Drop On By The Clown Cafe

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Would You Like To Speak To Her?

 Movies Watched (since last update): Obsession (2026)

October 10, 2026

I've had a lot of anxiety around Obsession, for a variety of reasons, and I'll start there before I get into discussing the film itself, because it does have a little bit of a thematic relevance to my previous entries, in which I talked a lot about communication, both personally and in the medium.

When the film came out, I wasn't terribly interested in seeing it, because...well, I've seen this one before. There have been no shortage of Monkey's Paw/Love Potion No.9/Mind Control/Robot Lover/Careful What You Wish For/Stalker movies to fill the grand canyon throughout the history of cinema, and I haven't much enjoyed watching any of them, because they make me feel ill for reasons I still haven't been able to fully articulate. Ill in a way that I cannot really enjoy the film for what it is, like triggering my mental health in a way that I feel miserable. Started with a double feature of I Spit On Your Grave/Bloodsucking Freaks when I was sixteen. Felt sick to my stomach, couldn't handle watching women be hurt like that, y'know? I can watch Jason Voorhees take out a dozen teenagers, but the emotional nature of the violence, the control, the helplessness...that made me feel awful. So I've had difficulty with those kinds of stories my whole life, so I tend to avoid cinema with those themes. Not because I don't think it's important, but because the spiraling of my mental health issues could leave me feeling awful for days. I saw Eden Lake once in my late 20's and it took me weeks to recover (though that didn't have the mind control/rape revenge stuff in it, but similar feeling). 

So I didn't need another "Woman enslaved by Bad Guy" movie in my life.

I tried to articulate that when the film came out, and was dismayed when I had people I love and respect get aggressive with me on the subject, which triggered what became the main reason I started to avoid the film: rejection sensitivity from a long life of social trauma. 

Not sure where that started.

I was always a disposable friend, for the most part, and never felt like I was allowed to express myself because, if I did, it was always misunderstood if not met with outright anger or rejection. It was always "I didn't understand," or I was stupid, or I was contrarian, or whatever. Whole life has been like that.

So I started to avoid Obsession because I was afraid I wouldn't like it (and I didn't particularly like it, feels like I oughta rip that band-aid off right now) and the same people who got upset with me for my disinterest would be extra mad that I didn't like it. 

But, in the name of personal growth, which is part of why I'm keeping this film journal (not only to talk about movies, but also what they mean to me, the things they make me confront, the things they make me feel and think, etc), I decided to push ahead and talk about the film (and you have no idea how much it took out of me to even start the film, let alone discuss it. The amount of energy and self-affirmation I needed) and, while I do admit that maybe all this baggage does create a little bit of a bias that is decidedly not in the films favor, I gave my read of it the same amount of attention I would for something I was forced to watch in a film class. 

It isn't that Obsession is a bad movie. It's not. There are some good scenes, some good effects, some shocking moments, but it left me feeling very hollow, and a little irritated. The main thing I found myself thinking about was Chasing Amy. In that film, we follow a man who falls for a lesbian, becomes her friend, pushes a bit too hard about his feelings for her, she chooses to give him a shot, his own immaturity and unresolved feelings about homosexuality and sexual identity and sexual history causes him to blow it, he loses the relationship, and grows as a person.

Chasing Amy is a pretty decent movie, but it has one huge glaring flaw: It wasn't about the girl. That whole story focuses on our heterosexual lead and his experience with all this, when the story is really about her, and I found myself thinking the same about Obsession.

Nikki and her struggle with being ostensibly possessed due to a douchebag's thoughtless wish is the real meat of the film, but the film is too busy seeing everything from Bear's perspective and there are two problems with this: 1)Bear is a man, and 2) Bear suuuuuuuuuuuuucks. Taking out even personal revulsion of the character (which is earned: Bear is unmistakably the villain protagonist of Obsession) he isn't terribly well drawn or developed as a character, just a walking bag of meat who makes faces sometimes. We know nothing about this idiot, except a collection of traits we associate with incels, or "nice guys," but the attitude of the film seems to be that, as long as we're making it clear he's bad, it's okay that we follow him through the narrative. It also feels relevant that I got the impression that this was supposed to be funny, like in an It's Always Sunny kinda way? But I don't have a lot of conversation in me about that element, but it feels relevant that the tone is darkly ironic, as if following Bear is a subversive "men are bad" joke? 

Anyway. We should be following Nikki.

Why won't this story follow me?

The most interesting moments in Obsession come when she briefly throws off control of whatever entity is controlling her (the mechanics of what is going on is woefully under-serviced in the narrative, which would be fine if it was solely macguffin, but the One Wish Willow is so load bearing in this story (it becomes a plot point in the climax, and the empty box constantly appears as a reminder of how we got here) and there is no attention given to it. I'm more curious about how this world we're inhabiting contains literal wish granting items available through casual retail and yet the world is somehow totally normal? That's like Buffy saying vampires exist without mentioning that people don't know they exist...sorry for that sub paragraph, it's bad writing. It's an awkward analogy, too, but so much of Obsession feels like a Buffy episode where Buffy never shows up). She is in there, fighting for her life, but instead of showing us that, we need Bear regretting his actions. Feels like the only version of the Monkey's Paw/Love Potion No.9/Mind Control we haven't had is the story in which the victim is the point of view character. 

Anyway. 

This is getting a little long winded and maybe a little too aggressive towards the film, and I don't really want that to be the way this goes down, so I'll talk about some positives.

I liked the party scene. It was well crafted (and actually lit, which was a nice change of pace from half of this movie being lit like a storage locker at midnight in the bad part of town) and performed, and Inde Navarette (who gives a strong performance, even if I think it's a little too showy and could have been great if she had more to do than screaming and flailing) is good in it. The moments of violence in the film are actually quite well done, solid visual effects work combined with a lot of ferocity from performers and editing alike. 

I ended up giving it a 3 star rating on letterboxd.

See?

It's mostly competently done, lighting issues and underwhelming script aside, with a spirited lead performance from a talented young actress. It just has the focus of a straight, white, cis man telling a story that really should be told from the perspective of literally anyone else. 

We should have been watching Nikki.

One Day, I'll Just Disappear

 Movies Watched (since last entry): We're All Going To The World's Fair

October 9th, 2026

Earlier today, I wrote about the transcendent Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma and decided I'd keep that ball rolling by watching and writing about We're All Going To The World's Fair since I hadn't seen it.

I'm having trouble finding a proper starting point to writing about the film (we'll use Fair as short hand, it's a long title. Y'know what, let's also agree to Miasma and Glow for the other films, won't we?), especially since I want to avoid spoiling too much (I fear I may have revealed too much about Miasma), but I'll do my best...but it's probably better if you see the film first. Sometimes that doesn't matter, but in this case, I think it does.

Fair is a really excellent debut effort from a talented filmmaker, and I make specific note of "debut" (there is another film out there under Schoenbrun's dead name) because it is warranted here. There are techniques used that feel a little like they were better on paper than on screen, but that can largely be chalked up to it being an early attempt. Specifically, there's a tad too much walking, and some shots are held a tad longer than they should be, but the philosophy behind them is certainly solid (they are admittedly dislocating and disorienting, and provide instability), but on screen they also don't keep the viewer as focused as they maybe should be. But those things aren't even really ineffective, they just could be a few seconds shorter? I dunno.

Overall, my experience with the film was a positive one. Fair gets its juice from uncertainty, creating a premise whose depth is almost immediately clear to the viewer, and then twists and turns it, making you doubt your original perceptions of what, exactly, is really going on throughout. Themes and metaphors and allegories you began certain of start to become questionable, as you become half-convinced the film is about something else, a characters motivation is something else, and that uncertainty drives along a very quiet, very subdued narrative.

The film's best weapon is star Anna Cobb(in her feature film debut), who manages to engender sympathy, warmth, concern, and finally a sense of panic in the viewer as she goes deeper and deeper into the existential hole she falls into when she attempts to assuage her loneliness by playing an online horror MMORPG in which she invites a strange power to transform her. 

Told largely through webcam footage uploaded to the internet with occasional third person view (shot handheld, creating a drifting, imbalanced feel that fits extremely well) and footage of empty parking lots and nonspecific landscapes (making it seem like the story is literally taking place anywhere snow is possible, which is smartly utilized as a small plot point, which is a nice touch), the film occasionally drags as much as watching youtube does, but it still manages to be paced well, and draws the viewer into the insomniac-like hypnosis of the chronically online world.

Like Casey herself, we feel as if we are sleepwalking through a half-real world, separated from human contact all while being dependent on it for the same human contact. In that, the film very much feels like a post-covid fever dream, a thesis on the various ways we all can find ourselves lonely and alone, and the faustian bargains we'll enter just to feel better, if even for a moment, and maybe, just maybe, we'll be lucky enough to stumble onto someone who cares. 

As fantastic as the film's ideas are, it remains a very grounded, thoughtful, and occasionally moving piece of depression cinema.

..............

The film itself doesn't directly offer such resources, as I thought for a moment it might, but whenever self harm is depicted in a film, it is best to always end this kind of writing with resources, so if you are having troubling thoughts of self-harm, please reach out to someone, or dial 988. 

If It Gets Too Real, You Can Always Turn It Off

 Film Watched: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

October 9th, 2026

I have been watching movies a long time. I first got into actually understanding films when I discovered David Lynch films in high school, and I never really looked back. The two films that undeniably helped make me who I am are Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, both of which still are my favorite movie depending on the day.

Lynch is very important to what I am going to be discussing here today, which is mainly that I am ready to call it: Jane Schoenbrun is the heir apparent to David Lynch. But I have to talk more about Lynch before I can get there, so bear with me.

Recently, when interrogating just why Lynch is so important to me, I realized that all my favorite filmmakers (Lynch, Bergman, Haneke, Kubrick, etc) are always communicating personally through the medium of film. In particular, I came to realize that (even if he didn't intend it to be so) The Elephant Man is a personal statement from Lynch about Eraserhead and the way it was seen. In Eraserhead, Lynch made a film that allowed him to be vulnerable and express his deep-seated fears about becoming a husband and a father, that it would not only end his own hopes and dreams, but that he would also destroy his wife and child in the process. 

So imagine you make art so you can express your anxieties and vulnerabilities, and the film becomes a midnight movie cult success that people smoke dope and go to watch the film because it is "weird." While the imagery connected to the audience, as a collective whole they missed the part that Lynch saw as the most important aspect. 

In essence, Eraserhead was seen as a freak show.

In Elephant Man, a sensitive and emotional man is raised up out of poverty and mediocrity for all the wrong reasons, gains celebrity for all the wrong reasons and, while he is largely treated well by the social elites, he is still seen as nothing more than a freak. So he decides to live his life the way he wants, even if it kills him (and it does, in the films sublime final moments, where John Merrick lays himself down to sleep as a man, even though he will suffocate due to his condition). That sounds a lot like Lynch, disappointed that his meaningful expression of his soul was seen as a curiosity, making a personal statement that he will do his own thing, that he will make the films he wants to make, even if his career dies as a result.

Lynch does go on to do Dune, and he hates the gig, and it shows, and he more or less entirely swears off the studio system, seeking independent financing for his future work (Twin Peaks, of course, is something of an exception).

So, when thinking about all this, I realized two things are true:

1.All film is adaptation 

2.How the idea is adapted says something about the film maker

An idea is filtered from brain, to page, to screen, always changing form, always adapting to fit the needs of the medium it enters. Some filmmakers do this through careful technique, to show you what is being said (nothing wrong with this, by the way. There are excellent filmmakers who show you unbelievable things, even if there is a distance. Sometimes a painting needs only to be pretty). Others, like Lynch, want you to feel it, to communicate deeper ideas about the way they see the world, the way they feel about things. They show you what's inside of them, strip themselves bare, eviscerate themselves in front of you, all for the desire to be truly seen and, ideally, to share those feelings with others.

In essence, put less pretentiously, film is art, and a filmmaker is an artist.

The other main preamble here is that, when recording the latest episode of my podcast At The Devil's Ball, my co-host Sammaeal referred to Jane Schoenbrun as "his most anticipated filmmaker" despite their only have completed three feature films. After that conversation, I watched Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Schoenbrun's latest film, and came to understand why Sammaeal (and myself) might think that way.

It's because we don't see the personal film as often anymore.

I've talked a lot on the podcast, and privately, about how a lot of modern cinema doesn't do much for me. In the sea of Marvel movies and retro IPs and remakes and adaptations, there isn't a lot of personal expression to be found. That, again, isn't to say there aren't good movies being made, there definitely are, but we haven't seen something like Eraserhead until...well, probably I Saw The Tv Glow, Schoenbrun's other masterpiece about making peace with one's own identity (gendered or otherwise: the films power lies in allowing the cis viewer to relate to the trans experience by allowing it to a broader concept without ignoring the allegories, a rare feat) through the shared experience of narrative art (which was deliberately meant to invoke Buffy and Power Rangers, two shows that undoubtedly left an impact on Schoenbrun as a young person). Glow was a tremendous experience as well, and I kinda want to rewatch it now, and probably will soon. 

I'm not really here to review Miasma.

Not really.

To really talk too in detail about the film would rob you, the reader, of the experience of the film, but I can talk to you a little about how it made me feel, the joys and sads and horrors that all came to the surface, with the understanding that, if you meet the film on it's wavelength, you will likely have similar feelings, but about different things.

The film is about a lot of things, a lot of feelings are being expressed, but the one that might be most relevant to what I was talking about with Lynch was probably it's most simplistic: Schoenbrun makes a pledge to keep doing what they're doing. 

The films main character, Kris (Hannah Einbinder, in a wonderfully vulnerable performance), is a director who made a splash at film festivals with a pretentious art film, and has been hired to reboot a popular slasher franchise (patently based on Friday The 13th, with nods to Sleepaway Camp) that has run out of steam. She complains that she realizes she was only hired to do the job because she is queer, and that her queerness will help the studio gloss over the franchise's problematic past and, through her relationship with Billy (Gillian Anderson, channeling Bette Davis and giving an incredible performance), begins to realize that, well, it just ain't worth it. Film is personal expression, after all, and what is inside her is certainly not a mainstream, big budget, studio driven IP piece, and the franchise meant a lot more to her (and Billy) than just the sum of it's parts. 

In doing the film, Schoenbrun makes a personal statement that her career path does not involve Marvel movies, or doing a Friday The 13th reboot, but continuing to make personal statements about the human condition (in all it's forms) through their shared love of genre fiction. Because, in the end, Schoenbrun knows just as Kris does (and Lynch somewhat learned): if the studio gave them a big job, it wouldn't be because they understood the films, but because they wanted a trans filmmaker for political points in an increasingly volatile world.

Of course, that isn't the only personal statement being made: the film is, at it's heart, a love story between an awkward, sexually confused queer filmmaker and the mommy domme former starlet, who develop a deep connection through their mutual understanding of a cult horror film. Not that they are the only ones who understand it, but that they understand it the same way, with the same spirit. 

It is unbelievably romantic and sweet and, yes, sexy.

What moved me the most was unusual though: Kris confesses, in a moment of vulnerability, that she has never had a successful encounter when it comes to intercourse. She views sex as something she does to meet her partners needs, and can only achieve orgasm by going "far away" and, chat...that's me. I didn't see it coming. And it gets weirder: her connection to cinema is that "far away." As such, the film becomes about Kris connecting cinema to the sexual being she has inside of her, with Billy gently guiding her, and it becomes a whole examination of the way film intersects with self, not only for the artist, but for the viewer. Film itself becomes an extension of reality, allowing us our "own private alternate universe," and if it gets too real, you can always turn it off. As Billy says, "It's all just for play."

I think I cried a little, four times.

What results is certainly chaotic, but the high energy tone, the sense of tension in mundane moments, the matte paintings and animations in the background, everything becomes an absolutely treat for the senses. 

And it is undeniably personal.

But if it gets too real, you can always turn if off.

Not only is Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma my current favorite film of 2026 (and I'm working on seeing a lot more of those as we speak), but a new all-time favorite and, just like Sammaeal, Jane Schoenbrun is my most anticipated filmmaker today.

................

Anyway, going to try to write about movies again more often, hopefully regularly, and the ole' Cinematic Russian Roulette blog I made and abandoned years ago seems like the place to keep a film diary.