Netflix has been thriving on the woman-in-peril sub-genre of filmmaking. It found an unexpected smash in Birdbox, starring Sandra Bullock as a mother fleeing unseen demons. It bought the TV show You, a half-season flop about a stalker boyfriend, from the Lifetime network and turned it into a series already greenlit for a second season.
Which makes the streaming service’s latest flick, Secret Obsession, so curious. It’s the kind of movie filmmakers don’t make anymore — and for good reason.
Suspense-free and trope-filled, Obsession is a particularly odd choice for Netflix, which is trying to establish its original features as serious, event cinema. But this latest entry feels slapdash and cheap, the kind of fare usually relegated to weeknight time-filler fare on dying cable networks. It feels like someone owed someone a favor to get this made.
Directed by television veteran Peter Sullivan (The Sandman), it’s difficult to know where to start with Obsession: its give-all-away trailer, its inevitable plot arc or its worst offense, boredom. This is one of those rare films that would have been better had it been worse; a good dose of camp would at least have made for a fun (or funny) way to spend an hour and a half.
Instead, we get a thriller that does not thrill, a suspense movie with as much suspense as a Beagle, and a production that will do little to fend off the competition of ascending streaming services.
Obsession’s opening scene begins with a glimmer of hope for entertainment: A woman flees a silent, sinister pursuer around a highway rest stop in driving rain. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but it’s too simple to screw up. After that, though, it’s all downhill.
Our protagonist, Jennifer (Brenda Song), evades her tormentor, only to be hit by a passing car. The driver gets her to a hospital while her husband, Russell (Mike Vogel), arrives shortly thereafter. The doctors tell him she’ll be okay, but she’s got a bad case of the most plot-forwarding injury of all, amnesia. Memento was the last film to use that device effectively, and woe to the director who tries to employ it as effectively.
Jennifer can’t remember a thing, leaving it to Russell to remind her who she is as he nurses her back to health. Something, though, seems fishy, raising the suspicion of Detective Frank Page (Dennis Haysbert), who comes with his own convenient and tragic backstory, along with a doubting police chief.
That Page (or Jennifer herself) wouldn’t notice the countless holes in the story immediately is Obsession‘s first major misstep. This is a movie that would have us believe that a patient can undergo a days-long course of medical treatment without ever being positively identified — and that same patient can subsequently be released into the care of someone who also hasn’t identified themselves. A good 10 minutes of “Secret Obsession” consists of people slowly realizing that they don’t have any idea who the main characters of this story actually are.
Still, Russell is allowed to bring Jennifer to a palatial home in secluded woods 20 miles north of San Francisco — and a mile from the nearest neighbor. A good 10 minutes is burned on Jennifer trying to find a cell-phone signal. (She never does.)
Though Obsession hoists as many red flags as the Kremlin, Jennifer is the last to see any of them, allowing her husband to let his own psycho flag fly. Instead of slowly revealing the dark side of our villain, as You, Misery, Fatal Attraction and innumerable others did, Obsession seems impatient to get to the point we all see coming, and the rush is needless.
Song is apt as the movie’s heroine, but the best performance by far comes from Haysbert. While he’s become known as the Allstate insurance guy, he’s a terrific actor whose credits include Heat, Major League and 24.
Alas, he’s not in the film often enough to make it entertaining, and by the end of Obsession, you’ll be the one pining for amnesia.
