Obsession, The (Sweet Sinner) Review

Reviewed by arkhamresident  on  2/27/2018

I've been a fan of Jacky St James work for a long time. So when I heard she was doing a psychological thriller inspired by the movie Single White Female, I was interested to see what she could do. This is one of her early features working for Sweet Sinner. Which is a shame because it means breaking up with her usual cinematographer Eddie Powell. For me, Jacky St James without Eddie Powell is like Steven Spielberg without John Williams; it's just not the same. Plus Eddie's style of cinematography is usually dark with a lot of shadows, which (when you're making a thriller) is perfect. Luckily Jacky still manages to make a pretty good feature. The writing, directing and acting all great as usual. However there are some slight problems with the way the movie is executed. And when you're directing a thriller, execution is everything.

The movie is about a young woman Michele (Abella Danger) who becomes obsessed with her roommate Mandy (Chanel Preston). But one of the problems is that it doesn't really have an introduction to the characters. Instead it just throws you in the middle of what's going on, and tries to explain it through exposition. It starts with Abella Danger moving into a house with Chanel Preston and Michael Vegas. Yes I know those aren't their names in the movie, but I'm calling them that. (Anyway) the way the scene is shot, it's almost like there was a scene missing. Maybe if the movie first showed Chanel and Michael is their every day lives. Then they get a call from Abella asking about the add for a roommated wanted. That would've brought the audience up to speed on what's going on.

Another problem (believe it or not) is the staircase scene. The scene where Abella comes down the stairs and hears Chanel talking to Jay Smooth about their secret affair. I think the mistake was showing Abella come down the stairs and hearing them. It undermined what could have been an unsettling moment. This might sound like I'm nit picking. But seeing her in plain sight (I think) defused the tension too quickly. Usually when the main character is being spied on while revealing important information, it doesn't show the spy until the end of the scene. The audience thinks everything is gonna be okay. And then person spying is revealed, it instantly puts the audience on edge.

The last thing is Abella Danger's character; Michele. Don't get me wrong, Abella acted really well, and they did establish her as a legit sociopath. But in other obsession movies like Fatal Attraction, Single White Female, or The Crush, each of the stalkers have one thing in common; charm. They start off as seemingly normal and friendly people, but as the movie goes on they slowly become more violent and crazy. It's one of the things that makes them so scary. Because the next time someone tries to be nice to you, you don't know if they can be trusted. The problem with Michele is that she starts off as creepy and disturbed, and just gets more creepy and disturbed. Therefor there's no real surprise when she does go crazy. Plus it's kind of false advertising when the subtext on the cover is "Things are never what they seem". It's a movie about a girl who looks like a mentally unstable stalker, and then is revealed to actually be a mentally unstable stalker.

These things don't make the movie bad, but do take it down a notch or two. But overall this was still much better than a lot of other adult thrillers. And if you can over look a few issues with the pacing and storytelling you'll probably still enjoy it.