Movie Obsessed (2009)

Still a Stalker’s Perfect Target

Suzanne Tenner/Screen Gems

There are no boiled bunnies in “Obsessed,” a clanking, low-rent imitation of “Fatal Attraction” that lacks the imagination to come up with such a novelty. But because Ali Larter plays Lisa, the movie’s psychotic lady-who-refuses-to-take-no-for-an-answer like a carbon copy of Glenn Close’s demonic temptress in the original, she succeeds in pushing buttons that make you root for her destruction and feel ashamed for doing so.
As Lisa, a sultry office temp, puts the moves on Derek Charles (Idris Elba), a happily married investment banker, she wears an insinuating smirk that turns into a crazy rictus smile. Sidling up to Derek at a fancy bar and ordering two dirty martinis, she announces that she likes hers “filthy.” At work, Derek is riding high, having just reeled in a $150 million account. For a while he succeeds in fending off Lisa. But just when he thinks she has abandoned her campaign, she trails him to a corporate retreat, where she poses as his wife to enter his hotel room and tries to kill herself with sleeping pills. After Lisa’s attempted suicide, Derek, who neglected to tell Sharon about the harassment, endures a domestic fall from grace. But this perfect husband and father isn’t down and out for long.
The movie’s most disturbing aspect, of which the filmmakers could not have been unaware, is the physical resemblance between Mr. Elba and Ms. Larter to O. J. and Nicole Brown Simpson. It lends “Obsessed” a distasteful taint of exploitation.
This movie Directed by Steve Shill; written by David Loughery; director of photography, Ken Seng; edited by Paul Seydor; music by Jim Dooley; production designer, Jon Gary Steele; produced by Will Packer; released by Screen Gems.