Despite some major blind spots in how it handles consent and romantic fixations, Obsession (2025), Curry Barker’s low-budget psychological horror film manages to create tension, atmosphere and discomfort in ways most modern horror movies completely fail to, while Inde Navarrette delivers one of the year’s strongest horror performances.
It seems to me that many aspiring directors spend years crawling their way up through Hollywood, and by the time they finally get the chance to make their first feature, they’ve already lost a significant part of their creative energy. The industry’s bureaucracy, commercial anxieties, and endless approval mechanisms sand down people before they even begin. That’s why so many debut films end up feeling less like passionate artistic statements and more like the exhausted final chapter of a long survival struggle. But directors like Curry Barker exist slightly outside of that cycle.
Barker is part of the growing wave of “YouTuber directors” we’ve been seeing more and more of in recent years. I first discovered him through Milk & Serial (2024), which he uploaded to YouTube. To be completely honest, I can’t say I liked the film very much. In fact, it felt less like a proper “film” and more like a very well-made YouTube video. Especially as someone who has been obsessed with the found footage genre for years and has explored its deepest corners, I’ve seen far more impressive examples made with much lower budgets and under far harsher conditions.
Still, there was something else about Curry Barker that caught my attention: his hunger to prove himself. I think that’s one of the main reasons why films by directors like him, who didn’t become visible by navigating Hollywood’s endless bureaucratic hallways, but instead built themselves entirely through their own means, have started attracting so much attention lately. These people still want to make art. They still feel the need to prove something. Sometimes, great art comes precisely from that kind of place.
Obsession is a dark psychological horror film centered around four close friends. Bear, Nikki, Ian, and Sarah are ordinary young adults who work at the same music store and organize trivia nights together. Bear has been secretly in love with his childhood friend Nikki for years, but his shyness prevents him from ever confessing his feelings. After the unexpected death of his cat Sandy pushes him into an even deeper depressive state, Bear buys a cheap “One Wish Willow” wish toy from a mystic shop and wishes for Nikki to fall in love with him.
So yes, at its core, it’s a classic “be careful what you wish for” story. But the film doesn’t approach the concept with the hopeful fantasy tone of It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), nor with the absurd comedic language of Click (2006). Instead, once the wish comes true and Nikki transforms into a disturbingly obsessive partner fixated on Bear, Obsession attempts to build an unsettling psychological thriller centered around the horror of possession.
I appreciated the film’s sincere effort to create tension through something other than cheap jump scares. It genuinely tries to reconstruct that feeling of uncanny atmosphere that has diminished in horror cinema in recent years. But, I also think the film never fully grasps the moral weight of the story it’s telling.
On the surface, Obsession behaves as if it’s telling the story of a well-intentioned wish spiraling out of control. But what Bear actually does is far darker: he strips another human being of her free will. After the wish takes effect, Nikki almost becomes a soulless entity. Her empty stares, mechanical behavior, and the complete erasure of her personality make that painfully obvious. Yet Bear continues being with her anyway. The film tries to frame this as the horrifying consequence of a romantic tragedy, but at its core, what we are watching is something much darker: a relationship where consent has been entirely annihilated.
What’s interesting is that visually, the film almost seems aware of this. Especially in scenes emphasizing Nikki’s expressionless gaze, it successfully conveys just how disturbing the situation truly is. But the narrative perspective itself never really shifts. Bear remains the film’s central “tragic character.” In other words, the story interprets events not through Nikki’s horrific experience, but through Bear’s wish getting out of control. Because of that, the female perspective feels dramatically absent.
At times, Nikki’s subconscious almost feels like it’s screaming for help, but the film becomes so fixated on its possession themes that it never fully explores the psychological and ethical implications of what it’s actually depicting. Of course, I don’t think this comes from deliberate malice. More than anything, I think the film’s desire to be a unique and creative horror movie prevents it from fully recognizing the darkness embedded within its own story.
Still, in the end, I think Obsession is one of the best horror films of the year. Once I put aside its narrative shortcomings and simply approached it as someone who wants to have a good time at the cinema and genuinely feel afraid while watching a horror movie, what I saw absolutely satisfied me. Despite its small budget, the film has cinematography that visually outclasses productions many times its size.
Inde Navarrette, who plays Nikki, delivers an absolutely phenomenal performance. You may recognize her from Superman & Lois. Honestly, anyone talented enough to stand out in a Superman-related series clearly has serious acting ability, so seeing her give such a strong performance here didn’t surprise me at all.
Curry Barker entered the industry from an incredibly high starting point. Whether this was just a one time success or the first major achievement of someone who could eventually become one of the defining directors of his generation is something only time will reveal. My advice to him would be this: he probably shouldn’t insist on handling directing, writing, and editing duties all by himself. Especially if he starts collaborating with a strong screenwriter and turns that into a long-term creative partnership, the chances of the second possibility becoming reality would increase dramatically.
That concludes our review of Obsession
Did you enjoy the article? Let us know in the comments down below!
For more episodes of More Movies Weekly as well as our other shows and podcasts, be sure to check out the Podcasts page on our website.
Remember, you can have a choice of what films we review on our Weekly podcast by joining us on Patreon here.
Please join us on social media on Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook. We really appreciate all the likes, shares, retweets etc., and we would love to hear from you and continue chatting about all things cinema on these platforms.
If you love to watch videos on YouTube, then please subscribe to our channel here. There’s lots of fun and informative videos uploaded that we hope you will enjoy!
We have a passion for movies and aim to produce entertaining and informative movie-related content. It certainly is a lot of hard work, but we love films so much that it’s worth all the effort. We have to keep the lights on and make sure we have plenty of caffeine to keep all of the articles, videos and social media posts coming, so if you like our work, then please consider supporting us at Buy Me A Coffee here. You can also become a More Movies patron on Patreon here.
To help support us here at More Movies, we do use advertising in a few places and we try our best to make sure they are not intrusive or aggressive, so we appreciate it if you do not use AdBlockers on our site. Who knows, you may actually see something you like!
We are also affiliated with Funky T-shirts so be sure to check out their range of cool t-shirts which include categories Film & TV, Slogans and Retro Comics!
