Obsession (now on VOD platforms like Prime Video) shows us what happens when you go from the Friend Zone to the Twilight Zone. YouTuber Curry Barker’s second directorial feature — after 2024’s Milk and Serial — is his first wide release, and it’s a megasmash that defied all expectations in two ways. One, it’s a sharp, wildly entertaining riff on an old idea. And two, it defied all box office conventions by not only beating a Star Wars movie, The Mandalorian and Grogu, in worldwide ticket sales (Obsession so far has raked in $371 million to Mando’s $335 million), but by actually INCREASING its earnings for three weekends, which is essentially unheard-of nowadays. Not bad for a movie that cost $750,000 to make, and stars relative unknowns in Michael Johnston (he had a supporting spot in the Teen Wolf TV series) and Inde Navarrette (who broke through with Superman and Lois), the latter of whom, in a just world, would be up for Oscar consideration. No, really.
OBSESSION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Schlumpy sweater, a hushed almost-stammer, wide innocent eyes: Bear (Johnston) is absolutely not an alpha. His every nervous trait is immediately prevalent as he practices a confession of love on a friendly, accommodating diner waitress, while his best pal Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) coaches him. The object of Bear’s affection is Nikki (Navarrette), part of a platonic foursome that also includes Sarah (Megan Lawless), all of whom are co-workers at a guitar shop. Maybe “platonic” should have quote marks around it, because these are younger twenty-somethings and inevitably, when they go out for drinks and trivia, hormones make their presence known, e.g., Bear for Nikki and the eventual revelation that Sarah might have feelings for Bear. And it’s not just lust Bear feels for Nikki; they’ve experienced true emotional intimacy via sharing-your-innermost-feelings-type convos and supporting each other through difficult moments, and now he’s rightly terrified that truly opening his heart might ruin their friendship.
Bear’s first misstep is ignoring the bad omen; he comes home to the house he inherited from his grandmother to find his cat dead after it got into her leftover medication. Then again, maybe that misstep is his failure to recognize that he’s in a mov- er, reality, where bad omens aren’t meaningless superstition. The revelation that Nikki lost her crystal necklace down the drain prompts Bear to stop at the woo-woo shoppe for a replacement, where he finds something far easier than a risky conversation: a One Wish Willow, a stupid hunk of plastic that, when snapped in half, grants its possessor one wish. Again, please note Bear’s lack of awareness of the context of his existence. The four friends go out and Bear gets Nikki away from the rest and he bumbles right out of his plan to tell her how he feels and then in an act of desperate frustration he busts the Willow and wishes for Nikki to love him more than anything else in the world.
Right: Oh boy. Pretty much immediately, Nikki starts acting… strange. She invites him into her place but he balks so she invites herself over to his place and says she’s upset that her mostly estranged dad is dying and she pulls off her shirt and asks him to sleep in the same bed with her, etc. Bear assumes she was on molly and she brushes away her weird behavior as a panic attack, but. Things still ain’t quite right. She has this tendency to fulfill all the cliches of Crazy Girlfriends in movies: possessive behavior, emotional manipulation, making a sandwich out of the dead cat, etc. But Bear apparently believes that one should accept others for their faults, and he forges ahead and finds himself in a montage where they make love and laugh together and have no-pants breakfast together and generally exist in a state of new-love bliss. And they lived happily ever after, the end! Actually, no — this movie is all kinds of fucked up!
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Well, Barker’s Obsession and Kane Parson’s Backrooms seem to be on parallel tracks, establishing the YouTube-to-smash-theatrical-horror-hit path this year (notably, Barker is 26 and Parsons is 20), following the somewhat out-of-nowhere $51 million hit Iron Lung, from YouTuber Mark Fischbach. But thematically, and in its ability to take a well-worn concept and render it fresh and exciting, it has a lot in common with It Follows, a comparison one should never make lightly.
Performance Worth Watching: Not to push aside Johnston’s convincing portrait of confusion and buried male toxicity, but Navarrette puts on a virtuosic performance that hits the sweet spot between hilarious and terrifying as she shifts on the fly from sweet to malevolent in the blink of an eye, or holds a big smile until it becomes a terrifying rictus. (Her work is similar to the way Emily Blunt seemingly unconsciously changes tones and speaks different languages in Disclosure Day — another Oscar-nom-worthy performance.)
Sex And Skin: A wiiiieeerrrrd sex scene with some butt and sideboob; also some frontal female in a disturbingly nonsexy shot.
Our Take: There’s nothing particularly original about Obsession; it’s just the old monkey’s-paw/careful-what-you-wish-for story on enough of a shoestring budget to limit the visual artistry of its presentation. But this is a classic case of limitations fostering creativity, with Barker making the absolute most of subtle character dynamics, coaxing exemplary performances from his cast, and choosing his punches wisely and strategically instead of throwing wild haymakers and hoping they land. It’s also hilarious, prompting one to declare 2026 — with Obsession, Apple TV’s brilliant series Widow’s Bay and Sam Raimi’s return-to-form Send Help — a rather robust year for horror-comedy.
Not that the subtext of Obsession isn’t seriously disturbing, mind you. It dresses Bear in all the cozy cableknits of a sensitive guy, when deep down, he’s apparently fine with the real Nikki seemingly being trapped inside her own quasi-demonically possessed body. I mean, he’s sleeping with a years-long crush who just can’t get enough of him, ever. It’s a dream come true! Or in this case, the exact opposite of that! In some ways, Johnston’s performance is as the film’s straight man to Navarrette’s hysterical whimper-to-scream whiplash-inducing personality switchbacks, which encompass deeply warped instances of stomach-churning bodily-function grossness, nasty-nasty gore and self-mutilation, often delivered via Barker’s wily visual punchlines. And the filmmaker knows how to end a movie effectively, making you feel hopeless and exhilarated at the same time. The line between laughter and dread is rarely so precariously thin.
Our Call: Obsession has absolutely earned all its hype and success. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
