Guest Post: Obsession (2026)

Obsession: A Disquieting Commentary on a Popular Trope

Guest Post by Jonas Schwartz-Owen

Remember those beloved ’80s teen comedies, where Lloyd Dobler blares his boombox outside his ex-girlfriend’s window despite her breaking up with him, or the geek has sex with a passed-out prom queen? Hilarity ensues - until the hangover of hindsight kicks in and we realize these “charming” moments were never funny, never charming, and definitely not forgivable.

Curry Barker’s runaway hit Obsession drags those moments back into the light and reconstructs them for what they always were: stalking, assault, and other atrocities. This time, the “hero” gets the consequences he always deserved.

Bear (Michael Johnston) has a deep fixation on his coworker and friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette), who long ago relegated him to the friend zone. Desperate, he buys a trinket from a magic shop that promises to grant one wish. He wishes Nikki would love him more than anyone else in the world, then snaps the twig-like charm as instructed. As anyone who’s read W.W. Jacobs’ The Monkey’s Paw knows: be careful what you wish for.

New-media wunderkind Curry Barker has scared up a fortune for Blumhouse and Focus Features, thanks in part to his massive YouTube following - 1.33 million subscribers - and the viral success of his first film, Milk & Serial (3.2 million views). More importantly, Obsession is a taut, confident piece of filmmaking. Bear’s responsibility for the chaos never gets swept under the rug to make him seem heroic, and yet his core “crime” remains relatable. Who hasn’t, at some point, wished a friend would become something more? Barker establishes a creeping sense of dread early, so when the horror erupts, the audience is already primed.

The film delivers several memorable set pieces that linger: Nikki’s patient wait for “her man” to come home, a nimble spoof of the much-maligned animal cracker scene from Armageddon, a game of Jenga with far more than wooden blocks at stake, and possibly the worst college acceptance reveal in cinematic history.

The film does stumble in one key area - particularly frustrating given its commentary on toxic relationship tropes. The “real” Nikki becomes more of a conduit, her unseen suffering functioning as torture for Bear. But the movie never fully establishes the stakes for Nikki herself. Is her consciousness trapped in a kind of hell (as one tech-support gag implies), or is she imprisoned inside her own body, à la Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out? Nikki is blameless - she didn’t cause any of the insanity Bear unleashes - yet the audience only truly connects with her in the final moments. It feels less like a revelation and more like a final twist of the knife. For a film dissecting toxic masculinity, it occasionally forgets the woman at the center of it.

The cast grounds the movie with quirky, committed performances. Johnston, who is openly gay, brings an added layer of subtext to Bear, despite the character being heterosexual. Anyone who has wrestled with identity in their youth may recognize the desperation to appear “normal” by fixating on someone of the opposite sex - an obsession that’s less about love and more about self-denial. Whether intentional or not, it’s a compelling layer.

Though the script sometimes shortchanges Nikki, Inde Navarrette nearly steals the film. Her character’s hairpin emotional shifts give her the opportunity to play multiple registers at once. 

Megan Lawless, as the girl-next-door hopelessly in love with Bear, channels the great “third wheel” archetypes - Watts (Some Kind of Wonderful) and Duckie (Pretty in Pink) - while making the role her own. She’s a fully realized love interest who is consistently overlooked. Cooper Tomlinson, Barker’s comedy partner, slots neatly into the jock-best-friend role, serving as both comic relief and moral sounding board.

For Obsession to become such a massive moneymaker, it’s clearly tapping into something in the zeitgeist. Maybe it’s that Barker, a Gen Z creator, has cracked the code and delivered a $750,000 budgeted juggernaut. Maybe it’s proof that a well-made horror film can still drag audiences back into theaters. Or maybe it’s both. It could take years before scholars like John Kenneth Muir fully dissect its cultural significance.

For now, though, the new king definitely has clothes - and they’re bloody good.