A very bad rip-off of “Fatal Attraction,” in which an investment executive (Idris Elba) is targeted by the temp from hell (Ali Larter, from”Heroes”), who comes close to destroying the guy’s marriage to his erstwhile secretary (Beyonce Knowles). The familiar story is given a charge by the fact that the couple is African-American and the slinky siren a Caucasian blonde, adding a racial spin to the mix.
David Loughery’s script is one of those absurd concoctions in which virtually everybody not only talks in either groan-inducing cliches or howlingly funny absurdities, but also acts more foolishly than the certifiably insane villainess. So the hero doesn’t bother to inform his wife when the temp comes on to him, and allows the madwoman to drug and bed him during a company retreat. His executive aide (Matthew Humphreys) hands out information about the couple to the stalker even after she’s left the firm. A babysitter (Scout Taylor-Compton) permits a complete stranger to visit the put-upon couple’s infant son unattended. And at the end the wife returns alone to the house to check on the security alarm, and when she hears somebody rooting around upstairs, goes to check on it herself instead of calling the cops (or pressing the convenient “panic” button we’ve already seen installed).
Of course, that last bad decision is required to set up the big denouement—a protracted altercation between the two women. It’s hilariously awful (at one point the wife could walk away and wait for the cops, but instead decides to follow the nut-case up to the attic to finish the brawl!), but connoisseurs of cat-fights out there is advised that here’s one they shouldn’t miss. It’s got hair-pulling, face-punching, and the inevitable long fall into a conveniently-situated glass coffee table (from so high, in fact, that it makes the house seem from the inside like a skyscraper). And it’s topped off by a falling chandelier!
Why any of the leads should have thought that this tawdry potboiler was worth their time is unanswerable (Mathew and Beyonce Knowles went a step further by serving as two of the executive producers, along with “Magic” Johnson), and the supporting players (Bruce McGill as the hero’s boss, Jerry O’Connell as his randy office pal) are terrible, too. The saddest person to watch, though, is Christine Lahti, who looks positively stricken as the sad-faced cop who investigates when the whacked-out woman attempts suicide to “prove” her delusional affair with the exec. (No wonder she looks stricken since the cops are, as usual in such stuff, totally ineffectual.)
From a technical perspective, “Obsessed” is fine (Ken Seng’s widescreen cinematography is good), and it might have made it as a guilty pleasure or camp classic were it not overextended to more than a hundred minutes. (Had they dropped the numerous establishing helicopter shots of Los Angeles and the outside of the couple’s house they probably could have lopped 10% or so off the running-time.)
The director’s name is Shill, which seems appropriate, given the fact that as a “thriller” this movie is pretty much a dirty trick played on the audience.