Obsession Review: Demented Creepypasta-Tinged Thriller is Modern Horror at its Finest
Curry Barker’s second feature has already been picked up by Blumhouse and Focus Features after a buzzy festival run
by Alex Kaan 19 March 2026
© Focus Features
In the last few years, YouTube has become a popular, plausible pipeline for emerging filmmakers to break into the horror genre. After running a comedy channel on the platform, Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou’s 2022 feature-length debut, Talk to Me, was acquired by A24 and grossed nearly $100 million worldwide on a $4.5 million budget. Michael Shanks similarly went straight from releasing short-form content on social media to writing and directing Together, the 2025 body horror relationship drama with Dave Franco and Alison Brie.
Now Curry Barker, one half of sketch comedy duo that’s a bad idea, has made a film for $1 million that premiered at TIFF just over a year after his $800 found footage film Milk & Serial became a viral YouTube hit. And when you see the resulting movie, it becomes clear why indie production company Capstone Pictures backed the project. Doing for romantic relationships what Hereditary did for dysfunctional families, Obsession is a masterclass in unrelenting terror. This is powerful filmmaking that will make you sick to your stomach and shaken to your core.
© Focus Features
Turning the clingy partner archetype into an insidious force, this harrowing cursed object parable of a man who wishes his crush would love him announces Barker as a director to watch very closely—even if you have to peek through your fingers. We meet our protagonist, Baron “Bear” (Michael Johnston), as he delivers a grand romantic confession before the reveal that it was a practice run, something that his co-worker and wingman, Ian (Cooper Tomlinson, the other half of that’s a bad idea), is rather thankful for as he lets his friend know that it was terrible. The object of Bear’s desperate affection is another co-worker, the sweet-natured, free-spirited Nikki (Inde Navarrette).
There is an added complexity to Bear’s crush in that his friend group—Ian, Nikki, and Sarah (Megan Lawless)—is entirely comprised of his music store colleagues, but when Nikki announces she’s handed in her notice in order to become a writer, Bear knows he has to make his move. Nikki even serves him the ideal opportunity on a platter when she directly asks him if he likes her, but he chokes. Instead, he impulsively uses a mysterious novelty toy, the “One Wish Willow”, and asks for Nikki to “love [him] more than anything in this world”. Naturally, as with any variation of the “Monkey’s Paw” narrative, his wish comes true, yet brings with it horrific consequences.
© Focus Features
While the taut script and dread-drenched atmosphere, courtesy of Taylor Clemons’ grim cinematography and Rock Burwell’s eerie ambient score, do plenty of the heavy lifting, the film’s frights hinge on Inde Navarrette’s performance as the disturbingly infatuated girlfriend—and it is sensational. A live-wire, revoltingly uncanny tour-de-force, her facial expressions alone will imprint on your subconscious.
With its unravelling narrative and fascinating lore delivered with a blunt simplicity, Obsession plays like big-screen creepypasta imbued with a graphic brutality. However, aside from its nauseating set pieces, what sets the film apart is that the film’s true horror lies in the gradual realisation of the depths of a meek “nice guy’s” selfish longing, embodied perfectly by Michael Johnston. This isn’t the first film to feature an unlikeable protagonist, but Barker has a fresh conceit in that he steadily pulls the rug out from under any viewer who had a degree of empathy for the painfully insecure character at the start of the movie.
Gruesome, depraved, and thought-provoking, Obsession is an exceptional relationship horror film and a near-traumatic cinematic experience.