Rating 7/10
Obsession is a remarkably self-assured little horror picture, made on a shoestring, but it never looks cheap. Yet one nagging element kept me from fully accepting the premise: its lead protagonist does not behave like a normal person. That may sound like a small complaint in a movie involving supernatural forces. But, it becomes a problem when the saga would have us believe the main character would remain passive after every available alarm bell has gone off.
So Baron Bailey (Michael Johnston), his buddies call him “Bear,” has a secret crush on his friend Nikki Freeman (Inde Navarrette). They work together at a record shop alongside their pals, Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) and Sarah (Megan Lawless). Nothing says healthy romantic foundation like years of unspoken yearning. After chickening out when Nikki asks whether he likes her, Bear purchases a mystical novelty trinket called a One Wish Willow and asks for Nikki to love him more than anyone in the world. In true “be-careful-what-you-wish-for” fashion, it goes predictably off the rails, almost immediately. Nikki suddenly wants to sleep over, screams at blood curdling decibels at random intervals, builds a shrine from the remains of Bear’s dead cat, and lies about her father suffering from cancer.
The actress getting all the acclaim is Inde Navarrette, who plays Bear’s co-worker and the object of his affection. The thing is, there’s very little time for us to appreciate the bright, playful presence Bear has built up in his head before things change. The second she unearths his dead cat and places candles around it in the kitchen, I would have said, ” I’m out.” Of course, then we wouldn’t have a movie. Bear is clearly a unique personality. Then there’s the woman Nikki has become. Navarrette certainly commits to the intensity of the role. She is very good at making the wish-corrupted version of her seem both terrifying and deeply wronged. Let’s face it. Her very soul has been hijacked and weaponized against her. But because the story turns her into a five-alarm nightmare so quickly, we barely get to mourn the person she was before Bear’s wish erased her.
The unhealthy fixation depicted is Nikki for Bear, but we, the audience, have to consider that Bear is likewise unhealthily consumed with her. Why would he continue to endure one ludicrous outburst after another? Nikki duct-tapes him into the house, serves the remains of his dead cat as a sandwich, and has a screaming fit whenever he tries to pull away. A party game of Jenga involves her recitation of an incestuous fairy tale she wrote herself. This devolves into broken glass and blood. After a while, it was just a series of outlandish deeds one after another for nearly two hours. And you find yourself nodding at the screen, yup, she’s crazy. What else you got? Despite his selfish wish, you do feel concern for Bear at first, but the fact that he takes absolutely no steps to curtail what is happening makes you lose all respect for him as a human being. I mean, Dial 911. It’s a simple phone call.
That is where Obsession began to lose me a little. It is not that I need characters to behave intelligently or make the same choices I would make. Bad decisions are practically a requirement of the horror genre. However, Bear’s inaction feels like a construct of the screenplay, pausing any response so Nikki can unleash the next grotesque attack. The account wants to satirize the selfishness of his wish, and that hits home. I just needed his intellect to evolve with the escalating danger. Watching him react to nightmare after nightmare has all the urgency of someone deciding whether to return a library book.
Obsession is a creative story written and directed by Curry Barker. The 26-year-old filmmaker first built an audience online through comedy sketches and microbudget horror, most notably the viral film Milk & Serial. He has said the idea came from the “Monkey’s Paw” segment from The Simpsons‘ episode Treehouse of Horror II. The film grew out of the same low-cost filmmaking instincts that made his earlier work stand out. That makes the movie’s confidence all the more impressive: this feature arrives with a distinct voice already fully formed.
Made for somewhere between $750,000 and $1 million, Obsession has already earned over $31.4 million worldwide. I have to applaud that kind of underdog success. I also have to hail the way this film kept me enrapt despite the implausibility of its lead character. Barker has made a nasty, impressively controlled, and, yes, very funny horror movie. A romantic fantasy has rarely been distorted so effectively. I enjoyed Obsession quite a bit. I just may not be obsessed.
05-19-26