After breaking the mysterious "One Wish Willow" to win his crush's heart, a hopeless romantic finds himself getting exactly what he asked for but soon discovers that some desires come at a dark, si...
Ever since I started doing my own movie reviews, I’ve taken notice that people tend to exaggerate their feelings on certain films they like or dislike depending on the situation…..and I am not immune to said practices. Somebody's best film of the year could genuinely be terrible or even mediocre, while somebody’s worst could be another’s guilty pleasure. I bring this up because when I heard certain associates in my TCC chat and other movie reviewers praising “Obsession” and freaking out over how legitimately scary it was, I was intrigued but I wasn’t sold.
And after seeing it….yeah, it was probably for the best I kept my expectations low.
Another day, another YouTuber breaks through the glass ceiling and gets a chance to make their own movie. Despite having already made a horror film back in 2024, this is my first introduction to Curry Barker as a director….and honestly? There’s a little something-something here, I guess. Operatic and way too coy with the actual dimensions of his project, Curry is nonetheless very patient in rooting his direction squarely within the basic fundamentals of what normally makes the horror genre work and its just tight enough to smooth over the more head-scratching wrinkles that weren’t ironed out. There’s nothing incisive about it but his confidence is bursting at the seams.
Vivian Gray’s production design meets the standards one would expect out of a psychological horror: isolating characters in a few key locations, filling familiar domestic spaces with subtle details that reflect the characters' worsening psychological state and toxic relationship and she takes advantage of that. Creepy and cozy to almost a self-effacing degree, it’s that very normalcy, that insistence on the familiar and the domestic, that makes the literal and figurative spatial claustrophobia hit just a little bit better than any of the jump scares here (just putting that out there). Operating on a limited budget, the final result is the kind of minimalism you’d expect straight out of a haunted house flick on a YouTuber’s budget (for better or worse) and Gray seems to be keenly aware of every possible axis by which the domestic can become uncanny.
Off the bat, the presentation has the benefit of working off of a familiar framework so the gimmick should feel blessedly unforced….if not for the broader structure feeling so meandering and oddly warped; something the overall technical elements try to push back against. Taylor Clemons’s cinematography is focused strictly on, well, focus to a fault. Most of her shots are clear and concise, taking advantage of this deliberate expansiveness to how she frames and holds a given space and the 1:50:1 aspect ratio further helps immerse us within the spaces chosen rather than simply document them; only downside to that is I don’t really like the lighting and color grading going with it at the same time. After years of watching so many films using orange, grey and beige color palettes, it just doesn’t look all that appealing anymore and even granting that it fits this demented campfire story vibe they’re going for here, the sheer dimness of everything stops feeling atmospheric and more overwhelming.
The editing to this film is so off-kilter and destabilizing on its own merits, its actually surprising it manages to stay as tight as it does.
Pacing-wise, it took a while for me to get on its wavelength and even when I did, it operates on such an unnatural rhythm that half the time, I wasn’t sure if the film was actually building toward something or wandering around in its own atmosphere hoping I’d follow. It’s a slow burn that has the decency to not be boring—I’ll give it that much—but there’s a difference between a film earning its runtime and one that simply occupies it and at an hour and forty-nine minutes long for a plot this simple and straightforward…..yeah, it never took me out of the movie, but it’s doing a lot of the latter. Makeup and visual effects run the gamut almost as a package deal—ranging from subtle, skin-deep wrongness in the quieter moments to full-on grotesque practical work when the film decides to finally let loose—and both are very strong, whatever tension the film has barely has a buildup because it reveals its hand almost immediately at the start (some films can get away with this, this one cannot) and only has a tangible lasting effect because of Inde, the humor doesn’t land as much either, and at the very least…..I guess I do have to point out the execution of the scares. You can tell there was actual effort in attempting to mislead your attentions and dig up scares from unexpected places but it still can’t take away how obvious and telegraphed most of these scares are.
Also, the tone. At any given moment, this film is juggling comedy, discomfort, psychological horror, and outright brutality—sometimes all within the same scene—and minus the comedy, the fact that it never fully drops the ball on most of them even when it takes itself a teeny-bit too seriously is, frankly, kind of impressive.
Rock Burwell’s musical score was a mild surprise: the synth work threads romantic and ominous together in a way that actually serves the film, and the ironic needle drops from the soundtrack do their part in locking down the overall mood. Sound design is excellent even if it gets too comfortable leaning too heavily on loud-jump-scare-audio-cues as a crutch, Blair James’s costume design is largely unremarkable across the board but there’s a quiet intentionality placed towards Nikki’s wardrobe the more unhinged she gets, mirroring the psychological deterioration the wish has done to her and….honestly, I feel like the R-rating this movie was given was a little too generous because the violence and grotesque imagery displayed here? Bloody hell, excessive doesn’t even begin to cover how much heavy lifting it does. Case in point: there’s a bludgeoning scene here that is so graphic and comes so far out of left field that cuts had to be made to keep the film from landing into NC-17 territory.
No matter what I have to say about the plot, it must go without saying that the actors involved here are doing their damnedest to make this work. Individually, they’re all decent enough given how considerably new they are but they evoke very little chemistry between each other. That being said, most of the dialogue they're given is painfully awkward from the jump and doesn’t really improve the longer the film progresses and on top of that, all of the characters here are paper thin. Artificial right from the start, all of them border on nearly becoming complete ciphers and the only reason why most of them don’t is because, again, the actors try their best.
Megan Lawless and Cooper Tomlinson are given very little to do, while Andy Richter has a thankless supporting role. Michael Johnston takes over as one half of the lead performances and he’s…..ok, I’m torn. He does just enough to fully define Bear as the cowardly annoying little shit that he is but as far as emotional depth beyond that, it’s beyond the bare minimum to avoid feeling wooden but that’s really about it. And then…..there’s Inde Navarrette. Inde, Inde, Inde, this newcomer had way too much fun in this role and she is gleefully unhinged. As both a teasing coquette, a full-blown psychotic and someone stripped of their own free will, she left no crumbs, swinging between every crazy girlfriend stereotype with so much manic energy and rage that she did a better job supplying much of the film’s tension than the film does on its own. Not since Mia Goth’s performance in Pearl has an actress's performance actively left me this scared.
Ok, so stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a hopeless romantic, too shy or socially awkward to ask his childhood crush out on a date, makes a wish to get her to fall in love with him instead. Things go well enough at first before inevitably going off the rails, thus fulfilling the adage ‘Be careful what you wish for’ and all that. You remember that one Fairly OddParents episode, where Timmy wishes he and Trixie Tang are the last two people on Earth, and because of her deep-seated inferiority complex and need for external validation, she goes completely off the deep end the moment he tries to break it off and attempts to kill him? That’s more or less this entire narrative; a dirt-simple, generic premise that feels somewhat intentionally throwback-y in nature where the simplicity is supposed to be the entire point.
Given the dark campfire-tale nature of what’s taking place, the film kinda knows that it doesn't need to flesh a whole world or ecosystem when the basic elements are all that’s really needed to set the mood. And I do like where the film aims its ire toward: modern-day dating, yearning, consent, instant gratification, codependency and how mistaking obsession for love can be more disgusting and raw than how one fantasied for themselves. The film is very aware of, and plays into, how much of a detestable little shit Bear is for taking advantage of Nikki in such a vulnerable state (also, the irony that he’s named Bear after the debate of woman choosing to be stuck in the woods with a bear over a random man isn’t lost on me) and certain decisions made, like Bear taking WAY too long to try and undo the wish because he didn’t want to stop prioritizing his desires at the expense of someone else, giving away just how messed up he actually is, I both liked and hated and never got to the point of cannibalizing its own critique. It’s basically the Monkey’s Paw story for Incels revolving around this meditation on unhealthy infatuations, weaponizing romantic fantasy saying “this is what delusional male fantasy looks like” and refuses to bail out the moment accountability comes knocking.
Long and short of it, it’s the kind of story that does ramp up no matter how arbitrary its escalations are. And its because of those very arbitrary circumstances…..that it can get kinda frustrating.
I am well aware that horror movies like this require a LOT of substantial suspensions of disbelief and I can overlook its refusal to clearly establish the rules of its premise among other things or how building the core conflict on such a simple supernatural mechanism makes parts of the story feel artificial rather than believable. But lets keep this in mind: the film puts all its energy into pushing the "obsessive girlfriend" trope to the absolute extremes, so much so that the narrative nearly bleeds itself dry trying to keep its own momentum. There is the bare minimum of expressive amplification or emotional escalation following through from scene to scene that just straight up shouldn’t happen given the context of what’s to come and once you lock the pattern down, it gets kinda depressive with how repetitive it is. Practically running around in circles like a dog chasing its tail with the occasional jumpscare or gore sprinkled in, the drama feels undeveloped despite there being a visible setup and payoff.
The movie knows it should hurt—it insists and delivers on it from time to time but the emotional texture is always one level removed when it really shouldn’t be. Like, not one single time does the film even attempt to clue us in on who Nikki even is before Bear makes his self-serving wish; she’s always kept at arm’s length—which does help ratchet up the uncomfortability for the chaos to come—but at what cost? Especially when the story tries to create ambiguity between Nikki's possible psychological instability and the supernatural "wish" influence, but the writing never fully commits to either direction?
Horror has long made a habit of putting women through hell at the hands of men, with results varying from the deeply misogynistic to the cathartically feminist…..and this movie leans EVER SO slightly to the former if only because the litany of stories we’ve already gotten that are exactly like this are laser-focused on forcing us into the shoes of shitty men so we can sympathize with them. Yes, the darker introspective of this should make viewers question if they’d ever consider doing what Bear did, how many ‘good guys’ you know in your life would jump at the chance of doing this consequences be damned but while doing that well, but something about this particular execution has been giving me pause, especially when considering that women are kinda given the short end of the stick in general in this film.
That being said, for how many people I have heard say the ending felt like a copout, I do appreciate the nerve of leaving the last note this sour with no catharsis or ironic wink when the right choice is eventually made.
Barely keeping the light aflame by virtue of a reliable formula and Inde Navarrette’s standout performance, I can see the love for “Obsession” growing stronger by years end but there are just enough annoyances to turn someone off unless they’re extremely patient with it. I didn’t love it to the extent that everyone else is but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t worth your time; guess my wish kinda came true after all?
