Obsession

OVERVIEW

The surprise box office phenomenon of 2026, Obsession follows Baron “Bear” Bailey (Michael Johnston), a young coward who works at a musical instrument store and has no great ambitions beyond winning the affection of his coworker and childhood crush, Nikki (Inde Navarrette). Unable to ask her out in the “old-fashioned” way, even as she outright asks him if he likes her, he breaks a mystical object called the One Wish Willow and makes a wish for her to fall in love with him more than any person in the world. As anyone who has watched Aladdin knows, this is the one wish you don’t do, and soon, strange things start happening to Nikki, which affect not only Bear but everyone around them.

The film plays as a horror-romantic-comedy hybrid, not unlike last year’s Together. Both focus on delivering scares by exaggerating already naturally terrifying aspects of modern relationships. Where Together unsettled couples by asking what it would mean to be physically glued to your partner, Obsession wonders what it is like to have a truly obsessed partner, while also exploring the line between control and love, and when that warps into abuse.

BACKGROUND

Following in the footsteps of Paul Thomas Anderson, John Carpenter, and many others, Curry Barker dropped out of film school before proving that, sometimes in the film world, not following the established rules can pay off. He grew a YouTube channel called “that’s a bad idea” with his schoolmate and fellow dropout Cooper Tomlinson while working at Starbucks to make ends meet. The duo found immense success with their horror and comedy shorts, especially 2023’s The Chair, as well as the feature Milk & Serial, released for free on the platform after a year trying to find distributors. Producer James Harris looked at the viewership Barker was attracting and, seeing the potential, approached the young director for an opportunity to expand The Chair into a feature film. Barker instead pitched Obsession and secured $750,000 after turning down $2 million that would have required him to compromise a few of his script ideas.

The film made its debut in the 2025 TIFF Midnight Madness session, where it was bought by Focus Features for roughly $15 million. The studio held the movie for eight months before releasing it at the start of the summer of 2026, using cryptic marketing. It debuted to impressive numbers, which grew even larger in its second and third week, passing The Blair Witch Project as the most profitable festival acquisition ever made, and easily becoming Focus Features’ biggest film.

THE REVIEW

Barker’s practical experience is evident throughout the film. Years of no-budget shorts, with plenty of trial and error, clearly taught him efficiency. Every scene has a clear purpose, and the pacing is confident, with Barker editing the film himself. He spends just enough time setting up the characters before the turn, which has us believing that their relationship could have developed naturally, then steadily builds tension as Nikki’s devotion mutates from harmless eavesdropping to absurd gestures that are both unsettling and funny. The use of humor to build unease is particularly effective, keeping us on edge even when we have just laughed at the material. And it helps that many moments are genuinely funny and memorable, like Nikki sealing the door with silver duct tape so Bear cannot leave for work, or waiting all day for him to return. By the time the film erupts into full horror, the escalation feels earned, and the shift from sweet to nightmarish is complete.

Selling that transition and elevating the film is Inde Navarrette, who is a future star. She hits every note, coming off as funny, pitiable, unnerving, terrifying, often in the same scene. She makes Nikki both recognizably human and monstrously unhinged, and she is extremely efficient in her facial acting, often making subtle changes in expression that turn her face nightmarishly creepy without ever being cartoonish. It is one of 2026’s best performances, and I would love to see it recognized at next year’s Oscars in Best Supporting Actress. There has been discussion about whether she should compete in the lead or supporting category, but despite her significant screen time, the script always treats her as a supporting player, one of its few missteps. The choice is intentional as we are seeing Bear’s point of view, but having one or two additional scenes that let us connect more with who Nikki truly is would make the tragedy of the situation hit even harder.

Michael Johnston also deserves credit for leaning into Bear’s darker edges, not afraid to let the character come across as the true loser he is and becoming one of the year’s most despicable characters in the process. In this case, the script is extremely efficient, never feeling the need to spell it out (other than the disturbing sex scene). When he first calls about the One Wish Willow (Barker is the voice on the other end of the phone), he promptly asks if the wish can be altered, and gets desperate when the agent asks if he wants to cancel. He doesn’t. Part of him likes robbing Nikki of her free will, and had he had another chance, he would probably make the exact same wish, with “Nikki behaving more like the real Nikki.”

The other secondary characters have the same issue as Nikki but to a lesser extent, where they often don’t feel like real people and more like supporting characters in Bear’s life. The cast is still able to bring them to life and capture a lived-in sense of friendship despite their limited screen time.

The horror set pieces are appropriately shocking and disturbing, while shying away from gore. Barker constructs the scenes with patience and often lets dialogue continue past the point of comfort, creating both secondhand embarrassment for the characters and the uneasy feeling that something shocking can happen at any moment. When it does, it works extremely well, with Barker getting around budget constraints by resorting to simple yet efficiently creative choices, such as using a dancer to portray Nikki’s possessed movements or filming a scene slowly and accelerating it in the edit.

Nothing is particularly innovative, and once in a while it feels like a repackaging of standard horror conventions (hiding Nikki’s face, turning her into a silhouette). Not all of the ideas land (things involving a cat feel a bit gratuitous), nor are the themes deeply explored (for a deeper discussion of its themes, watch Ruby Sparks). Yet the balance between shock and character dynamic is impressive, and as a genre piece, Obsession more than delivers.

FINAL THOUGHTS

In a world where studio films become increasingly manufactured as ready-to-consume content, it is great seeing a film like Obsession beat Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu at the box office and prove that studios don’t always know what people want, and more importantly, that a director’s creative vision can pay off immensely. There is more to the film than it lets on. Yes, it is extremely well-acted and inventive, with at least two very memorable shocks. Watching the making-of feature, I was able to appreciate more how Barker overcame the budgetary constraints in creative ways, reminding me of how a young Spielberg would jump through hoops to get his desired shots. Yet more than that, the film connected with young audiences, who have lost the ability to have normal interactions, are unable to ask a girl out while thinking they are owed great things, and are unable to even form an idea of who they want to be. Barker might have created the most real portrayal of post-COVID single people yet, and that Obsession is such an entertaining film to watch is just the cherry on top. It ends as a creepy, funny, and clever experience that leaves you relieved for the breathing room in your own relationships.

Still courtesy of TIFF.

At a glance

4/5

Highly recommended

#16 of 73 in TIFF 2025 RankedSee the ranking →

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