Obsessed | Teen Ink

Obsessed

May 21, 2009
By Anonymous

It's something every women fears when she gets married. Even in the most trusting relationship, the little voice inside a women's head will never go away. “Would he cheat?” This question comes and goes with time, but is always present deep down. For Sharon (Beyoncé Knowles), this lingering question begins to surface as her husband, successful businessman Derek (Idris Elba), begins working with a new, strikingly beautiful temp worker named Lisa.

With their baby boy, Derek and Sharon Charles move into their dream house in suburbia. Happy with their marriage, it seems nothing could ruin their happiness. In true Fatal Attraction fashion, the gorgeous new temp worker begins to obsess, stalk, and seduce Derek. But Derek, being a committed and chivalrous kind of guy, does not give in to any of Lisa's advances. Obsessed is the Fatal Attraction of this generation. However, this movie was so predictable, one could almost laugh at it. The final scene, the essential showdown between ticked-off wife and out-of-her-mind “lover”, is so hokey and predictable that I did, in fact, find myself laughing in the theater.

In terms of characters, Elba played a genuinely innocent, “why-don't-you-believe-me” husband. Knowles' character is a typical, a diva-housewife, who can pull off being drop-dead gorgeous, even when trying to look “worn-and torn”. After she finds out about her husband's alleged affair, however, she became….just plain annoying. Through a montage, the viewer can see how a few months have passed. Sharon kicked her innocent husband out, with Derek only coming to pick up and drop off their son. She stares longingly out the window as he comes and goes, and the viewer can obviously see how she wants him back. But, in true dramatic manner, when Derek apologizes (for how many times he does, I lost count), she becomes She-Woman Man-Hater. After the instant replays of her slamming the door in his face, I began to want to scream at her.

And finally, Lisa, the obsessed and mentally deranged, is the craziest character I've ever seen in a movie, being second only to Hannibal Lector. At first, she plays the innocent “my boyfriend just broke up with me, I'm so pathetic” card, putting her target in a position to awkwardly tell her how “if I were single, I'd date you”. Bad move. She uses that line verbatim against Derek later in the movie. After her little Oscar-worthy performance, she tries to seduce Derek at the company Christmas party, breaks into his car, and, when he gets in, takes off her trench coat to show him what she must have bought at Victoria's Secret. On a company retreat, she stalks him, drugs him, and gets him into bed. “Poor Derek“, is an understatement. She then poses as his wife to get him out of a meeting, he threatens her, she overdoses in his hotel bed, he finds her and calls 9-1-1, and, after all this chaos, the viewer finds that they are calling Lisa some very degrading words, as half of the audience was doing in my theater.

Obsessed does win in my book, despite all of this negative criticism, solely on the fact that watching this movie is fun. This movie does a wonderful job at dragging its viewer in, establishing an emotional connection with the characters, making them legitimately hate a fictitious character, and having them literally cheering for Sharon and Derek at the end of the final scene. After all, good always prevails over evil (or, in this case, the insane and obsessed).


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