I saw Obsession, the horror flick that has now become the highest-earning low-budget film of all time. What started out as the relatively cheap endeavor of Gen Z director Curry Barker is nothing short of a cultural phenomenon! Wow! Here’s what I scribbled in my journal the following morning, a little languidly because I confess it took me a while to fall asleep:
Watched Obsession last night with Avery and Megan - very well done movie that certainly shook me a bit - about what happens when a guy refuses to humanly ask a girl out and instead appeals to dark forces to make her “love” him - love, though, as Lewis showed in TGD (The Great Divorce), is not love when it’s aimed aggressively as a finite creature and never submitted to God.
Of course, in Obsession, the girl (Nikki) is the victim of obsessive passion, not its wielder. The real vice in the story boils down primarily to the cowardice of Bear, the young man who fails to take a meaningful risk and instead brings calamity on himself, Nikki, and his friends. It goes to show that relationships can be so tricky because often we want an absolute guarantor of their success; like Bear, we might make a wish with a magic store-bought trinket instead of just saying, “Hey, uh, I, uh, you know, kinda sorta got feelings for you.” For more of my thoughts on the horror genre and what perhaps we might learn from it, check out my latest op-ed in The American Spectator.
I also finished Middlemarch, the multifaceted Victorian novel by George Eliot (aka Marian Evans). The first 400 pages were slow going for me, and I was also trying to work through some other books in prep for next semester. However, I was able to burn through the second half of the book pretty fast and have to say that it is one of the best novels I’ve read in years! Eliot might exceed Dickens as a prose stylist and her psychological penetration into her characters is unmatched. In the end, we see a celebration of a hidden life lived faithfully and for the benefit of one’s community. Can’t recommend it enough. The final line is worth the price of admission.
God speaks to us through movies, books, art, nature, and perhaps especially through other people (Lewis again, I think). If you have a hunch that you need to say a word of encouragement to a brother or sister or even someone you don’t know, do it! What’s the worst that can happen? The worst that can actually happen is that we stay comfortable, at ease in our chairs and behind our screens, and never say a word to each other except a polite, “Hello, how are you?”
