Curry Barker's OBSESSION (2026)

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Obsession features a pretty fresh new voice in Horror with Curry Barker (no relation to Clive, this is ala Zack Cregger someone who came up through sketch comedy and YouTube), that is still familiar in some ways while being stronger and more engaging in others. One of the pleasant (yes, pleasant) things about the movie is that it is at heart a black-as-the-color-tone-of-many-indoor-dimly-lit-scenes comedy of romance gone bad, though if you don't find this as funny as I do I get it. The humor of the film is in watching a guy get hit in the face with like ten thousand rakes; I can picture the Coens sitting and having a good laugh at the main guy Bear's expense (Michael Johnston).

This is a story that involves a young man who does one of the dumbest things he could do, and he spends much of the time - after an initial high of love and romance from his one wish for Nikki to love him more than (and I quote) "anyone in the fucking world" - paying for it through some extreme and terribly violent consequences. One of the things that makes the filmmaking stand out, aside from Barker knowing how horror can work like comedy in the sense of the Punch-Line and creating a set up plus having to pay it off so the audience isn't cheated or left unamused (again, as someone who knows timing from sketch, or hopefully he would), is that he does a lot to immerse you in this perspective of Bear's with Nikki (Navarrette, more on her in a moment) that feels a little more grounded than in a more traditional Possessed By X movie.

Some of the lighting is a little dim, but much of the direction is crafted to get under your skin mostly in the compositions. There was one part where Bear wakes up in the middle of the night and Nikki is just staring at him while he sleeps, but at first all we hear is her voice and it is only once she shuffles a little we see her and then the rest of the AHH ensues to crank up the tension. What is in the frame and what isn't gets some playfulness (as maybe too self conscious some of the lighting is), and I even liked the way Barker shows us two characters talking - ie Ian and Bear at work - and Nikki is just... there watching, and won't let go even through a big silly grin.

As a full genre exercise, what works about the film is so strong that it does outweigh what comes in parts that don't so much. To go back to the comedian analogy for a moment, there is something where comics sometimes find a joke that works and then do the thing of going back to it and it isn't as meaningful. Case in point here is with the cat; I'm sure many in the audience will find what eventually happens with the cat to be a full WTF moment that is meant to take things up a fuller notch into Crazy-Town, but I found what Nikki does first with the cat to be enough and actually more unsettling, and what's more it made sense in the scope of how someone who wants to show their love for their partner to an extreme would do it (without spoiling the Big Thing she does later, it is reminiscent of something else in a classic 80s Stalker Thriller and without the acid logic of that set piece).

On the other hand, there is a deliciously uncomfortable and decidedly long scene where Bear brings Nikki to a small party his friend Ian is having (not really his wish, no pun intended, ok some), and everything about that is where you see Barker and especially Navarrette firing on all cylinders to make your skin crawl and to still make you laugh at how even the camera placement emphasizes what bat-shit is going on. And as much as you may have heard hype for the movie, it is primarily around Navarrette and her performance. While the acting strength is not entirely equal - Johnston is good, don't get me wrong, especially earlier in the film when he is so needy and his reactions are like how maybe some men see themselves in their shittiest moments, but Navarrette is better - she gets to go into such wild tonal shifts not only within a scene but like second to second, from AHHH hysteria to a bright and chipper school-girl.

I also liked her early on in the film, before she gets this wish placed upon her, mostly because she is not that extraordinary and is just a normal young conventionally attractive woman. There are things we find out much later about her that adds some shade to what Bear thought about her before, but I found that Barker cast her not just for the extremes she could go to in her performance (ie how she reacts when Bear does manage to leave the house, not an easy thing to do, to start his day, is a highlight) but that she could play off of Johnston well in those earlier scenes as someone who Bear is obsessing over for not as much as he should really be expecting. In that way and in some other slivers (and enough for this to be ultimately quite a good movie), he wants love but really under his terms, and he shuts out the vital piece of info Nikki gives which is that when she has a crush, she doesn't really say it to someone.

If the movie suffers a bit in quality it is in some aspects that I usually will give leeway to with a first-time feature director, like how the supporting actors are fairly middling to not that impressive (Tomlinson is amateur, Lawless a little better if underwritten), and there is a predictable quality to the fate of at least one character that I wish Barker had had a little more stones to try to subvert in some way or another (and for another they get dispatched so quickly there isn't even time to have a chuckle about it before Nikki steam-rolls to the next batch of crazy).

Yet what works so well is that the movie, while giving some slickly-and-gross Big Horror Moments, does bring things to a satisfying and rather hopeless conclusion. In Obsession there isn't even the salve that came with, say, The Substance inasmuch as having some exit ramp that would be marginally easier on the protagonist and how not taking it brought on everything bad to continue. What Bear brings upon himself is compounded by his denial, and that was something I at first on my drive home post movie thought was a slight flaw - like this guy is so cowardly that he still doesn't just run away when most of us watching would or find some other wat out - but something my wife said about what Barker was going for makes some more sense upon reflection: this guy is everyone who can't let go of what they see as This Good Thing That Happened For me, even as every warning and exit ramp flies by.

In other words: Men are Trash ::snap snap:: and the despair of the very end shows Barker ultimately not being like his main character, quite the opposite. There may be flaws in the writing and some of the performances, but the integrity and courage in the convictions of what this is, and the pathetic tragic outcome of men like Bear, makes this a potent warning of a movie more-so than a jump-scare machine.