If toxic relationships are the new black, the recent crop of horror-dark comedy hybrids have been eggshell white. Together, Oh Hi, Companion, Keeper, Strange Darling, The Roses, the list goes on. They all promise a twisted metaphor on co-dependency and they all kind of botch it. Finally, an oasis in the middle of the desert has emerged. Someone figured out how to extend this metaphor. Someone managed to take a simple cautionary tale and turn it into genuinely frightening carnage. Curry Barker’s Obsession is the palate cleanser I’ve been praying for.
Before the screening even started, I felt a kinship, like I was in good hands when Barker sauntered on stage in a dark theatre with sunglasses on. He had a devilish smirk on as he introduced the movie, and told the audience flatly, “This movie fucking sucks.” The room laughed, a little nervously. Barker knew exactly what he was about to unleash on us innocent festival folk.
Our main character, Bear (Michael Johnston), is a painfully meek “nice guy” archetype: existential spiral around his manic-pixie-dream-girl, terrified of confessing his feelings, eternally rehearsing them in his head. Nikki (Inde Navarrette) has probably been preparing her gentle “you’re like a brother” speech for years. After some bro-to-bro encouragement from his friend Ian (Cooper Tomlinson), Bear decides that a group trivia night will be the perfect time to profess his love for her.
Earlier, Bear stopped in a metaphysical shop to get a crystal necklace for Nikki; a gift he’s sure will sweep her off her feet. Instead, a glowing toy perched on a dusty shelf caught his eye, the One Wish Willow. The way it gleams under the overhead lights, you can feel it pulsing with intent. Novelty and innocent looking enough, but Barker has confidence in the audience to know a Monkey’s Paw when they see one.
Bear seals his fate when he snaps the Willow in half in a fugue state of rejection. As the wood breaks, he grunts, “I wish Nikki loved me more than anyone in the world,” it’s both desperate simp behaviour and an unwitting invitation for doom. The theatre exhaled collectively, all understanding that we’re about witness to something inevitably ugly.
As Nikki descends into a girl who loves some guy more than life itself, her behaviour is, frankly, not abnormal. Double texting, clinging to his arm, wanting to spend every waking minute with him, little outbursts when he tries to go to boy’s night. We’ve all been there. But it’s not long before stage-five clinger becomes Isabelle Adjani in Possession. Barker traps the audience in consequence of Bear’s wish right alongside Nikki. Even as she grows violent, you still feel an ache for her, stuck in this devastating fate.
After a litany of insane behaviour, Bear is desperate for Nikki to just be normal. Everyone wants a girlfriend until they start “acting crazy.” He pleads with her, “Please, no more weird shit.” Then she proceeds to do some really fucking weird shit. Blood, shit, piss, broken glass, cement—all smeared together in the name of love.
I’ve never heard a theatre be so audible. Screams, gulps, gasps, sounds of disgust. Everyone’s hands were either clutching their armrests or covering their eyes. The visceral reactions are certainly compliments to Navarrette’s performance as Nikki. She’s a scream queen revelation—every flicker of her eyes, every body movement, every slow sinister smile. It’s haunting and terrifying, but she still plays her with buried humanity. She avoids the ‘crazy girl’ trope by committing fully to hideous mania. One part of her performance as Nikki is as a girl trying to prove her devotion to Bear by any means necessary, and the other part is someone forcibly trapped inside hell, seeking death for escape. Even if reactions to the film are divided, Navarrette’s performance is undeniable.
And then there’s Bear. He simped too close to the sun. Johnston could’ve been a punchline, a brick wall for his counterpart to shine. Instead, his performance tells another tragic tale. We follow him as he slowly and quietly breaks down, and it’s genuinely painful to watch. Yes, his idealistic infatuation was infuriating and detrimental, but Johnston’s performance kept Bear from becoming hateable. As Nikki escalates, the balance flips. The dude you used to roll your eyes at suddenly becomes someone to ache for. Johnston plays him with this hollowed-out sadness, destroyed by the very thing he thought would save him.
Maybe it’s the festival hype or the buzz of the audience, but Obsession feels special. On the surface, it does kind of look like a run-of-the-mill Blumhouse-Now-Streaming-On-Shudder pile, but I promise you this one is different. It’s a tragedy dressed up in horror-comedy drag.
Other than the actual gimmick, it doesn’t need any gimmicks. It lets the relationship unravel in ways that feel humiliatingly real, then pushes that reality so far it becomes grotesque. The dark humour never undercuts the horror, the horror never overshadows the humanity, and the performances ground what could’ve easily been ridiculous. Where those other films flirt with the idea of obsession, this one shows us what it feels like to be consumed by it.
