Chooch texted me around 1AM one night last week and all it said was “Jesus Christ.”

Thankfully, he added to that before I woke up and was sent into a spiral. Apparently, he had just gone to see “Obsession” and needed me to know that it was the only time he felt genuinely unsettled during a horror movie.

He then proceeded to see it two more times and had me preorder the soundtrack on vinyl from Waxwork—he knows that when he sends me links to records he wants, I will never say no.

I trust Chooch’s opinion greatly and also, I never need an excuse to go see a horror movie, so that it is what Henry and I did yesterday afternoon. Matinee, baby!

I chose the Manor Theater because I truly try to avoid the Cinemarks and AMCs of the world whenever I can. And besides, we hadn’t been there since we went to see Parasite in 2019! I couldn’t even remember what it was like inside!

Pre-Obsession bathroom selfie.

There is something so pure and comforting about BUYING YOUR TICKET AT THE THEATER and NOT KNOWING WHERE YOU WILL SIT UNTIL ENTER THE SCREENING ROOM. Apparently, Henry is not of this camp though because he was complaining about how that makes him “nervous.”

OK calm down, bro.

It was just us and maybe 10 other people. Good, quiet crowd.

I just….I can’t remember ever crying the way I did yesterday at a horror movie. I mean, we typically sit through the ending credits anyway but I honestly NEEDED to remain seated after the lights came on because I couldn’t get myself to calm down. And then we left and proceeded to not talk about it for a good long while.

And then finally I just launched into it.

I loved it.

But it was HEARTBREAKING.

When Chooch says “unsettling”—that’s exactly right. I was very tightly wound from beginning to end. I had visceral reactions. I gasped. I cried out. I even laughed (there are quite a few effortlessly funny moments but this IS NOT A COMEDY or even anything resembling a horror parody so don’t get THAT twisted).

There are parts of this movie that left me actually feeling depressed and gutted. To the point that I was philosophizing about this today on our drive home from antiquing (I got a clown noisemaker and a strange folk art crucifix for the bathroom). I was telling Henry how upsetting it was, how it was a true testament to the acting, writing, entire production including sound and lighting, that I was able to FEEL so much, like how I did watching Hamnet but on a completely different end of the spectrum.

I guess “traumatic” is the best way to explain it. It felt traumatic to witness.

So, all of this was being chatted about casually in the car when we rolled down our street and past at least 8 cop cars a block up from our house, including the crime scene unit. They were all out front of this beautiful blue house that belongs to a couple with at least one young child. I used to bitch when they first moved in — probably right before the pandemic — and made the house look so beautiful only to have the COLDEST LIGHT BULBS in use so that every time I walked by at night, it was was like walking past an office building.

But…sorry, I get carried away when it comes to lighting.

So, we get home and my neighbors are outside. They said that they had only just returned home too and when they drove past, they saw A BODY IN THE YARD COVERED BY A WHITE SHEET.

I immediately felt sick to my stomach. I do not know a single thing about this family who lives there but that doesn’t matter because this is literally a block away and I walk past their house EVERY DAY. It is the definition of “too close to house.”

Henry turned on his police scanner but we must have been too late because he wasn’t able to pick anything up from that. Meanwhile, I was googling, checking Reddit, the Patch, the local news, in some morbid research binge because I NEED TO KNOW. It’s like I am begging the world to help me feel more like shit than I already do. Give me secondhand grief.

Eventually, I found a Reddit post where someone was asking what was happening ON ANOTHER STREET in my neighborhood. They said the same thing: numerous cops, news crew (I didn’t see the news crew here though) and the crime scene unit.

Finally, someone replied to that and said that the Brookline Facebook group was saying that A MAN SHOT HIMSELF ON THE FRONT STOOP WHILE HIS FAMILY WAS INSIDE.

Someone replied and said, “That happened on [my street], not [this other street that OP was asking about].” So someone ELSE weighed in said that what OP was asking about has something to do with people finding HUMAN REMAINS in their yard while doing yardwork.

BOTH of these alleged incidents were happening here AT THE SAME TIME. Busy fucking day in Brookline.

I can’t confirm the validity of either of these events, but I will tell you that it is making me feel as sick as I did the day we saw the dead body outside of the Mattress Factory.

My heart is COOKED. Happy Memorial Day.