After releasing micro-budget chiller Milk & Serial for free on YouTube two years ago, 26-year-old sketch comedian Curry Barker has graduated beyond the confines of streaming with the new horror outing Obsession. Picked up by Focus Features at TIFF last September for a reported $15 million price tag, it’s the kind of high-concept buzzy title that competitors A24 and NEON may still be kicking themselves months later for not securing. At the same time, the fact that there are enough promising Gen Z filmmakers around to trigger these kinds of bidding wars among distributors with their projects is a good problem to have. It represents not just an investment in future cinematic storytellers but a commitment to creative forces that audiences have come to know through platforms like YouTube and Reddit.
In Obsession, reserved twentysomething Bear (Michael Johnston) slaves away at a local music shop and harbors a longtime crush on co-worker and childhood friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette). It’s enough of an open secret among his other co-workers and trivia mates Tim (Cooper Tomlinson) and Sarah (Megan Lawless) that he practices spilling his guts to Nikki when they’re around. With hopes of replacing a necklace Nikki lost, Bear wanders into a gift shop and finds a One Wish Willow trinket that promises to grant the owner their greatest desire. After another frustrating night in the friend zone, Bear impulsively wishes that Nikki loved him “more than anyone in the entire world.” Much to his surprise, the magic behind the kitschy novelty toy kicks in but it doesn’t take long for her amorous affection to turn ominous and even dangerous.
In effect, Obsession is a suffusion of two well-worn tropes in the romantic and horror genres: a boy being too shy to tell the girl he’s pining after how he feels and the “be careful what you wish for” tale. In his writing and direction, Curry Barker uses these familiar starting points as a way to investigate the dark underpinnings behind these touchstones. When Bear casts his wish, it’s not as though Cupid shoots his arrow at Nikki and a romance slowly builds. Her entire personality turns on a dime and we learn that her real self is in essence a prisoner to this new possessed and obsessed version of Nikki. Some of the film’s scariest moments occur when the “real” Nikki pops back to the surface for terrifying interludes where we realize she’s essentially being held captive in her own body. It’s a horrifying concept that Barker explores within his take on the classic The Monkey’s Paw short story.
The quartet of young actors all add distinctive touches to their respective performances but Inde Navarrette’s work here is simply sublime. Under Bear’s seemingly innocuous spell, Nikki becomes unsettlingly possessive and violently co-dependent, erratically dithering between dewy-eyed obsequiousness and explosive neediness. As the affected version of Nikki for most of the movie, Navarrette hits notes of desperation and frustration that give Obsession a plethora of sustained uneasiness and well-earned beats of humor too. When Bear draws a Jenga piece at a party and is tasked with planting one on the person sitting to his left, Nikki’s remedy to the situation is both hilarious and creepy. I hadn’t seen Navarrette in anything prior to this but her commanding and unforgettable work here will rightfully open more doors for her in the future.
Though Curry Barker certainly pushes his story to gorier and more emotionally visceral lengths than we often get with typical tales of twisted wish fulfillment, its ending is telegraphed relatively early on. Interactions with both the employees where Bear procured the cursed charm and employees of the company that produces the One Wish Willow are marked by wickedly cavalier candor but serve to remind us of this film’s inevitable conclusion. But before that point, Barker sustains a timbre of absurdist tension that feels like a sketch from I Think You Should Leave and an episode from Tales From The Crypt got mutilated in a blender together. Like fellow YouTubers Markiplier and RackaRacka, who have also made the leap to theatrical horror filmmaking, Curry Barker has demonstrated that he won’t be ignored.
Score – 3.5/5
New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
The Mandalorian And Grogu, starring Pedro Pascal and Jeremy Allen White, continues the Star Wars saga of the titular bounty hunter and his cuddly companion as they traverse the galaxy to rescue the son of a powerful and notorious crime lord.
I Love Boosters, starring Keke Palmer and Naomi Ackie, is a crime comedy which finds a group of shoplifters (known as “boosters”) as they take aim at a cutthroat fashion maven after she steals their designs.
Passenger, starring Jacob Scipio and Lou Llobell, is a supernatural horror film following a young couple who witnesses a gruesome highway accident and soon realizes they did not leave the crash scene alone, as a demonic presence won’t stop until it claims them both.