Obsession review: Has the most unnerving movie of the year arrived?

Are you ready to get rattled? YouTuber turned feature filmmaker Curry Barker will get under your skin with Obsession, a gnarly horror movie that tackles the male loneliness epidemic with some rom-com awareness. 

After getting buzz following its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, this indie offering got acquired by Focus Features, distributors of Nosferatu, for a whopping $14 million. Now Hollywood is watching to see if Barker’s bold movie will be worth this big investment. But be warned, horror fans: Obsession is hard to stomach. 

Obsession centers on a dangerous incel who thinks he’s a nice guy. 

Written and directed by Barker, Obsession begins where most romantic comedies usually climax — — with the male lead confessing his deep love for the female lead. 

However, Bear (Michael Johnston) is not a rom-com hero. He’s not funny, charming, dashing, or even all that interesting. When he’s not working at a music store with his few friends, he’s moping around the house he’s inherited from his grandmother and never really made his own. Surrounded by frilly old baubles, he can’t even keep his cat alive, as she kills herself by somehow getting into the late grandmother’s meds. 

Moreover, he’s not confessing his feelings to his crush but practicing his monologue to some waitress, because any woman’s opinion of his love declaration will do, right? Simply put, Bear is a loser with no idea how to talk to women. Even though he has nothing going for him, he thinks he has a shot with Nikki (Inde Navarrette), a snarky, spirited aspiring writer whom he’s been obsessing over for years. However, rather than even trying to ask her out, this creepy coward turns to a novelty toy for help. The box promises snapping the “One Wish Willow” will give him whatever he wants. But asking for Nikki to love him “more than anyone else” will have consequences. 

Immediately, the cool, smirking girl we met at bar trivia a scene before is a frenzy of emotions. She smiles and mopes and screams, only to occasionally look deeply confused and then horrified. But whatever this Nikki is, she is fixated on Bear. Imagine — it’s not what he had in mind. 

Obsession plays with gendered tropes. 

The “nice guy” is a cultural concept that plays into the misogynistic idea that women only want “bad boys,” leaving good men to be left lonely. The truth is that the term “nice guy” can be a flimsy façade for men who feel entitled to the women they desire, even if they have nothing to offer. (Cue Siobhan Thompson’s epic monologue from Dimension 20: Fantasy High!) 

These kinds of men are not nice, as they only give their female crushes something because they expect sex or love in return. They can’t conceive of a woman as a person who has her own desires. And this is the horror at the center of Obsession. 

Bear might see himself as the romantic hero of his story, but from flubbing the heartfelt monologue (which is all about what Nikki’s done for him) out the gate, he is set up as an anti-hero. He uses the “One Wish Willow” like Rohypnol, slipping it into action at the end of a night out that wasn’t ending with the girl he wants in his arms. What didn’t occur to him in his reckless wishing is that by demanding such a major change in Nikki’s personality, he would change Nikki into someone he doesn’t recognize. 

Nikki becomes the “crazy girlfriend,” often alienated and maligned in hushed tones. No sooner has Nikki started dating Bear than their circle of friends begins to gossip about her, accusing her of deception and leaving her out of hangouts. Barker’s script pushes the concept of the crazy girlfriend to harrowing extremes. Beyond her ferociously mercurial moods, Nikki also lurks in shadows, hisses strange things at night, and moves with bizarre physicality as if she’s made of nightmares. And yet as freaked out as he is, none of this stops Bear from having sex with her. The camera frames this like a rape scene, with a wide shot that has him thrusting away, his face unseen, while hers is blank, staring off and unengaged. 

Obsession taps into the horror of dehumanizing women, but also relishes in gendered violence. 

Props to Navarrette, who makes this cursed rape victim into a riveting terror. One moment she’s sulking so intensely it’s almost funny, pulling her frown past Florence Pugh levels. The next, she’s intensely unfurling a twisted fairy tale that leaves her audience — onscreen and off — in a disturbed silence. Then, she’s dancing while covered in blood, or screaming so hard your throat may ache in sympathy. 

Cinematographer Taylor Clemons frequently keeps Navarrette’s face out of frame, either cropped out or covered by hair or shadow. This seems to reflect how Bear can’t bear to look at her, because she is familiar yet strange. Yet this barrier to her performance is transcended by Navarrette’s precise physicality. 

Once she’s been wished upon, Nikki’s style shifts away from edgy dark clothes to tight, skin-revealing cocktail dresses. Yet her body’s tension never allows her clothing to be simply alluring. The glint in her eye seems like the edge of a knife, sharp and ready to slice. When the real Nikki briefly breaks through, Navarrette’s performance becomes heartbreaking. The full horror of what Bear has done to her becomes clear as the real Nikki sprawls for escape. 

However, Barker undercuts the message of anti-misogyny through third-act violence. While several characters will be gravely harmed in Obsession, it’s the women whose bodies are most brutally attacked. One female character is not only bludgeoned horrifically, but a close-up lingers on the pulpy remains of what used to be her face. Later, her corpse will be on display, totally naked, with no apparent reason beyond grisly spectacle. 

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It’s such cheap and sleazy gags that make Obsession feel frustratingly juvenile. Sure, on one hand, several characters lecture Bear about the responsibility he has to his girlfriend, especially if he’s the cause of her current circumstances. On the other hand, the styling of Nikki in fashion and gore urges the audience to stare at her body, pushing Bear’s perspective of her as a thing to be attained and gawked over. Then, some randomly jokey bits — like an inexplicable argument with a shop clerk and the film’s final jaunty song over the credits — awkwardly attempt to wedge in humor. To what end? Of course, horror and comedy can go together beautifully, as we’ve seen in Get Out or, more recently, Weapons. But here, these clumsy attempts at levity just seem crass. 

Obsession explores an incel’s twisted idea of romance through scenes of brutal violence and gross-out gags involving blood, vomit, piss, and a cat corpse. Barker and his cast go hard into the darkness, creating scenes that are visually disturbing and emotionally harrowing. For all that, I can imagine this becoming one of those movies horror fans dare each other to watch. However, even as the audience may come to understand that Bear is not the hero of this story but the villain, Obsession‘s cinematography favors his perspective, turning the female characters into fleshy, dehumanizing spectacles until the end. 

This makes the finale of Obsession unnerving — not so much for what it shows, but for the empathy it ultimately lacks. 

Obsession opens in theater on May 15. 

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