Obsession Review: You Can’t Spell “Possessive” Without “Possess”

The author Carson McCullers believed that in any relationship there is the lover and the beloved. She wrote, “the beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons.” That’s basically the plot of unhinged horror Obsession, in which spineless dweeb Bear (Michael Johnston) finally gets the love-of-a-lifetime devotion from his platonic best friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette) that he’s always craved. He’s adored her since grade school, while she obliviously puts him in the “like a little brother” category. After a seemingly harmless wish on a magical kids’ toy goes awry, the situation is upended, with Bear rightly terrified of her increasingly manic, dangerous, and seemingly unnatural behavior.

With its slow-burn observational and character-driven first act, Obsession, the debut feature from writer/director Curry Barker, could readily be tagged with the dreaded “A24 horror” descriptor. But this isn’t an A24 film: It’s a Blumhouse flick, in distributor and in crowdpleasing intention, and somehow Barker pulls off the constant switchbacks between psychodrama and good old-fashioned thrill ride.

Barker achieves this in no small part because he doesn’t get bogged down in the exact supernatural mechanics that turn Nikki from true friend to hyperpossessive maniac. It’s the Final Destination technique, where the exact uncanny mechanics of what’s happening to Nikki don’t need to be unpacked by exposition for them to be scary. Instead, he hints around a bigger universe within classic horror tropes, like how Bear gets his heart’s desire courtesy of a One Wish Willow, a vintage novelty that he buys in a mysterious arcane store … and when he goes back for help, the shopkeeper’s not there. WooOoOo! Well, probably because it’s her day off.

Barker establishes a certain mundanity to the characters’ lives, with Bear and Nikki working in a strip mall musical instrument store with their friends, Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) and Sarah (Megan Lawless), that is run by Sarah’s dad (Andy Richter). Without the One Wish Willow, theirs is just a well-laid-out relationship drama, with Sarah quietly pining over Bear, and the loutish Ian mad that any of the quartet would want to upset their packed shared social calendar of karaoke and trivia nights. With it, all Hell breaks loose.

That interpersonal dynamic setup, upended by a wish gone awry, could allow Barker to say something insightful about responsibilities and power dynamics in relationships, but he’s clearly not interested in any of that. Instead, it’s all in service of the scare. The only moral that any sighing young lover could take away is that it’s probably best just to be honest with the object of your affections. However, after that slight observation, the hallmarks of a lopsided relationship are just amplified to extreme levels for excellently delivered shocks.

None of this works without an extraordinary central performance from Navarrette as the love-cursed Nikki. There’s no moment at which she’s simply a Fatal Attraction-esque bunny boiler. Through her physical performance and line delivery – sometimes childish singsong, sometimes a roaring beast, and sometimes terrified of her own situation – she makes it clear that, whatever’s happening to Bear and her pals, she’s subjected to something much, much worse.

Like any great funfair ride designer, it’s Barker’s grasp of pacing, of when to lull and when to launch, that makes Obsession such a terrifying blast. Its movements are perfectly amplified by the loudquietloud soundscape created by sound designers Cailey Milito and Ben Zarai, complimented by composer Rock Burwell’s score with the perfect wrong note at just the right moment. Moreover, it all accelerates so incrementally and smoothly that the audience doesn’t realize how fast they’re going. When they get to that last big drop (trust me, you will know exactly when that one hits like a brick), they’ll suddenly realize how fast they were going all along.

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This article appears in May 15 • 2026.