Obsessed (2009), one of Beyoncé’s last attempts to prove her mettle as an actress, is a Lifetime-esque melodrama descended from movies like Fatal Attraction (1987) and Disclosure (1994): sleazy domestic thrillers that culled their intrigue and suspense from devil-women attempting to sully an all-American family’s sanctity.
One difference between Obsessed and its antecedents is that the man who becomes the seductress’s lust object doesn’t give in to the temptation posed. Another is its general blandness. Though they were almost unabatingly offensive (e.g., their ultimately holding women accountable for a man’s improprieties, their reckless ideas of sex and sexual misconduct as something commonly weaponized by dishonest women), Fatal Attraction and Disclosure were at least stylish and coarsely compelling. Obsessed has the requisite narrative beats down to a T, and it decently furthers an idea Fatal Attraction proffered in its finale: the wife of the preyed-upon hero being the family’s failsafe protector — a feminine backup when the so-called provider buckles. But it feels indistinct compared to the intentionally provocative movies laying its groundwork. Fatal Attraction and Disclosure throbbed with danger. Obsessed is comparatively beige. It feels rushed, conspicuously clipping along to get to an obligatorily explosive ending that did, for what it’s worth, win an MTV Movie Award for Best Fight.
The marriage imperiled in Obsessed is between Derek and Sharon (Idris Elba and Beyoncé), who are entering a new phase in their lives when the film starts. They’re celebrating three years of marriage, Sharon has just given birth, and they’ve moved into a tony mansion much better than their last house at flaunting the wealth Derek has accrued as a corporate leader. Sharon doesn’t want to get too settled, though: she’ll stop some after-work romantic overtures early in the movie to remind her spouse that she doesn’t want to be a stay-at-home mom for much longer — that he promised she could eventually go back to school to get the degree their romance interrupted. (They met when she was hired as his assistant at work — a foundational power imbalance the movie, which also half-heartedly alludes to a general work environment where sexual forwardness levied by those in powerful positions isn’t out of the question, doesn’t dwell on.)
Beyoncé in Obsessed.
A dynamic Obsessed does dwell on: the one that surfaces between Derek and a sexy temp in crisp white linens named Lisa (Ali Larter) who’s hired as his assistant. Lisa at first seems like a candidate you’d want to keep on full time. She’s so proactive in her duties that she’ll find out through a little digging, for instance, that Derek has made it a point to send Sharon a bouquet of flowers weekly since they started dating. (The first bouquet is already on the way before he can say anything.)
But Lisa’s attentiveness quickly turns inappropriate. She’s unsolicitedly making her boss mixtapes boasting appearances of bootlegged tracks from his favorite artists; she’s liquoring him up so that she can make moves in a bathroom stall during the staff Christmas party. Though he will at one point irresponsibly tell Lisa that he might vie for her romantically were he not married, Derek is largely painted as a hapless victim, struggling to split the difference between professional authority and friendliness until the consequences prove dire. “You better do something about this woman — or I will,” Sharon snarls near the end of the film.
Larter’s performance plays like a Xeroxed version of what Glenn Close achieved in Fatal Attraction. But whereas the latter film wanted us to see Close as more traditionally monstrous — her hair teased into an untamable lion’s mane, her madness-widened eyes intensely kohled — Larter is styled primly, like Demi Moore in Disclosure. She’s a cool temptress who could do something out of pocket and then convincingly make it seem like she wasn’t doing anything improper a few seconds ago. It’s fun to watch Larter’s bladed work in Obsessed; she’s like a cobra ready to strike compared to Close’s wolf-like madwoman. I liked watching her eyes connivingly squint.
Enjoyment of Larter’s and Close’s performances is contingent on how much you can stomach the queasy proposition their films are making: that there are women out there lurking with nothing better to do than destroy a man’s life — that we ought to not think about what events in their lives have maybe sympathetically coalesced to cause their psychological spiraling. The reason for a suicide attempt is no more complicated than “she wanted a man’s attention.”
Ali Larter in Obsessed.
In Obsessed, it’s less thorny to enjoy the performance of, say, the great Christine Lahti as a detective with a perpetually cocked eyebrow trying to make sense of what’s going on between this married couple and this other woman epitomizing notions of one being a danger to themselves and others. (One wonders what a performer as towering as Lahti thinks of being here, stuck in a movie football fields beneath her.)
White, blonde Larter’s predation on a Black couple strikes one differently now than it might have in 2009, when there weren’t allegations of her racist treatment of a Black colleague on the set of Heroes, the beloved-and-then-maligned superhero drama that ran for a few seasons at the end of the aughts. There’s also an element of what feels like foreshadowing seeing Beyoncé’s character going to increasingly aggressive lengths to keep the family unit intact — to keep standing by her man even when outside forces try to knock her down.
In less than a decade she’d release Lemonade, a visual album that captivatingly worked through the revelations of her rapper-mogul husband’s infidelity before disappointingly allowing for forgiveness. Much has changed for her since Obsessed’s release. One is her abandonment of acting, which she’s passable at, to focus on her musical output, which has only staggeringly multiplied in its sedulously engineered excellence. Her resonance with a woman who extracts power from monogamous love — who will fight through anything, even her own fury, to preserve it — has not.
Peterson Reviews 