Obsession ★★★★★

Released: 15 May 2026

Director: Curry Barker

Starring: Michael Johnston, Inde Navarette, Cooper Tomlinson & Megan Lawless

It was evident that Curry Barker would end up becoming one of horror’s emerging new talents, after a flurry of excellently focused shorts and his tragically well executed debut – Milk and Serial. Operating, ultimately, on incredibly low and micro-budgets, Barker’s films have always felt impressively realised, having such a visceral edge to them. This is not necessarily in their immediate effect, but in their tendency to bury themselves deep into the viewer’s skin. Obsession harnesses the very best of Barker’s clear formal and directorial prowess, resulting in a cavernous, complex and distorted portrait of perceived masculine entitlement and the resulting collateral damage. Obsession provides its viewer with a deeply tragic and profoundly disturbing second film prescribed from ‘the mind of Curry Barker’.

Bear, a music-store clerk played excellently by Michael Johnston, appears — at least to begin with — as a hopeless romantic, endlessly pining after his co-worker and closest friend Nikki Freeman. Freeman, performed tremendously by Inde Navaratte, is a talented writer, whose ambitions of becoming a writer have superseded her desire to continue her work at the music store. In the early instances of the film’s opening act, Nikki makes references to Bear being the ‘only one she can really talk too’ and this feeling is reciprocal. Following a drunken night out — an event that coincides with the death of Bear’s cat and his purchase of a gift for Nikki — Bear drops Nikki home. At this moment she presents him with an opportunity to articulate his feelings for her. Bear is speechless, unable to express at all how he feels for her, resulting in him saying they’re ‘great friends’. As Nikki heads back inside to her home, Bear opens the gift he had bought her, the ‘One Wish Willow’, a genie-like wooden stick that grants one wish per person when it is broken. Selfishly, and too incredible detriment, Bear wishes that Nikki loves him more than anything in the world.

It is at this point when Barker’s formalism becomes increasingly oppressive. Long, still Kubrickian frame composition, with its subjects centred flips and turns kinetically to a— quite frankly—genius framing device that utilises Nikki’s shadowed frame, rarely lifting any light onto her face. Is Nikki, Nikki? Nikki runs over to bear demanding that she goes back to his house, to Bear’s dumbfounded amazement, and it is at this point where things begin to go truly awry.

Obsession is intriguing phraseology for what conspires throughout the rest of the film’s relentlessly bleak 108 minute runtime. Into the second and final acts of Barker’s film, the notion of Obsession and its ties to the dangers of masculine entitlement are thoroughly analysed and examined. As Nikki becomes irrevocably ravenous for the reciprocal love of Bear, resulting in mass collateral damage, Barker constantly reminds his audience that is in fact Bear’s cross to bear as it is in fact his decisions that have led to these consequences. Nikki becomes increasingly disturbed and perturbed by Bear’s misgivings and this leads to inevitable violence and bloodshed. In one of the film’s most terrifying sequences, Nikki lies directly next to a sleep-deprived Bear and darkness conceals her face. It’s ingenious framing as it remains undisclosed whether or not Nikki has her eyes open or closed — a call-back to another wonderful independent horror film titled ‘They Look Like People’.

Barker clearly has such an acute understanding of not only the construction of a narrative, but teasing and playing with genre and perceived audience spectatorship. Further points are added due to the exceptional pacing and rhythm of Obsession, which is in fact edited by Curry himself. Taking reverence from the genres immortals, Barker has unleashed a fascinating tale of disturbing masculine hubris and the soul-shattering fallout of such decisions and behaviours. Oscillating between face-melting terror and perceived notions of what signifies ‘love’ Obsession is evidently a team effort and a clear labour of love. Whether it be its soft, sonically alluring synth score from Rocky Burwell — making his composition debut — or the tremendous ensemble cast, including Barker’s producer and collaborator Cooper Tomlinson, or Inde’s impressively heartbreaking range, Curry Barker’s Obsession is a seismic rift in the horror landscape.