Obsession

NOW IN THEATERS! Many people experience an awkward loneliness in their twenties. It’s the sort where you convince yourself that one text message can change your life, every passing interaction gets overanalysed into oblivion, and someone brushing your arm while laughing at a joke can sustain you emotionally for about two weeks. Obsession understands that humiliating emotional frequency almost too well. What starts as a cringingly recognisable portrait of unspoken desire slowly mutates into something nastier, sadder, and far more deranged than its deceptively simple premise initially suggests.

Curry Barker’s film takes the old “be careful what you wish for”, monkey’s paw formula and drags it into the age of emotional dependency, doomscrolling, and catastrophically poor boundaries. Bear, played by Michael Johnston with a permanently apologetic posture, works in a music shop alongside Nikki, his longtime friend and object of absolutely paralysing infatuation. He can’t tell her how he feels. Not won’t. Can’t. And the film gets surprising mileage out of that distinction. Johnston wisely resists the urge to make Bear charming in a conventional rom-com sense. He’s twitchy, needy, passive-aggressive, and irritating in tiny ways. Which is important, because the film only really works if you understand how badly he wants this fantasy while also recognising he probably shouldn’t have it.

Then comes the One Wish Willow, purchased in a tacky little occult gift shop for less than the price of lunch, which somehow makes the idea darkly amusing. Many a classic horror story has hinged on a foolish bargain: a cursed videotape, haunted locket, or ancient book bound in skin. Here, the gateway to a personal hell costs $6.99 and looks like something you’d find beside scented candles and novelty mugs.

“Here the gateway to a personal hell costs $6.99 and looks like something you’d find beside scented candles and novelty mugs.”

What Barker does particularly well is avoid over-explaining any of it. The willow works because it works. End of discussion. No ancient prophecy. No lore. No journey of discovery, and most chillingly – no undoing what is done. The film trusts the audience to run with the idea at a surprising pace, which turns out to be exactly the correct choice because the real horror isn’t supernatural anyway. It’s emotional.

And then there’s Inde Navarrette, who frankly runs away with the entire film. Her performance as Nikki becomes progressively unhinged in ways that are horrifying but also deeply sad. One minute she’s intensely funny, behaving with the exaggerated devotion of someone trying too hard to be the “perfect” girlfriend, and the next she’s standing motionless in a dark hallway staring at Bear while he sleeps like some grief-stricken phantom. Barker pushes these moments just far enough that they become genuinely unsettling without falling completely into caricature.

One or two ideas lean a little heavily on familiar horror shorthand, but still have impact. Some supporting performances are rough around the edges, although oddly, that slightly scrappy energy ends up helping the film more than hurting it.

The film has a disarmingly analog tone, from the almost 4:3 aspect ratio and deeply textured visual style, to the often dizzying retro-inspired synthy score. Obsession feels handmade in the best sense.

The final act is surprisingly vicious, both emotionally and physically. There are moments of violence that arrive with almost no warning, nasty little jolts that leave the audience gasping and then laughing nervously afterward. It’s impressive how confidently Barker uses sound, lighting and impeccable timing to keep tightening the screws.

It makes for an unrelenting 108 minutes of tension and turmoil. And at just 26, Barker already seems to possess the confidence of a filmmaker who knows exactly how to wrongfoot an audience.

Obsession is a near-perfect, twisted crowd-pleaser dripping with dread, desire, and chaos. Seriously powerful and seriously impressive.