Psychology
Movie Review - Obsessed
The movie entitled “Obsessed” is a 2009 thriller movie directed by Steve Hill and the story written by David Loughery. The main characters of the film is composed of Idris Elba who portrayed the role of Derek Charles a success Asset Manager, Beyonce Knowles as Derek’s wife Sharon and Ali Larter as Lisa Sheridan the stalking office temp and antagonist character in the film. The story revolves around the chaos that Lisa brought to the Charles family because of her obsession to Derek. It is apparent that Lisa suffers a psychiatric condition called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or OCD. Although the mental condition displays several other signs and symptoms, the fact that Lisa’s habits and actions manifests a level of intrusive, sexual and aggressive thoughts towards Derek it is enough to assume that she is suffering from OCD.
OCD is very common, although some of its form like that of Lisa is attributed to obsessive love, but the overall characteristics of her behavior still correspond to an OCD condition. It is also associated to distress and impairment of productive functioning due to the reoccupation of the mind to its targeted obsession. The condition was once believed to be rare and appeared to have a lifetime prevalence of 2.5% according to the Epidemiological Catchment Study (Greenberg, 2013). Currently the estimated lifetime prevalence of OCD ranges from 1.7% to 4% (Greenberg, 2013). The precise process in which OCD begins to develop in a person was not yet particularly established, but certain trials suggests that the brain is affected by the anomalies in serotonin neurotransmission or 5-HT. The fourth edition of DSM-IV-TR classifies OCD as an anxiety disorder characterized by the presence repetitive distress and intrusive behavior. Obsession as depicted by the character Lisa in the movie corresponds to the four criteria of DSM-IV-TR such as such as intrusiveness, the thoughts and impulsiveness, the person’s attempt to suppress thoughts and impulses and recognition of obsessional thoughts.
In general the movie was able to depict the general characteristics of an obsessed individual. For example, despite the constant rejection expressed by Derek, Lisa on the other hand neglects such thought and continuously creates situation that would allow her to get neat Derek. Similarly, such characteristic is also outlined in detail in the DSM-IV-TR description of the OCD condition. However, there are some aspects of OCD that the movie was not able to profoundly express. For example, if the objective of the movie is to show how obsessed Lisa is with Derek and show that Lisa is indeed not in a normal state of mind, there should have been a greater emphasis to OCD’s apparent symptoms such as resentment. On the other hand, the movie itself gave a satisfactory depiction of a person suffering from OCD, which can be observed in the scene where Lisa have committed suicide by overdosing herself with medication due to a prior rejection experience.
References
Greenberg, W. M. (2013, April 1). Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Retrieved April 3, 2013, from http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1934139-overview#a0101
Hill, S. (Director). (2009). Obsessed [Motion picture]. USA: Screen Gems.
