My Teacher, My Obsession (2018) - Movie Review

There is something profoundly icky about this movie, and indeed its entire sub-genre. This student-teacher tryst brand of psychological thrills is rarely if ever done well. Partly because that kind of relationship has a whole slew of baggage behind it, not the least of which being how it is reflected in reality, but mainly because psycho-thrillers involving romance are rarely done well in the first place. When Basic Instinct, a film famous for a flashing scene, is leading the pack, there’s a need for some serious talent both in front of and behind the camera to make something like this worth watching. This ain’t it; not by a long shot.

Any film with underwear model-turned-actor Rusty Joiner in the main cast tends to follow a certain aesthetic. An aesthetic of unbearably sterile filmmaking, coupled with the kind of dialogue that sounds like humans from the point of view of literal flies on the wall, all in service to a subject matter that is treated in the worst way possible. Sure enough, that’s what we get here. The visuals are incredibly dreary and bland, only outclassed by the immensely stiff acting.

Joiner himself actually turns out pretty well, showing the closest this film gets to realism in how he acts and reacts within the core story. He still has to bend to the will of the script, but as a depiction of the victim, he manages to land on solid ground. Everyone else either plays in absolute stereotype, or just dovetail over time from being watchable to being hysterically watchable, as there’s no way in hell that these are real people. Not with this dialogue and with how they react to what’s going on.

As far as actually delivering on psycho-thrills, romantic or otherwise, this film really needs to slow the hell down because it seems a little too quick to give up the goods. I mean, one look at the fucking poster dispels all myths of misdirection. The suspense is largely non-existent, even with the presence of a thinly-veiled red herring in the form of Tricia, who is about as much of a textbook bimbo as it’s possible for a film to get. There are hints of misdirection at the start, but it’s made crystal clear who the audience should and shouldn’t be afraid of. We’ll ignore how the dialogue makes actually being afraid of anything here kind of impossible. It’s insanely predictable, with every plot progression landing with a thud because this film seems to believe that pacing is a myth for lesser filmmakers.

Honestly, best thing I can say for this production is that it isn’t as misguided as some of the other films Rusty Joiner has featured in. It doesn’t have the inanity of ‘War On Christmas’ propaganda like with Last Ounce Of Courage, nor is it as remarkably tone-deaf as the entirely male-centric discussion on Planned Parenthood that is Voiceless. But with that said, this kind of story, where a male teacher is being harassed both physically and sexually by a female student? I seriously wonder if the writers or even the director even remembers high school because, statistically, teachers tend to be the predators. All of this film’s pretences about Elektra complexes and sociopathy and ‘I’m 18, I can do what I want’ don’t really scrub away just how out-of-touch this whole idea is, and it makes the act of watching this film both irritating and tremendously boring.