Obsessed

I can't believe I'm saying this, but Obsessed just isn't trashy enough. You've seen the ad campaign, the one built around Beyonce Knowles and Ali Larter having a knock-down, drag-out catfight that ends up trashing a house. It promises a movie that couldn't possibly be good, but might be enjoyably campy in the right hands. We have to wait a long time for that scene to come, and everything that comes before it is pretty average at best. I expected a lot of things from Obsessed. Mediocrity was not one of them.

The screenplay by David Loughery (Lakeview Terrace) is cut from the same cloth as similar domestic psycho thrillers like Fatal Attraction, Single White Female, Swimfan, and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Just like those films, it starts with a person who seemingly has it all. The person this time is Derek (Idris Elba). He's a high ranking person at the company he works for (we never learn what his company does or makes, it's just one of those generic movie office buildings), he's got a beautiful wife named Sharon (Beyonce Knowles), a cute toddler son, and a new house. It doesn't take long for "the other woman" to show up. As is the case with these films, this character is supposed to seem innocent enough at first, but slowly become mentally unhinged and show their true psychotic colors. The "other woman" is Lisa (Ali Larter), a temp filling in for Derek's assistant who's sick with the flu. Lisa seems harmless enough at first, but we've seen the trailers, so we know what's coming. All we need is for Derek to make that fateful mistake that will send the "other woman" spiraling into scene-chewing madness.

Derek makes that mistake when he comforts Lisa over a recent break up, telling her that if he were single, he would date her. This causes Lisa to throw herself upon him in the restroom during the office Christmas party. He rejects her, but the girl just won't take the hint. She follows him to his car in the parking garage, wearing nothing but her undergarments underneath a trenchcoat, she sends sexy photos of herself to Derek's computer over e-mail, she drugs his drink so she can force herself upon him while he's unconscious, she even goes so far as to break into his house. The movie keeps on coming up with contrived reasons for Derek to keep his mouth shut, so his wife won't know what's going on. She finally does find out eventually, and we get a domestic drama with Derek being kicked out of his own house and trying to patch things back up with Sharon. This plot takes up too much time and brings the movie to a near stand-still, since the psycho stalker temp all but disappears from the movie while this is going on.

If you've seen the trailer for Obsessed, then you've already seen the movie, since it literally shows every major thing that happens. It even shows the ending. In a way, I guess it saves the average theater patron some money and a lot of time. But what about us poor schmucks who review these movies? All we get is some popcorn, maybe some soda, and something that takes almost two hours to tell the exact same story that the trailer told in under three minutes. The movie doesn't really try to stand out, so it never really rises to being good or lowers itself to being truly awful. Maybe this is due to the fact that this is director Steve Shill's first theatrical effort, after working entirely in television for over 10 years. The movie needed the hand of someone who specializes in these kind of exploitive sex thrillers and knows how to make them fun. This movie takes itself too seriously, and never goes far enough.

When it does decide to finally throw caution to the wind and give us what we want, it arrives too late to make a true impact. The audience at my screening seemed to be getting a huge kick out of the heavily hyped catfight, yelling at the screen and cheering, but I was left feeling disappointed. Not just because I had already seen most of it in the trailer, but also because it comes across as being manipulative instead of rewarding. That the movie had been fairly mundane up to that point, then it suddenly decides to give us this all-out no-holds-barred craziness, felt like a cheap gimmick on the part of the filmmakers. It would have been more fitting if the rest of the movie had been just as insane. Anyone who tells you they didn't mind sitting through the domestic family squabbles before getting to this moment is lying to you and themselves.

Fun Fact: According to the IMDB, the original title for Obsessed was going to be "Oh No She Didn't". Not only is this a much better title, I'd love to see what kind of ad campaign could have been made around it. And just imagine how fun it would be to say the title to the person at the ticket window. If the makers of this movie actually preferred Obsessed to that title, then that probably explains where a lot of this movie's problems stem from.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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