By Alex McPherson
Disappointing in its simplicity yet chock-full of savage set-pieces, and featuring an awe-inspiring performance from Inde Navarette, director Curry Barker’s “Obsession” leaves a fittingly queasy impression.

We follow Bear (Michael Johnston), an insecure and socially awkward 20-something with a perpetual sense of self-loathing. He is working up the courage to ask out his best friend and music-store co-worker Nikki (Navarette), whom he has harbored a crush on for a long time but hasn’t known how or when to confess his feelings.

His buddy Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) forbids him from doing it during Trivia Night, which he, Bear, and Nikki attend with their other attractive co-worker Sarah (Megan Lawless). Sarah might have a crush on Bear, but Bear (whose cat has also just died unexpectedly) cannot wait.

After learning that Nikki lost a necklace, Bear decides to buy her a gift from a New Age store. He picks up a novelty trinket called a “One Wish Willow,” which claims to grant a wish to whoever snaps it in two. Later in the night when Bear drives Nikki home, the interaction doesn’t go as hoped.

Nikki asks him if he likes her, and, out of fear, Bear says no, leaving him feeling embarrassed and humiliated. After she’s dropped off, Bear impulsively uses the One Wish Willow himself. His wish? To make Nikki love him more than anything in the entire world. 

Almost immediately, Nikki is changed, taking a newfound romantic interest in Bear and quickly forming a relationship with him, even though she most assuredly is not the same person she was before. Everything seems fine for a while, as Bear gets to live out his fantasy, although Ian and Sarah become increasingly weirded out.

Things quickly spiral downhill, as Nikki’s fixation with Bear grows more obsessive, possessive, violent, and, frankly, batshit insane. Bear’s uneasiness causes Nikki to further devolve in an effort to make Bear love her back, no matter the bloody cost. Bear refuses to take responsibility and remains unable to do anything about the situation until nearly everything in his life is destroyed, one almost-NC-17-level head bash at a time.

“Obsession” is a deeply mean film with heavy-handed ideas about male loneliness, consent, and mental health that revels in making viewers uncomfortable. Barker, who got his start through online sketch comedy shorts with Tomlinson, seemingly designed the film to provoke strong reactions and make clippable sequences of craziness for our online age. I

t’s also relentlessly watchable despite its gruesome violence, largely thanks to a performance by Navarette that’s so full of twisted ingenuity that the film’s more facile, formulaic aspects are easier to overlook.

Indeed, although she isn’t technically the main character (although perhaps “Obsession” would have been more interesting if she had been), Nikki, and Navarette, are the real stars of the show. It’s an incredibly physical performance that Navarette portrays with unrestrained gravitas.

From the “Exorcist”-esque body gymnastics, to how conversations escalate from 0 to 100 in the blink of an eye, to the comical facial expressions, to the disturbingly poignant moments when the old, “true” Nikki breaks through the spell, crying out for help before being subsumed by the malevolent force reducing her to base instincts for Bear’s affection, Navarette has to do a lot.

She makes the film’s more nefariously twisted horror set-pieces tinged with melancholy and never lets us forget the real person trapped underneath the facade.

“Obsession” isn’t ultimately Nikki’s story, though, it’s Bear’s — a meek guy who desperately needs therapy and makes a selfish decision with wildly cascading consequences. Brought to life with maddening specificity by Johnston, Bear fails at nearly every turn to take responsibility for his actions out of both fear and a desperate sense of self-preservation as he robs Nikki of her life and agency.

Bear isn’t a monster, and arguably makes the initial wish without knowing if the trinket actually works, yet Barker’s screenplay zeroes in on his entitlement, his cowardice, and his repeated attempts to continue with life as normal even as he knows he’s actively destroying Nikki’s.

Regardless of the relevance of this thematic approach, though, it’s also limiting for “Obsession” — setting the stage for numerous memorably unhinged sequences at Nikki’s expense (and, admittedly, for our twisted enjoyment as an audience), but not developing much beyond the central conceit, and concluding in a feel-bad place that sits right at home with recent horror hits “Hereditary,” “Bring Her Back,” and “Talk to Me.”

That’s not to say Barker’s horror chops aren’t fully formed as a director; there are several sequences that won’t leave my mind any time soon, and the ways he deploys jump-scares and sterling use of darkness and claustrophobic framing are viscerally effective, along with the occasional burst of crowd-friendly, bone-dry humor.

“Obsession” still can’t quite capitalize on the sheer go-for-broke commitment of Navarette, though, falling back into tradition as she carves out her own place among the all-time greats like Mia Goth in “Pearl.” What’s here should satiate the bloodlust of horror aficionados nevertheless, and actively repel anybody with a weak stomach.

“Obsession” is a 2025 psychological horror-dark romance written and directed by Curry Barker and starring Michael Johnston, Inde Navarette, Megan Lawless, and Cooper Tomlinson. It is rated R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, sexual content, pervasive language, and brief graphic nudity, and its runtime is 1 hour, 48 minutes. It opened in theatres May 15. It began streaming on Peacock July 17. Alex’s Grade: B.

Alex McPherson

Alex McPherson is an unabashed pop culture nerd and a member of the St. Louis Film Critics Association.