Starring: Michael Johnston, IInde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, Andy Richter Written and directed by: Curry Barker
Some movies just have it. Whether it’s the right time, topic, or talent, you can feel the buzz vibrating off them from a mile away. Obsession is one of those movies. Picked up by Focus Features out of the 2025 Toronto Film Festival, the film has been building a crescendoing wave of word of mouth that just keeps growing more powerful.
Rather than collapsing under the weight of expectation, Obsession lives up to the hype. This movie is a wild fucking ride, signaling the arrival of writer-director Curry Barker (no relation to Hellraiser helmer Clive Barker) as a name to watch. Like 2022’s Talk to Me, you can feel the confidence and creativity pulsing through the reels here. This isn’t a one-off; it’s the start of a career.
The film begins as an engaging indie, digging into character and laying some groundwork. But once the premise is cracked open, we’re locked in and off to the races. From there it goes to some funny, surprising, and disturbing places, often turning on a dime in ways that give you whiplash.
All credit to lead actors Michael Johnston and IInde Navarrette, who pull off some demanding material. In many ways, Johnson has the more difficult role—playing the straight man watching his dream girl transform into a living nightmare. But it’s Navarrette you can take your eyes off. She doing so much, playing so many notes—sexy, sad, terrifying—sometimes in the same breath. Her jaw-dropping literary recitation during a party is the movie’s unhinged highlight.
As Bear and Nikki, Johnson and Navarrette bring crushing heartbreak to a horror movie that also delivers stomach-twisting tension and “oh no” chills. While you’re on pins and needles wondering how this tale is going to escalate next, Barker’s also at work prodding other parts of your brain.
At different points, the movie made me think about how AI is creating a world that embraces ass-kissing as love and fantasy as reality (with none of the messiness and challenge that comes from human interaction) and all the movies with introverted, longing guys as protagonists (and how we’ve made it seem heroic to idealize and obsess over someone, and why we think they deserve that person’s love in return).
This is what makes Obsession so delicious. It’s spinning a lot of plates while operating off a simplistic “be careful what you wish for” storyline. Except here instead of a Monkey’s Paw, we get the One Wish Willow—a fantastic film creation complete with fine print, a hotline, and online chatter (as well as its own real-world website). It’s telling that Barker went to this level of depth and detail with the product.
While not every element of Obsession goes down as smooth—there’s some character beats that feel a little forced and there’s a Wish Willow moment late in the film that really threw me off—there’s something to be said for a movie that feels both exactly of its time and like a timeless classic. I don’t know if Barker cracked a willow to get here, but Obsession earns a spot among the best horror debuts in recent memory.
Yours is the latest in a string of positive reviews I’ve read of the movie and also the one that convinced me I really need to see it.
I really enjoyed the film. It was a lot of fun to watch it with a packed audience and listen to their comments coming out of the theater.