Hello friends! New year, same newsletter. I have set a goal this year of writing two full Lifetime recaps for the free feed, and one thing for subscribers, every month. We’ll see! I’ve said it out loud so now I have to do it! I also have to tell you about this movie UNWRITTEN OBSESSION, a sordid tale of plagiarism, false identities, and model ship building. Recently deceased character actress Mary Pat Gleason is in it but I don’t talk about her at all because she had two scenes that didn’t matter at all, sorry Mary Pat Gleason! (Content warnings for suicide, stalking, and some gaslight-adjacent activities.)
We open with a short scene of a woman unloading groceries from her truck while a man inside her house stands up from a laptop, on which the words “THE END” are visible (but it’s the beginning of the movie?? whoa), and picks up a revolver. There’s piles and piles of printed-out text on the floor around him. When the woman enters the house, we hear a gunshot and her scream.
FIVE YEARS LATER: a woman named Skye Chaste reads from her book Maya’s Fall at a bookstore. This is the woman from the first scene, although it genuinely took me like half the movie to realize this. Her hair was slightly different, she was wearing lipstick, and she seemed happy, or maybe I have face blindness. A young blonde woman mouths the words along with Skye as she reads (and the title pops out of there too), but she doesn’t get a chance to ask a question during the Q&A. Don’t worry, the questions that do get asked are bad. One reader is outraged that there won’t be a sequel, because “Maya didn’t even get to Albuquerque!” which is an incredibly funny sentence. I think that’s actually fine for her, you can live a rich full life never going to Albuquerque. After the event, Skye sweatily asks if she can get paid now, and when the manager tells her that she’ll get a check in five to ten business days and offers her a muffin instead, she takes the muffin and goes to pick up a dude at a bar. Nothing makes a lady hornier than one of those weirdly greasy chocolate chip muffins, I get it. The blonde from the reading watches Skye and this random dude bone down through the motel window, so it seems like she has a healthy sense of boundaries.
Back in The City, whichever one it is, Skye meets with her agent Chelsea and proposes that they just do virtual events for her next book, So Dark the Waves, because this tour thing suuuuccccks. Have you seen the nerds who go to these things? Yikesville. The thing about that though, actually, is that publishers don’t want to buy her second book, because it’s “convoluted” and “pretentious” and “was written by a sociopath,” Chelsea tells her. Skye takes Chelsea’s suggestion to just write a sequel to Maya’s Fall, preferably one with a shirtless puppy-owning love interest, about as well as you’d expect someone who titled a book So Dark the Waves would.
As Skye huffs out to her car, the blonde girl approaches her and tells her she’s a huge fan. She offers to buy Skye breakfast, and Skye accepts because she’s broke and hungry and you do things when you’re broke and hungry. At a diner, we learn that the blonde’s name is Holly, and that Skye ripped off her favorite book inscription from Mark Twain, the one about the difference between a cat and a lie. Holly, who is wearing a “Maya” nameplate necklace which she says she got custom-made, gushes about Maya’s Fall and asks Skye if she could mentor her, because she’s a novelist too. Skye, drinking coffee with whiskey in it at a diner at like 10 in the morning, tells her that she has to do her own (convoluted, pretentious, sociopathic) writing and demurs, but Holly offers her $2,000. That does not seem like that much money, or maybe it seems like way too much money? I can’t tell. Either way, Skye needs the money so she agrees, and invites this young, eager person to her home in the country. I’m sure it’s fine.
At Skye’s house, Holly prints out a draft of her novel while Skye showers, but then she wanders off into the garage to poke through Skye’s things. She finds a framed photo of Skye with the guy from the opening scene. At this point I still thought it was a different person and I was like, “who is this mysterious brunette?” but no, it’s Skye, who panics when she finds Holly in the garage and tells her not to touch her stuff. That seems fair. Eventually, Skye softens and suggests a game of bocce and some trading of backstories. Holly’s backstory is that her parents both died, and she didn’t really have anything keeping her in Alaska so she decided to just swing on down and see Skye on her book tour. She rode a moose down here and then she lost the moose so she might as well stay. Skye’s tragic backstory, as you may have realized but I had not, is that her fiance, Paul Walsh, killed himself, six months after he proposed to her, so she packed up his shit and put it in the garage. You know what’s a good game? Bocce. I do not know what the actual rules are, I don’t need to know what they are, I just love that clacky noise and the weight of the balls. Bocce! Good stuff.
After bocce, Skye asks Holly about her book and Holly tells her that it’s a mystery of sorts, but she doesn’t have an ending yet. This seems like a flaw! Holly, in turn, asks Skye about her new book, which Skye says is about “grief, loss, and the intrinsic dishonesty of the human condition.” Well, so is Are You My Mother?. Skye settles in to read Holly’s novel, and by the time she finishes it she looks absolutely stricken. Also, the off-the-shoulder sweater she’s wearing looks absolutely exhausting to wear. She tells Holly, who’s just kind of moseying around looking at things and flipping through records, that it’s rough but salvageable, and invites her to stay for a few days to work on it. Holly agrees, and sets about playing some records.
In bed, Skye writes notes on Holly’s draft and then sends her agent a message that she’s working on something new, something good. Something that isn’t convoluted and pretentious, that’s for sure. She’s interrupted when she hears the song Holly put on downstairs, and runs down to snatch the record off the turntable, telling her to pick a different one. From a flashback, we learn that that was the song her fiance Paul was playing when he died, and this is also the point where I realize that it’s been Skye in the flashbacks all along. Listen! I’m not good with faces taken out of one context and put in another! Anyway, Skye is sad.
In the morning, Holly eats crunch berries because they’re the only food in the house, and Skye hands her the marked-up draft to keep her busy while Skye goes into town. Heyyyyy by the way, has Holly shown her novel to anyone else? Nope! Cool, cool, says Skye, and asks Holly to send her the text file. It’s uh, it’s uhhhhhhh, it’s formatted all wrong. The uh,,,,, the margins! They’re too big. And the font! Who writes a novel in Papyrus? Holly seems to detect that this is bullshit but agrees to send it along anyway. Also she doesn’t have a title for it yet, she’s thinking maybe Fan Girl? Sure, maybe. Skye also asks Holly for that two thousand dollars she promised her, and Holly hands over a chunk of cash.
Heading into town, Skye calls her agent Chelsea, who is playing solitaire and pretending to be busy, to tell her about her new book. She hasn’t told Chelsea about it because she didn’t want to jinx it, and also because she hadn’t stolen it yet. Chelsea is skeptical but agrees to take a look. While Skye is out of the house, Holly takes the opportunity to rummage through the house, with stops at Skye’s underwear drawer (turns out Skye wears underwear! wild stuff here) and the attic, where she pulls out some more pictures of Skye’s late fiance, along with a model ship and a baseball glove. When Skye returns, she sees Paul’s things arrayed in the living room and flips out at Holly, who primly informs her that it’s not good to hold onto pain. Maybe she wouldn’t need to drink so much if she was less sad. Yeah, well, maybe Holly’s family all died and/or deserted her because she’s insufferable, replies Skye. Holly doesn’t seem that insufferable to me! Her clothes all look like they’re from Boden and Madewell and her hair is very shiny. The scene ends when the electricity gets cut because Skye doesn’t pay her bills. She is simply too busy writing a terrible book and stealing a good one.
That night, Skye lights a bunch of candles and brings some to Holly, who is writing on her laptop in the dark. Holly makes a joke about writing by candlelight, like the pioneers did, but Skye despises jokes. She’s never made one and she’s certainly never laughed at one. She leaves Holly to her own devices and calls Chelsea again to talk about the title of the new book. She was thinking maybe Fan Girl. This movie came out in 2017, which was probably the height of putting “Girl” in the title of your pageturning thriller marketed toward 40-year-old white women, so that’s a good title. Skye goes to sleep and has a dream about helping Paul make that model ship in the living room, and then is awoken by a loud banging noise. She yells at Holly to knock it off, and Holly comes in to ask what she’s talking about, she didn’t hear any banging, and to meaningfully eye the empty whiskey bottle on Skye’s nightstand. They say “banging” a lot, too much really, and eventually Holly goes back to bed, both the victim and the perpetrator of some gaslighting. Oh what a tangled light we gas.
In the morning, Holly pulls the book Love in the Western World off the shelf and reads the inscription, to Skye from Paul, and then grabs a notebook and goes outside to write. Skye rifles through Holly’s extremely cool gigantic leather duffel bag and finds a big ol hammer, the kind you could really bang on a wall with, like in this Edward Steed cartoon. God, he is just the best. She also calls the electric company and tries to speak to the manager her way out of paying the whole bill, which does not work, and then finds a printout of Holly’s new chapter. How did she print that out? There is no power? Does her laptop have a printer in it? It did seem pretty chunky. Skye loves the new chapter, of course, but also wants to poke around in Holly’s stuff some more. She opens Holly’s laptop and sees surveillance footage of herself around her house. Oh no, I think Holly might be up to something! But she seems so mousy, who could have seen this! While Skye is breathlessly poring over the videos, she gets a call from Chelsea, who tells her there’s a bidding war for her new book. It’s so much better than that So Waves the Noir or fuckin whatever the other book was. Skye asks if she can make the deal conditional, so they have to publish both the new book and Dark Was the Sea. Chelsea will see about it, but Skye is barely listening now because she’s seen a video of herself, talking to Chelsea about “her” new book Fan Girl. So now she knows Holly knows, and we know Holly knows, and we know that Skye knows that etc., and we’re off to the races!
Skye brings Holly, who has been sitting on a swing writing in a notebook for like, several hours, a beer as a peace offering. Holly declines, because she is eighteen and a goody two shoes. Skye is extremely, overly nice to Holly, in the way you’re nice to a coworker you know is getting fired at the end of the week, or a spider you’re trying to talk into leaving your shower, and asks her about herself. Turns out Holly really doesn’t have anyone who’d miss her if she was gone. That’s so interesting. They go inside and Holly gets back to writing while Skye ominously makes her a sandwich. She slices the tomato without coring it, which is one of my television food pet peeves. Core the tomato! I’m more concerned that Holly is going to eat a tomato core than I am that she’s going to get plagiarized and murdered.
After delivering the sandwich, Skye goes to the garage and grabs all the things you’d need to cleanly and efficiently murder someone: gun, plastic sheeting, rope, hacksaw (??), the works. Inside the house, Holly checks the footage from the spycams she placed around the house and sees Skye look right into one of them. So now Holly knows that Skye knows that Holly knows and oh I’m dizzy. Also, the power is back on, so that’s nice.
Skye comes back inside and Holly hands her the newest chapter of her book. She was a little reluctant to take the advice about adding a love interest and a puppy, but she thinks it works. The puppy is named Boots, if you were wondering. More of a cat name, but okay. Holly takes an award off a bookshelf and asks Skye about it, and Skye huffs that she doesn’t even know what it is, and she’s sick of the acclaim she got for Maya’s Fall, which was supposed to open doors in her career, not define it. Holly sets down the glass award, takes a decorative hand sickle off the wall (I love farmhouse decor), and asks Skye if she wants to hear a story. Holly leans in close, holding the sickle, and tells her a story her dad told her about a farmer who was murdered in 13th century China. He was killed with a hand sickle, but everyone had a hand sickle, so the magistrate had all the farmers leave their sickles out in the hot sun all day, and one of them ended up covered in flies, attracted to the traces of blood. The owner of that sickle broke down and confessed, and the moral of the story is that the truth always comes out. I also have a confession at this point: this movie is kind of good! I enjoyed watching it and never felt like lying on the floor and dying rather than watching the end of it! Anyway, Holly asks, does the new chapter work? Skye, fairly shaken up by this young woman holding a sharpened farming implement to her chest, tells her that it’s getting there. Almost good enough to steal.
Skye lines her trunk with plastic sheeting while Holly finishes writing the last chapter of her novel. When she announces that she’s finished, Skye suggests a celebratory game of bocce. Holly points out that it’s dark, which makes an outdoor game consisting of hucking heavy balls around a little tricky, but Skye assures her that the backyard has floodlights. It was better when they had to pretend to be pioneers. Holly agrees to play bocce but proposes that they have a drink first, and pours them each some bourbon. Skye toasts to Holly’s first book, and Holly toasts “to Skye Chaste,” and I had forgotten that was her name, what an incredibly hilarious name, and then she hands Skye her last chapter. It’s actually a manuscript titled Revenge, by Paul Walsh. Skye asks if this is supposed to be funny, and then passes out. Actually Revenge is by Yōko Ogawa, and it rules and you should read it.
Skye wakes up, bound and gagged, on the floor of the garage. Holly swans in with Skye’s gun, tells her they need to talk, and rips the duct tape off her mouth. Skye asks Holly what she wants, because it’s obviously not money, remember? the electricity? the way I let a strange girl buy me breakfast? but Holly doesn’t need money, she needs answers. She needs to know what happened to Paul Walsh. Skye explains, again, that he shot himself, and Holly counters that no, Skye shot him and made it look like a suicide. “You’re crazy,” says Skye. “No, I’m not, I’m Maya!” says Holly, which would explain her nameplate necklace from the beginning of the movie. Skye has worked the ties on her wrists loose and grabs the gun away from Holly, but it doesn’t have bullets in it. Holly feebly explains that she assumed there would be bullets in it, she didn’t check. She’s more of a big-picture planner, pretty fuzzy on the details. You know what Holly needed? A checklist. Skye has the gun now, but she also has a bunch of bocce balls hanging out on the garage floor, and she slips on one and falls, finally fulfilling the Chekhov’s bocce ball thing, and allowing Holly to make a break into the house. Skye grabs some bullets off a shelf and follows.
In the house, Holly sees Skye before Skye sees her, and slashes at her with the hand sickle. If you hang hand sickles on your wall as whimsical rustic decor, you have to expect this. She again tells Skye that her name is Maya, and also that Maya is a character in a book Paul wrote. Skye asks how she could possibly know that. Have you figured it out? I hadn’t! Paul Walsh was Holly’s dad! He abandoned his family and the great state of Alaska and took up with Skye and never told her he had a daughter! He left Maya (that’s actually her name I guess) when she was 7 and sent postcards on her birthday until he didn’t anymore, and then he didn’t send anything at all, until he emailed her the very first draft of his very first novel, Maya’s Fall. The child he hadn’t seen in several years was the inspiration! So imagine her surprise when she saw this exact book in a bookstore six months later, with the absolutely absurd name of Skye Chaste on it instead of her late father’s. Skye Chaste! Isn’t there a bit in John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor where an author names a character “Chaste” and then people who read it are like, “it’s a pun, because they’re chaste but they’re also chased by suitors” and the author is like, what are you talking about, it isn’t a pun? I hope so, because it’s literally the only thing I remember about The Sot-Weed Factor. John Barth: he’s okay. He’s alive! He’s ninety. Okay sorry anyway, Maya slashes Skye with the sickle and grabs the gun back, but Skye swears that really, honestly, she didn’t kill Paul. They had a plan and a future and he did it anyway, but she figured that if he left her like that, she could take his manuscript. So, to summarize: Skye did not kill Paul to steal his book, but she was very willing to kill Holly to steal her book. So, you know. Maya forces Skye to sign a document confessing that she killed Paul and stole his book, and then grabs Skye’s cool leather jacket and takes off in her car, leaving Skye to bleed and cry and flip through the manuscript that’s mostly just “PAUL WALSH WROTE MAYA’S FALL” over and over. I think Maya proved her point, and the jacket is really very cool.
ONE YEAR LATER: Skye has different hair and is wearing lipstick but I’m wise to her tricks now, I know it’s the same woman as before. She’s in a bookshop, under a display for the new revised version of Maya’s Fall by Paul Walsh, running a writer’s workshop under the name “Jessie,” and when a mousy but talented writer named Beatrice asks her for help with her manuscript, Jessie gets a really great idea. They walk out of the bookstore together, past a display of Maya’s book Fan Girl. The cover photo is a still from this movie, of the first time Holly went into Skye’s house, which implies that there’s some sort of panopticon at work here, just waiting to supply cover art for debut novels. Neat!
This is maybe sincerely the best movie I’ve watched for this newsletter, so that’s something. I love Deadly Spa very much but it’s mostly not…good. This was pretty good! Good job, Unwritten Obsession. Thanks for reading and sharing, and remember you can subscribe if you want. See you in no more than two weeks!