There’s something kind of fitting about Curry Barker making the jump from internet horror to a feature film like Obsession. You can feel those roots all over the film, espcially when you watch some of his most popular YouTube shorts; The Chair and Milk & Serial. There’s no denying he understands how to get a reaction out of an audience.
At its core, Obsession plays like a modern, slightly twisted riff on Fatal Attraction, filtered through a “be careful what you wish for” lens that feels straight out of Stephen King’s playbook. The setup is simple but effective: Bear (Michael Johnston) is the kind of awkward, quietly desperate guy who can’t bring himself to act on his feelings for his co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarrette). That changes when he stumbles across a strange little shop and impulsively buys a so-called One Wish Willow. One snap later, everything he thought he wanted becomes very, very real… and very, very wrong.
What the film does well, especially early on, is tap into that uncomfortable shift from fantasy to suffocation. Nikki’s sudden devotion isn’t romantic; it’s invasive. She’s always there, always watching, always needing more. The movie gets a lot of mileage out of that creeping loss of control, turning small, relatable anxieties into something much darker. It’s amazing how framing a shot with precise editing can create so much tension and uneasiness; from something as simple closed bathroom door or laying in bed. It’s familiar ground, it’s nothing new, but it’s handled with enough unease to keep you locked in. From the moment he makes his wish, you’re hooked.
Where Barker really shows growth is in the atmosphere. There are moments here that genuinely land; quiet, eerie beats that linger longer than you expect. One early sequence in particular that stuck with me where Nikki silently watches Bear from the shadows, is simple but deeply unsettling. It’s the kind of scene that proves he knows how to build tension without overplaying his hand. The sound design helps a lot too, leaning into subtle, immersive cues that slowly tighten the screws.
But the further the film goes, the more it starts to feel like it’s following a roadmap instead of carving its own path. As things escalate into more mainstream horror the story loses some of that initial intimacy. It becomes less about the characters and more about hitting familiar genre beats, which takes some of the sting out of what was working early on.
That said, Inde Navarrette is the glue holding everything together. Her performance is easily the standout here, shifting from warm and inviting to deeply unsettling in a way that never feels forced. She’s the reason the film works as often as it does and without that performance, I’m not sure Obsession could have worked the way it did.
In the end, this is one of those movies I genuinely enjoyed… and then immediately started picking apart in my head on the drive home. Not because it failed, but because it got so close to being something even better. I tend to do that with films that work on me; I start circling the gaps, the unanswered questions, the moments that feel like they’re hinting at something deeper. Here, it’s things like: Why did it end that way? What was really happening during his phone call with customer service? (I won’t get into any spoilers!) The film plants these ideas but doesn’t quite follow through in a way that feels fully satisfying for me.
That said, Obsession still works more often than it doesn’t. It gets under your skin, builds real tension, and leans on a strong central performance and a solid concept to carry it through its rougher edges. It’s uneven, sure, and it occasionally falls back on familiar genre beats, but there’s enough atmosphere and intent here to make it stick. If anything, the fact that I’m still thinking about how it could have pushed further says a lot. It’s a good movie that flirts with being a great one and that alone makes it worth watching.
Have you seen it yet? Are you a fan of this movie? Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Cheers,
Matt.
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