Well, Twisted Devotion is a story which tells you what is going to happen before it shows you. Picture this – a world renowned pop-star who has no bodyguards, which makes her an easy target for kidnapping; her boyfriend who is a scapegoat and not the savior she needs, and lastly, a stalker who is as sensitive and scared as his victims.
Films about stalkers obsessed with people in the public eye have been a staple since as long as psychological thrillers have existed. From the Stephen King classic, Misery, where an obsessive fan rescues her favorite author after a car crash, only to kidnap him in order to compel him to rewrite the ending of his book according to her own liking; to the anime masterpiece Perfect Blue by Satoshi Kon, which elevates the para-social relationship of a fan and the object of their adulation, through a visually rich landscape of hallucinations and self-reflection that a pop-idol goes through when she is stalked by a fan who believes that she should remain the person that he thought she was. In the same vein, Twisted Devotion, directed by Marcus E. Brown, finds itself trying to make a statement about obsessive love and the ugly side of fame, while giving its audience a psychological deep dive into the mind of a stalker and the emotional manipulation that leads to the mental breakdown of his victims. However, in spite of the film being well-intentioned, the predictability of the plot as well as the one too many conveniences it takes in order to arrive at its conclusion, makes me wonder if Damien (the stalker) was the one with a delusional devotion, or whether it was this film that deluded me into giving it the benefit of the doubt until the very last frame.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens In The Film?
Twisted Devotion begins with a man sitting in a casual office space, rummaging through a file cabinet which holds many investigative case folders. He picks one folder out and starts setting up the plot in his narrator voice, which gives it a fable-esque quality. “Once upon a time there was a pop-star called Skye, whose music reached millions, but for one person it was not just a melody but became a calling.” This eerie opening then transports us to a news report where an entertainment journalist is talking about Skye’s comeback album. We are informed that Skye is at a crossroads in her career, after a chart-topping RnB debut, her second album, ‘Unbreakable,’ had flopped at the music charts, and now she’s returning after a sabbatical with her latest, called ‘Phoenix,’ which her fans are hoping will resurrect her from the ashes of irrelevance. As the opening credits start rolling to a sensual RnB song from her album, the tone of the film changes as we go from the bright newsroom to a sinister, empty room where a large man walking in the shadows of a dim light is setting up what looks like a bed, draping a white sheet over it. He lays out tools on a table, a blade, a hammer, and at the end, a gun. This is when the man is revealed as we cut to a wide shot, this foreshadows where the film is heading in plain sight, the beds have handcuffs attached to them and the man looks like he is up to no good. The screenplay swiftly moves to revealing the intentions of the man, Damien King, a prototype of a covert narcissist with psychopathic tendencies who is watching Skye interact with her audience online. He starts speaking to this visual image and confesses his love for her and says that he is going to protect her because he believes that she loves him too. Skye, on the other hand is having emotional upheavals because of her nerves before her album release. She is vulnerable, insecure, and being made to question the intentions of her artist boyfriend by her manager. Caught in this whirlwind of personal and professional choices, Damien approaches Skye and Weasley (her boyfriend) when they are engaged in a private conversation at a local park and tells her he’s a super-fan. Weasley asks him to leave them alone and is taken off-guard by this intrusion.
Soon after this incident, in the very next scene, Skye and Wesley have booked a cabin for the weekend. They want to enjoy some time together before work catches up with them. While Wesley is excited about his flourishing art business due to Skye’s growing popularity and their perceived image as a power couple, Skye starts to wonder if he is with her only to take advantage of her clout or because he truly sees her for who she is; while these thoughts plague her mind , a small black-box with a bow catches her attention. She goes to pick it up from the patio where they are standing, Wesley next to her side. As they open the box, it releases a gas which knocks them out. Ironically, the fainting Skye falls right into the arms of Damien, who magically appears standing behind her to cushion her fall. How did he land up here, without being noticed? How does he know about their weekend getaway spot? We never find answers to these questions, but it’s assumed that he has been keeping a watch on her movements for a while.
From this point onwards, a majority of the story unfolds with Skye and Wesley being held captive in Damien’s sadistic dungeon. They wake up to find themselves cuffed to the beds, and although they try to wriggle their way out, they are unable to escape. Damien operates on a dangerous blend of fantasy, entitlement, and emotional instability. He believes that he has a special connection with Skye and is meant to keep her safe by controlling her. He views her not as a human but an ideal- someone meant for him to possess. This showcases a critical distinction of a stalker; where love masks a deeper psychological delusion of ownership. The film also speaks about how if these desires are unable to validate their fantasy, then it can also push the stalker to turn violent and commit heinous acts in order to claim what they believe is theirs. The film oscillates between Skye’s public image and persona to the twisted descent into private horrors that fuel her survival mode. The dialogue writing could have been used to extract more of her vulnerabilities as well as expose her inherent fears of disappearing into the oblivion as an artist, which could metaphorically also play into the fear of impending doom that the situation presented her with. However, all Skye says on a loop is, ‘Please let us go’, in the same monotone without any variations or voice modulation. Unlike the viewer who is bound to get fidgety with the slow-burn of predictable scenes stacked like stale pancakes to drive the obsession home, Damien, doesn’t budge from his intent and is convinced that Skye will see his love and accept him. Wesley, who was also captured along with Skye becomes a punching bag for Damien, each scene in the torture room ending with an act of violence that is directed towards him. From physical fighting, to breaking his hands with a hammer to finally breaking his knee, Wesley is the kind of boyfriend that seems like a red-flag but is actually a green-forest.
Eventually, the film culminates in a resolution as old as time, when Skye pretends to accept ‘the key’ to Damiens heart and seduces him into believing that she is going to be with him. He lets his guards down just in time for her to grab his gun and secure her escape to freedom.
What Happens To Skye, And Wesley?
Twisted Devotion ends with what looks like AI generated footage of ‘people celebrating’ Skye’s return to civilization. We are told her album benefited out of this tragedy and we also see her milking her trauma on the podcast she had appeared on in the beginning, as she speaks about fighting through the demons of Damien that continue to haunt her. According to my understanding of her reactions in the dungeon, Skye would have suffered from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), she would have had to take years of therapy and medication in order to let go of her fear of others approaching her. She could have also developed an aversion to meeting large crowds of people and would be skeptical and suspicious of gifts being given to her. This would have strained her relationship with Wesley, who would have had to recover from his own mental and physical trauma in isolation. The lasting impacts of an incident of kidnapping and fighting your way out of captivity can leave the victim deeply scarred. Trauma in cases like this becomes layered, especially when a person’s sense of safety, autonomy and trust is betrayed by what should have been admiration but turns into a monstrosity.
Final Words
Twisted Devotion, could have been a statement about social media culture and the extreme access into celebrityhood that can blur the lines between what is real and what is private but instead it chose to graze over the subject while painting a narrative that felt nostalgic and vintage in its telling.
