Obsession

dir: Curry Barker

2026

This flick, this Obsession, is something of a black swan event that I don’t think anyone could have really anticipated.

Oh, sure, the company that ponied up the money had some confidence that Curry Barker, a maker of short films on Youtube, might make something that would connect with audiences, but they only gave him a million dollars. And yet the return on that is 300-fold so far. So everyone pretending they’re a genius for “finding” him must also have been taken by surprise.

No film, at least at the American box office, has ever made more money in its second and third weekends since ET came out in the 1980s.

As for why…

I have no idea. I’ve watched the film, and I have opinions, thoughts, feelings, and my usual stock standard icy cold takes. But nothing really gives me an insight into why this flick’s popularity has skyrocketed with audiences, the more people have seen it. If this is a date film, as in a flick to take your sweetheart and your other friends in couples to, after a milkshake and a cheeseburger down at the local diner, it’s the darkest one I’ve seen since at least Heart Eyes last year, and far, far nastier.

I have read reviews, written by people my age or older, who say things like “the film really speaks to the concerns and fears of Gen Z” and while I’m not going to argue that its terrors, trials and tribulations are universal, I’m not sure that I see it being so specific to a new, gratingest generation. Unrequited love as the starting point for a dreadful, as in dread-filled story, is not exactly new. One of the oldest books, being the Bible, which is more of a long short story collection, I guess, is about humanity’s unrequited love for God, who definitely never loves us back.

All of our literature, and much of our art as a species seems to mostly be about longing, and longing by its definition never gets satisfied. It’s always about the ones who got away, never loved us back, or so adeptly broke our hearts.
Of course most of that is because of how goddamn immature we are until it’s way too late…

It’s also not the first “be careful what you wish for” type story. It does not invent the cautionary tale genre. It is horror, definitely horror, but it at least starts from a fairly human place. In its bid to be oh so contemporary, there’s even a joke in the name of what I guess we’re meant to think of as the protagonist.

Remember the online discourse about why women on a hike would choose the bear over the man? Well, here we have a main chap called Bear!

Isn’t that hilarious. Notice that it wasn’t phrased or punctuated as a question.

Bear (Michael Johnston) is confessing his long-held crush to the object of his affections in the opening moments of the film. Except he’s really not. To show him how bad and cringe the experience would be, in order to convince him not to do it, a guy convinces an amenable waitress to sit in for Bear’s crush. It’s an embarrassing trainwreck for all concerned, especially me dying of second-hand embarrassment in the audience.

You see what a bad idea it is, bellows Ian (Cooper Tomlinson)? Definitely don’t confess your love soon, and definitely not at Trivia night, because I love my Trivia nights, says Ian.

Poor Bear, we’re meant to think. He seems like a nice enough chap. It’s almost endearing how nervous and flustered and afraid he is. But if it’s coming from a good place, and if the Nikki he’s tripping himself up over feels the same way, then why not tell her the truth, huh? What’s the worst that could happen?

Well, apparently being rejected is too terrible a possibility to contemplate. Bear is too cowardly to be honest, he’d rather do anything but.

There are good scenes between Bear and Nikki (Inde Navarrette) as co-workers, as friends who hang out together, as people who’ve known each other since school. You can, at least initially, see things in a positive light from his side. There is nothing wrong with telling someone awesome that you think they’re awesome and would love to go out with them, in general. I think we can still say that? Does that make me sound impossibly old-fashioned or naïve?

There has to be context, though, of course. If you work with someone it’s fraught; if they’re friends with all your friends it’s fraught; if there’s a power imbalance or major age difference it’s not only fraught but probably should be illegal (it’s at the very least ill-advised).

And if someone has told you ‘no thanks’ before, or that they just see you as a friend, if even that, then, no, it’s not okay, and must be destroyed. That is where it crosses the line into pathological control.

Bear’s indecision, insecurity, cowardliness means he wants to take choice out of the equation, and the possibility of rejection. Make no mistake despite the horrors that ensue, despite Bear seeming most of the time like he’s just going with the flow of what’s happening, he is a true monster and none of this would have happened had it not been for his awfulness.

Okay, so the whole premise does depend on something magical, or supernatural. A One-Wish Willow, that I’ve never heard of before so I suspect it was made up for this film, for some reason gives the wielder the power to make one wish, and in a moment of tremendous selfishness Bear wishes for Nikki to “fucking love me more than anyone else in the world”.

And lo and behold the clever, funny, sarcastic Nikki disappears, and in her place appears every callow youth’s worst wet dream and nightmare, all rolled up into one.

I cannot stress enough how great Inde Navarette is in this horrifying role. It is a true career making turn. I have not been this amazed at an acting performance in a horror flick since Mia Goth in that trilogy of Ti West movies, especially Pearl.

The demonic version of Nikki here goes even further than that. There are the cloying aspects of someone under a compulsion, a spell, a curse they cannot break compelling them to act all lovey dovey towards someone they otherwise wouldn’t piss on. There’s the absolutely serious, dementedly serious romantic poetic parody of a person head over heels in love, there’s the “Cool Girl” embodiment that Gillian Flynn in Gone Girl deconstructed all those years ago for our benefit when she blew that whole construct apart, there’s a terrifying, ferocious void of screaming need that will lash out at anyone and mostly herself, or at least her body, and then there is the Nikki who very briefly surfaces under the weight of this terrible demonic wish and beg for release from her torment.

And throughout the majority of the rest of the flick, this awful, pathetic fucker Bear doesn’t mind too much (no matter how bizarre or offputting her actions become, which includes serving up dead cat or taping a door shut to prevent him from leaving the house), as long as he’s getting some with the woman of his dreams that he really knows nothing about and doesn’t know as a person at all.

Even when he knows consent isn’t possible when someone is compelled, forced by an “innocent” wish that was never innocent, because how could it be? Merrily he rolls along with a slightly furrowed brow, but even when he’s trying to figure out ways to break the wish, even when he finds out that Nikki is deeply tormented, he makes excuses, he delays getting her help, he does everything to make an awful situation worse because doing otherwise would take some honest effort and probably result in him not being able to bang Nikki again.

I think it probably does encompass a lot of contemporary ideas about consent, about how we balance our (selfish) needs with other people’s (sometimes selfish needs), about how spending time with people boozing or taking drugs should have a whole set of expectations and courtesies to go along with it, and maybe those conversations are valid to have.

This just isn’t the movie to litigate or solve those problems, though. This flick is more trying to argue that the rush and terror of new love is only slightly less terrifying than someone starring at you all night as you sleep or threatening to erase your face with a brick.

There is a way of looking at this flick that probably, with intellect disconnected, brands the flick as being just another instalment in the dubious “girlfriend from hell” misogyny sub-genre, but my only defence against that is that awful things happen in horror movies, and at no stage do we think Nikki is responsible for any of this. We know, unless we’re being incredibly obtuse, that the entire blame falls on Bear and his pathetic ways.

However I’ve made this film sound, whether I’ve captured it fairly or completely dropped the ball, I assure you nothing can prepare you for how demented and terrifying this flick is. Of course people can point to familiar elements, but there is no other horror flick like this with a performance like Inde Navarette’s. Even better, since most horror flicks fuck up their endings, this flick nails it, fucking nails it. I still feel so, so bad for Nikki and what she’s been through, and what the flick implies will be in front of her ongoing, but damn if the right people didn’t get their comeuppance (and some completely didn’t at all deserve the horrible things that happened to them).

Perfect ending for the perfect date movie.

9 times don’t take advantage of people’s vulnerabilities, you sick fucks, out of 10

--
“Everyone in this room will die never knowing the strength of connection I felt with my Bear” – and die the happier for it, perhaps - Obsession