Why Obsession Has Finally Given Us a Successor to Hereditary
As Curry Barker’s indie horror phenomenon lights up the box office and drives heated conversations about female autonomy, we’ve finally found the next modern horror classic
by Alex Kaan 23 May 2026
Focus Features
Everyone is talking about Obsession. After a triumphant run on the festival circuit, starting with an electric TIFF premiere that led to a $15 million acquisition by Focus Features, Curry Barker’s harrowing tale of a wish-gone-wrong is on track to gross over $100 million worldwide on a budget of only $750,000. Moreover, the film has already earned the 26-year-old writer-director—who got his start as a sketch comedian on YouTube before posting horror shorts and a found-footage feature (the viral Milk & Serial)—a second film with Blumhouse and Focus Features, and the keys to A24’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot.
A new take on the “monkey’s paw” narrative, the film follows Bear (Michael Johnston), a meek young man with an all-consuming crush on his close friend and co-worker, Nikki (Inde Navarrette). On a regular trivia night with their fellow colleagues, Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) and Sarah (Megan Lawless), Bear decides he will finally confess his feelings to her—but chickens out at the last minute. Instead, he wishes on a novelty toy called a One Wish Willow for her to love him “more than anyone in the entire world”, leading to disastrous consequences. Succeeding in an even more important metric than financial success, the film is fast becoming a cultural phenomenon, with reactions, breakdowns, and theories flooding TikTok and Instagram.
Where Hereditary represented the pinnacle of elevated horror and inspired a slew of imitators, Obsession is a barnstorming product of the YouTube DIY horror generation raised on Creepypastas. Boasting outstanding word-of-mouth like Ari Aster’s film, Get Out, Paranormal Activity, and The Blair Witch Project before it, this is innovative filmmaking that will become a touchstone of the genre.
Focus Features
Of course, while fans agree that Obsession is uniquely scary, that consensus isn’t enough to join the pantheon of modern horror classics. What makes the film so resonant—and different from the work of other horror filmmakers who started on YouTube, like Danny and Michael Philippou (Talk to Me) and Michael Shanks (Together)—is its substitution of the traditional jump scare for an atmosphere informed by uncanny internet horror, realised both through Inde Navarrette’s unhinged, off-kilter performance and Barker’s command of the horror mythology. It’s a language that Gen Z viewers will be familiar with, but has yet to become a staple on the big screen.
While Hereditary didn’t start the elevated horror boom (see The Babadook, Get Out, Mother!), the success of Aster’s 2018 hit and his 2019 follow-up, Midsommar, warmed audiences to the arthouse horror that would follow (Saint Maud, The Lighthouse, Relic, I Saw the TV Glow) just as Paranormal Activity ushered in a cost-effective wave of found-footage flicks (Lake Mungo, Grave Encounters, V/H/S, The Taking of Deborah Logan). With Obsession poised to achieve the incredibly rare feat of its second weekend at the domestic box office outperforming the first, Curry Barker’s indie sensation is sure to similarly change the machinations of horror filmmaking and will hopefully see the industry invest in young, fresh voices.
With the Creepypasta-esque mythology of the One Wish Willow, from its appearance in a mystic shop to its customer service hotline, the internet discourse around Obsession has mirrored that of a Reddit comment section below a scary story. It’s the same kind of fan engagement that has led to A24 hiring 20-year-old Kane Parsons to direct Backrooms, adapting his liminal horror YouTube series, which is in turn based on a Creepypasta circling 4chan. Viewers are taking to TikTok, Instagram, and the like to speculate on the rules of the One Wish Willow: for example, wondering how Bear could have better phrased his wish to avoid the carnage that would ultimately follow.
Focus Features
However, the One Wish Willow isn’t the determining factor of the film’s viral status. While Inde Navarrette’s tour de force alone will drive ticket sales and already ensures Obsession’s status as a modern horror classic, the film keeps drawing in audiences—and will surely eclipse Hereditary’s $82 million worldwide haul—because of the lively debates surrounding its piercing examination of modern dating. Barker’s first theatrically distributed feature is essentially a love-potion story taken to its most unsettling, depraved conclusion, and the film is so effective because its biggest fright is its concept. Rarely has a genre film so eloquently explored the loss of female autonomy and so boldly dissected the covert villainy of the “nice guy”. And yet, by grounding the story in Bear’s perspective, Barker’s script leaves enough room for the audience to let their personal biases determine whether or not he is the story’s bona fide bad guy.
While analysts are suggesting that fellow YouTube-rooted horror Backrooms could have a staggering opening of up to $50 million when it hits theatres on May 29th, thethematic weight and the idiosyncratic strength of Barker’s vision will give his film more cultural resonance. As the frenzied reactions attest, Obsession is tracking to secure its place as the first veritably bone-chilling horror masterpiece of the 2020s.