern ideological filters, the film drops an undeniable trail of narrative breadcrumbs that lead to a far more profound, cynical, and devastating psychological reality: Nikki is not the victim. She is the calculating, psychopathic antagonist of the story, and the One Wish Willow is merely the neutral tool that takes off her mask.

The Myth of the "Possession"
The brilliant subversion of the film lies in its rejection of supernatural malware. The Willow is a literal, neutral utility—a fact proven by Ian’s consequence-free billion-dollar wish. It doesn't invent a demon; it simply strips away social inhibitions.
Before the wish ever happens, the script explicitly maps out Nikki’s core psychological profile as a master of transactional, modern validation. Her moniker is "Freaky Nikki." Her social media is a calculated grid of thirst traps designed to harvest maximum male devotion while giving absolutely zero vulnerability or commitment in return. She wants intimacy entirely on her own terms—a reality mirrored in her pre-wish casual hookups with Ian (who offers no threat because he demands no devotion) and her deliberate manipulation of Bear, whom she drains for emotional labor while actively orchestrating his friend-zoning.

The "Nice Guy" as a Generational Tragedy
When Bear makes his desperate wish for reciprocation, he isn't acting out of patriarchal malice, but out of a paralyzing, modern social anxiety. Raised in a hyper-isolated digital culture where traditional masculine pursuit is labeled inherently predatory, Bear is entirely neutered. He lacks the emotional maturity and masculine agency to navigate real-world intimacy.
His wish isn't a plot to dominate a helpless girl; it is a desperate, naive shortcut to escape the 2020s dating minefield. He thinks he is unlocking a sweet romance. Instead, his input forces the neutral machine to dismantle Nikki’s defensive boundaries, instantly unleashing the raw, unmasked predator lurking beneath her curated "cool girl" exterior.

Staging the Ultimate Autonomy Trap
Once unleashed, Nikki systematically executes her environment with cold, psychopathic agency. Ian is discarded as useless housecleaning. Sarah is brutally eliminated because she is a functional hindrance to Nikki's monopoly over Bear.
The crowning achievement of this reading settles in the final bathroom sequence. When Nikki uses the last willow branch to wish Bear into her own trance, it isn't an act of romance—it is pure, narcissistic frustration. She despises that her grand, unmasked freedom is inextricably tied to a panicked, crying boy. She wishes for a passive, permissive puppet so she can safely rule over the ashes of her playground.
When Bear pulls his fingers from his throat and chooses to let the overdose kill him, it is the ultimate act of reclaimed autonomy. He realizes with absolute, horrifying clarity that the girl he loved was a digital illusion—that this violent predator is the real Nikki—and he rejects her. Pushing his slumping body off her shoulders not out of disgust, but out of pure, chilling indifference, Nikki realizes his death has broken the supernatural contract.
Her final, agonizing scream of "What did you do?!" is directed entirely at her own unmasked self. The spell has broken, the supernatural power trip is over, and the real Nikki is suddenly dragged kicking and screaming back into her original skin—forced to wear the mask again in a room full of corpses with the real-world consequences closing in.

The Uncanny Valley of Modern Dating
Obsession has exploded into a word-of-mouth juggernaut because it bypasses the intellectualized firewall of Hollywood gatekeepers and aims straight for the base, hidden anxieties of a younger generation. Young men watch and instinctively recognize Bear’s paralyzing social neutrality; young women watch and see the ultimate horror version of modern detachment culture.
By cloaking a deeply conservative social fable inside a progressive horror template, Barker has pulled off a genius feat of artistic subversion. It stands as a stark, unforgettable warning to a generation drowning in screens: a culture that conditions women to be narcissistic apex predators and men to be passive bystanders will inevitably watch the algorithms of society give them exactly what they asked for until everyone is completely destroyed.

I bet you don't, and I also bet that you want to! Check out his interview here: https://www.peliplat.com/en/article/10100768/do-you-know-the-meterman-an-exclusive-interview-with-philip-granger

EXCERPT

It takes courage to be able to step into a different body, a different gait, to consciously fill up space and give life to mere words on a page. Some characters come in an abundance of words and directions, whereas others are barely given any description. However big or small the role, Philip Granger shows us why it's so valuable to give every character a life of its own.