We’re quickly approaching the purpose the place essentially the most dependable path to changing into a horror director is to launch a short-form comedy profession. Jordan Peele shocked the world with “Get Out,” Zach Cregger made it a sample with “Barbarian” and “Weapons,” Danny and Michael Philippou jumped on the prepare with “Discuss to Me” and “Convey Her Again.” Now, YouTube prankster Curry Barker has launched the most effective horror movies of 2025.
“Obsession” begins with the best of horror premises: Bear (Michael Johnston) is a shy and delicate music retailer worker who can’t discover the braveness to ask his co-worker and childhood good friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette) on a date. Relatively than be trustworthy together with her and inform her how he truly feels, he wanders right into a woo-woo crystal retailer and buys a One Want Willow, a kitschy vintage toy from the Nineteen Sixties that guarantees to grant its proprietor one want once they snap a department in half. The cashier warns him that a lot of the clients who purchase them have complained in regards to the outcomes, however it wouldn’t be a lot of a horror film if he listened.
After dropping Nikki off at house after an evening of bar trivia with their different co-workers (and weirding her out together with his try to flirt whereas insisting they’re simply mates), he snaps the willow and makes a easy want: that Nikki would love him greater than something on the planet. It isn’t lengthy earlier than she emerges from her home and asks to go house with him, and Bear thinks he simply bought a one-way ticket out of the good friend zone.
Abruptly, Nikki is at all times attractive for Bear, is keen to point out public affection, and spends a lot time with him that she principally strikes in. For Bear, the brand new association is nice about 99 % of the time… the one disadvantage is that Nikki often snaps again into her previous self and screams in utter terror for a number of seconds, earlier than resuming the love-bombing.
Even earlier than the film spirals uncontrolled, Bear and Nikki’s mutual mates begin declaring how bizarre this all is. The opposite women at work heard Nikki speaking about how she noticed Bear as slightly brother mere hours earlier than she was a lovestruck teenager, and it turns into clear that she’s going via one thing. Rumors begin to fly — guesses vary from drug dependancy to a full psychological breakdown, however someway no person guesses “novelty ’60s wish-granting toy with lethal penalties” — however the one factor they will all agree on is that Bear is benefiting from a lady in a weak state.
Social connections start to dry up, occasion invites get misplaced within the mail, and Bear quickly finds himself with no person to show to when the brand new Nikki begins stabbing herself with damaged glass, cooking his lifeless cat, and sealing his doorways with duct tape to forestall him from leaving the home. All that he can do is name the customer support line on the again of the package deal — however when he hears that they’ve the soul of the actual Nikki screaming for assist, the hopeless romantic realizes that he bit off way over he might chew.
“Obsession” is proof that the Cregger-ification of 2020s horror is in full impact, as its mixture of sadistic violence, ironic needle drops, and comedy mined from individuals responding to tragedy in pathetically self-serving methods will benefit loads of comparisons to “Barbarian” and “Weapons.” It additionally properly continues the current pattern of permitting forces of unexplained evil to easily exist in its world, discovering its social commentary in the best way people react to issues they don’t perceive. As an alternative of turning the precise evils into metaphors.
The movie‘s most compellingly unpredictable thrust lies in Barker’s alternative to inform a narrative of one thing objectively horrible — on this case, a man taking a lady’s total soul away and turning her right into a psychotic reproduction of herself in order that he can have intercourse together with her physique and faux they’re truly courting — solely from the angle of the perpetrator. Navarrette delivers a brilliantly twisted efficiency as what’s left of Nikki, however on condition that her actual self is caught shrieking in call-center purgatory and solely will get to emerge for seconds at a time, Bear is the human whose eyes we see every part via.
A large majority of the horror style is constructed round males doing heinous issues to girls, with outcomes starting from deeply misogynistic to cathartically feminist. However “Obsession” is constructed round a way more up to date male worry: being the problematic man whose total social circle is aware of he took benefit of a lady and desires nothing to do with him.
After we meet Bear, he isn’t some monster simply ready to snap. He’s a delicate man, pissed off by his lack of romantic success, and his heartbreak pushes him to place his personal needs over his good friend’s autonomy simply lengthy sufficient to smash each of their lives. He doesn’t bodily assault her, however he wades right into a morally grey space for purely self-serving functions, clearly haunted by the guilt of the irreversible cycle he set in movement. He additionally hates the truth that his mates are right of their criticisms of him. (The truth that a film like “Obsession” may even exist is proof of the tiniest little bit of social progress, as it will solely work in a society the place males really feel like there are actual social penalties to sexual misconduct.) Barker reveals him no mercy for his actions, however leaves the door open to darker introspection. For many viewers, the terrifying query shouldn’t be “Might I find yourself like Nikki?” — quite, it’s, “Might I or somebody I do know be tempted to do what Bear did?”
That’s to not say that what occurs to him is worse than what occurs to her (not less than at first), however Barker nearly appears to be daring his viewers to ask themselves what number of “good guys” within the theater might be able to an analogous lapse in judgment below sure circumstances. Women and men will expertise two very various kinds of fears once they take into account the reply, however “Obsession” ought to maintain everybody awake lengthy after they get house from seeing it.
Grade: B+
“Obsession” premiered on the 2025 Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition. It’s presently looking for U.S. distribution.