Every few years, horror gets a jolt of energy from somewhere unexpected, and this year that jolt came from a 26-year-old YouTube sketch comedian named Curry Barker. “Obsession” was shot in Los Angeles for around $750,000, a budget so small it barely registers next to studio horror tentpoles, and it ended up in a bidding war between Focus Features, A24, and NEON before Focus won out. That underdog story alone would be interesting. The fact that the movie is genuinely great makes it one of the year’s most satisfying horror surprises.
The Story
Bear (Michael Johnston) works at a music store and has been quietly in love with his coworker Nikki (Inde Navarrette) for what feels like forever. He’s the classic “friend zone” case — too anxious, too awkward, too unwilling to risk the relationship they already have by admitting how he feels. Then, in an antique shop, he finds a strange little object called the “One Wish Willow.” The rules are simple: make a wish, break it, and the wish comes true. Bear doesn’t really believe it. He wishes anyway, asking for Nikki to love him more than anything else in the world.
She does. Immediately, completely, and in a way that Bear never could have imagined.
What starts as a wish-fulfillment fantasy curdles fast. Nikki’s love doesn’t look like the romance Bear pictured — it looks like obsession, possession, and eventually something closer to psychosis. Barker’s clever trick is making the audience sit with an uncomfortable question: what would it actually take for someone to love you unconditionally, above everything else, including their own sense of self? The answer, as the film shows in increasingly graphic terms, is nothing you’d actually want.
Performances
Michael Johnston plays Bear as sincerely pathetic in the best way — not a hero, not really a villain, just a lonely guy whose worst impulse gets granted in the worst possible way. It’s a performance that invites you to laugh at him a little and wince a little too, especially as the story goes on and his own denial becomes part of the problem.
But this movie belongs to Inde Navarrette. Her Nikki starts as a warm, teasing, entirely believable love interest, and Barker slowly, deliberately dismantles that person in front of us. Navarrette plays both ends of that transformation — the coquettish coworker and the full-blown nightmare she becomes — without ever losing the thread connecting them. It’s rare for a horror movie to hinge this completely on one performance, and rarer still for that performance to fully deliver. Expect to hear her name a lot after this.
Supporting turns from Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, and Andy Richter round out the cast, mostly providing grounding and dark comic relief amid the escalating horror.
Direction and Craft
Barker wrote, directed, and edited the film himself, and it shows a level of control that’s impressive for a low-budget debut theatrical release. The sound design is a standout element — much of the film’s dread comes from what you hear rather than what you see, an approach that makes even quiet scenes tense. Visually, the film doesn’t rely on jump-scare theatrics; it’s more interested in slow, creeping wrongness, which makes the moments of real horror land harder when they arrive.
There’s also a vein of dark comedy running underneath the horror. Barker doesn’t play the premise entirely straight, and the film is frequently very funny in a way that never undercuts the tension — it makes the whole thing feel more human, and closer to how people might actually cope with something this absurd and terrifying.
Where It Falls Short
The film’s biggest ask of its audience is patience with Bear’s decision-making. There’s only so long a person would realistically stay around as their crush transforms into someone dangerous, and the script leans on that suspension of disbelief more than once to keep the plot moving. It’s a horror movie, so some of that comes with the territory, but a few scenes stretch credulity further than they probably needed to.
The film also gestures at bigger ideas — about modern romantic obsession, about what young people expect from relationships, about the danger of wanting to be loved unconditionally — without quite committing to a sharper point of view on any of them. It’s more interested in being unsettling than being a pointed satire, and depending on what you’re looking for, that might feel like a missed opportunity or might feel exactly right.
Bottom Line
“Obsession” is a lean, confident, occasionally grotesque horror film that earns its word-of-mouth success. It’s proof that a tiny budget, a tight cast, and one genuinely great central performance can outshine movies with a hundred times the resources. Inde Navarrette’s performance alone makes this worth seeking out, and Barker’s control over tone — horrifying one moment, darkly funny the next — marks him as a filmmaker worth watching going forward.
Where to watch: Available to rent or buy now, with a Peacock streaming release and a later Netflix release date both set for later in 2026.