Obsession

Obsession begins with a rehearsal. We watch tight-jawed twentysomething cutie-dweeb Bear (Michael Johnston), cordoned off in a tight single shot, nakedly confess his heretofore hidden love for friend and workmate Nikki (Inde Navarrette). It’s only in the carefully delayed reverse shot that we realize Bear’s audience is not Nikki but a kindly diner server serving as Nikki’s surrogate. Moved by Bear’s soul-baring declaration, the server-surrogate sheds a tear, which could be read as a token of genuine empathy. Given where this wickedly clever horror/anti-love story is going, however, that tear speaks more poignantly to how easily feelings can be manipulated, how pliant our psyches are to external forces for which we are mere playthings, sources of amusement in a cosmic black comedy.

The inaugural scenes of writer/director/editor Curry Barker’s sophomore feature—he previously helmed 2024’s $800 found-footage YouTube smash Milk & Serial—would have you believe Bear to be the embodiment of the titular psychological malaise: the kid’s got it bad for Nikki, his pining exacerbated by a fairly humdrum job in a music store and no apparent ambitions for his future. The story then takes a radical swerve toward diabolical intervention when Bear stumbles into a New Agey gift shop and purchases a One Wish Willow, a cheap novelty item meant to grant its user their stated desire. One evening, in a moment of desperation, Bear snaps the contraption as instructed and wishes for Nikki’s unconditional love. A moment later, Nikki locks eyes with Bear, gazing at him with a single-minded—and terrifyingly relentless—adoration. Nikki is overtaken by a perpetual fugue state, one that will lead her to seal the couple’s front door with electrical tape, pee on the floor, do embarrassing things at parties, and, eventually, much, much worse. From here on, we’re going to see what real obsession looks like.

Well, okay, maybe not real obsession. The film is unnervingly fun, smartly plotted, and elegantly crafted: cinematographer Taylor Clemons’s use of moody penumbra and, above all, shallow focus is very apropos for the film’s central theme of perilous fixation. And, Nikki’s apparent development of superhuman strength aside, Barker doesn’t let his fevered use of genre tropes run away from him: Obsession adheres to a fairly strict internal logic. But it is a kind of cartoon logic, deploying exaggeration for immediate effect, a careful-what-you-wish-for parable driven by a perfectly serviceable bit of artifice—it’s just not a logic that reflects actual human behavior with any level of special resonance: emotion is held firmly at arm’s length throughout. Obsession is witty, stylish, and entertaining, but while watching it, I couldn’t help but repeatedly think of Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession, a horror masterpiece that likewise uses an unapologetically outré conceit to embody fraught love and ferocious codependency in scenes of lunatic rapture and depravity, centered around Isabelle Adjani’s mercilessly visceral, go-for-broke performance. Though bold and precise, Navarrette, by contrast, is largely called upon to force a series of crazed smiles and dead-eyed stares, soulless screams and siren-like wails. Her Nikki resembles a robot programmed to smother the object of its desire, rather than a human being in the throes of an uncontrollable, all-consuming passion.

To be clear, the above comparison is not entirely fair: Barker is only in his 20s, and Obsession is indeed reflective of a young person’s experience of love as a spell, an arbitrary, crazy-making disease that forces one into an overwhelming, ultimately homicidal fear of abandonment. Which is just to say the film is a little low on amour but brimming with inspired fou. I’m interested in seeing what Barker does next. (Or maybe next-next? Apparently, he’s signed up to helm another Texas Chainsaw iteration.) Meanwhile, a remake of Possession is underway, and I can’t think of anything more dunderheaded.