Good lord, this is one of the most anxiety-inducing movies I’ve seen in a long while, allowing the dread and the bleakness to wrap themselves around me as I witness the horrifying and heart-wrenching consequences of an incredibly foolish wish. I had already been onboard for writer, director, and editor Curry Barker due to the previous horror shorts I’d seen from him, “The Chair” and “Milk & Serial.” The former wasn’t blowing me away, but it did a decent job at showing off the darkness that Barker can commit himself to. The latter is what got me leaning forward and going, “Oh, this filmmaker has some true artistic juice stirring around in his innards.” What that short does to meticulously crank up the tension over the course of an hour is fascinating, and I still think of it as one of the best horror shorts I’ve ever seen. With all of that in hand, I’d been left to hope Barker can give us the good shit, and my expectations only increased as more and more people hyped up Obsession. And oh my, now that I’ve seen it for myself, I can confirm that it deserves the praise. Something that I think is proper to note right off the bat is how much this movie isn’t trying to spike up the tension with a whole ton of jumpscares and gore. It’s much more of a slow-burn than that. Yes, this does have jumpscares, but it dishes them out in more of a limited fashion. Yes, this does have gore, but the majority of that is saved for the third act in order to let it provide a climactic payoff. I also suspect this can’t afford to be liberal with the grisliness because of its shockingly low $750k budget, so it has to be resourceful with where it utilizes that bloody material.
But again, this is a slow-burn. It plunges me into a spot where my stress gradually climbs higher and higher as I watch Baron “Bear” Bailey make a wish that strips Nikki Freeman of her autonomy and forces her to love him more than anyone else in the entire world (notice how ironic it is that her surname clashes with the lack of freedom that she suffers from throughout most of the narrative). I’m stressing out, I’m unnerved, and I’m begging Bear to avoid making this wish, but whoops, he goes ahead and makes it in a thoughtless moment. And that one moment sends us down a road that drives a punch right through my guts. Kudos to Barker for how he’s designed this character and to Michael Johnston for how he’s brought Bear to life onscreen, because they succeed at adding on the nuance that Bear needs to feel like a real human being. He’s not an eldritch horror who popped in here from an alternate dimension. He’s not an individual with evil seething away in his heart. No, no, he’s a regular old person who’s deeply scared of rejection and loneliness. He wants to express his feelings for Nikki so badly, but he just can’t work up the courage. And hey, this is surely relatable for us, right? We’ve been stuck in similar situations. It’s a perfectly human experience, and it grounds Bear in a believable space that makes the repercussions for his wish hit us that much harder. It makes his cowardliness, his inability to take accountability for himself, and his desire for external validation that much more loathsome. It frames him in the Nice Guy archetype that pushes us to realize how many men like this exist in the world—men who don’t consciously walk around with malice in their souls, but instead are too ignorant to consider the ways in which their choices can directly and indirectly harm women. They suffer from a fundamental misunderstanding of consent and of women’s boundaries. This is why the Nice Guy ends up being responsible for a significant portion of the misogynistic violence, including murder and rape, that women endure on a daily basis. This is why it’s crucial for the movie to use that archetype as a way to portray Bear in all of his deeply pathetic and selfish facets. Frankly, watching him reminds me of what it was like to watch Sally Hawkins’s Laura in Bring Her Back. I pity Laura, I understand the agonizing grief she’s going through, and I despise the abusive and murderous path that she chooses to go down with her sorrow consuming her psychologically and emotionally broken self. Like Bear, Laura is a human being who has feelings and experiences that I can connect with on a mortal level—and like Bear, that makes her and the irreversible hurt she selfishly inflicts against other people all the more scary.
Then we have Nikki, who’s a victim of the Nice Guy, the rapist, and the spineless little shitbag that is Bear. She comprises such a major portion of the beating heart in this tragedy. And yes, I do call this a tragedy, considering how devastating it is for her to be locked up behind the bars of Bear’s wish. We may not be spending a ton of time with her outside of that prison, but the little time we do get with her true self gets us feeling for her and dearly wishing that a different route could have unfolded for her. But nope, she’s trapped in the clutches of the One Wish Willow, forced into a lovey-dovey state that amps up fast into toxic codependency. Bear’s wish has ripped away her volition, and in response, this skewed and hollowed-out version of Nikki clings onto him and drowns him with what she perceives to be “love.” It’s a relationship that can hit home for many people, with Together being another horror movie that depicts toxic codependency and the harmful and smothering effects it has on the central dynamic. On a side note, there are multiple moments where I’m looking at Bear and going, “Oh, he looks like a sad Dave Franco.” And then holy shit, Inde Navarrette is a star! She’s an absolute star who’s standing tall in the spotlight and dedicating herself to the extreme lengths of this character. Purely what she carries out on physical and vocal levels is enthralling. Whether it’s her agape mouth stuttering open like she’s struggling to function correctly, a broad smile plastering itself on her face for an extensive period of time, a pout heavily pulling her mouth downward, an exaggerated cackle ballooning throughout the air, or a painful wail slicing across the room, she displays such masterful control over her mannerisms and conveys the automaton that Nikki has become. This is a shell of a human being who’s been forcibly programmed to love Bear, with Navarrette fleshing out all of that on a complex scale. A different actor may not have been able to muster up the nerve that’s required for a role like this—a role that needs them to jack things up to eleven without a single ounce of hesitation. But thankfully, we’ve got Navarrette plunging right into this, and I can’t wait to see where she goes next. It’s amazing that she’d only popped up in a couple movies before this, as well as 13 Reasons Why and Superman & Lois. I’m glad to see people already talking about her in regard to awards season, and hey, we do live in a world where Amy Madigan snagged an Oscar for Weapons. If only stars like Toni Collette and Lupita Nyong’o could have received their own Oscars recognition for Hereditary and Us, respectively. For shame! Ah well, at least the Academy is warming up to horror more and more with every passing year, so who knows what could happen for Navarrette down the line.
I really could go on and on about this movie that cleverly deploys its visuals, especially when it comes to the lighting that often frames Nikki as a shadowy form, as a silhouette, as an entity whose face we can’t properly make out and who provides a gap for us to fill with whatever we’ve got running through our imagination. The glint in her eyes has its own discomfiting touch that makes her feel like she’s crossed over into some sort of supernatural realm of existence. I could go on and on about the score by Rock Burwell, which isn’t going for a conventional horror sound all the time. No, no, it can allow a soft sentimentality trickle out into the air, coming across like it should be gently lifting us up through the sweet blossoming of a good old romance… and yet there’s an eeriness slithering through its undertones and reminding us what sort of movie we’re watching. “Love is in the Air, Pt. 1” is particularly excellent as a darkly appropriate choice for this kind of “love story.” I could go on and on about the carefulness with which Barker’s editing rolls out the incremental pacing and avoids getting sluggish. The editing in a movie truly can make or break it, particularly when you’re working with a slow-burn that needs to keep its audience invested in the journey, and what Barker achieves falls into the Make It category. I could go on and on about how effectively this slips in beats of dark comedy to give us slight relief from the horror. They’re the sort of gags where we have to nervously laugh our way through the tension while gritting our teeth for what’s to come. To be clear, though, I’m not labeling this as a horror-comedy. Nope, it’s a horror movie that knows how to take bits and pieces of the suspense, then squeeze them into something humorous (I’d be more comfortable calling Weapons, for one, an outright horror-comedy). I could go on and on about how casually this arranges the worldbuilding for One Wish Willow, a trinket that you can somehow buy at an ordinary mystic shop rather than having to hunt it down through a back-alley route. This is one of the subtle details that I especially appreciate, subverting the cliche that says you’d only be able to track down this curio through something along the lines of the dark web. But this movie is simultaneously smart enough to avoid dumping a bunch of unnecessary exposition onto us, because ultimately, the mystery of where this wish-granting product comes from isn’t the narrative’s focal point. I’m good with leaving those questions open for us so that we can cook up our own interpretations. I could go on and on about the messiness of Bear and Nikki’s friend group and how this expands the depth of a narrative that promotes how important it is to be courageous and honest with your feelings rather than hiding them and letting them fester away inside of you because you’re uncomfortable with the possibility of embarrassment and disappointment. Props to Megan Lawless and Cooper Tomlinson, because I do enjoy them as a part of the friend group, and it’s also just plain nice to see Tomlinson show up here after all that he’s previously done with Barker, including their work as the sketch comedy duo That’s a Bad Idea. I could go on and on about this film that’s devoted itself to its own mean-spiritedness under Barker’s helm and that makes me go, “Curry, you sinister and ruthless little demon! You don’t want to pull your punches with us, do you?” And hey, I’m gluing myself to my seat for that energy. To top it all off, this somehow has Andy Richter popping in for a small role, and sure, I’m wondering why the movie brings him in if it isn’t going to do much with him. But eh, it’s still neat to see him show up.
I gotta say, I was originally planning to rate Obsession 4.5 stars, but it’s becoming so riveting to peel away the layers of its tale and how it’s all executed, and it’s leading me to the conclusion that I simply must bestow upon it the full five stars. It’s been interesting to watch some viewers go, “Oh hell no, I can’t revisit this one,” because meanwhile, I’m thinking to myself, “Yeah, I’m diving back into this in the future.” I know there will be plenty of substance for me to analyze even more thoroughly. This movie has resonated with me quite strongly. It had me locked into the emotions of its story—not quite making me cry, no, but goddamn, I was close to tumbling over that edge. I had a similarly visceral response to Project Hail Mary because of how much it was building up suspense and pulling me into its tight grasp, especially during the fishing sequence. By the way, PHM is currently my #1 movie of 2026, and now I’m ranking Obsession in the #2 spot, so these two are in good company.
My final rating: 5 out of 5 stars
2 Cents Critic 