Review by Tim Robins
After breaking the mysterious “One Wish Willow” to win his crush’s heart, a hopeless romantic gets exactly what he asked for. However, he soon discovers that some desires come at a dark and sinister price…
WARNING: SOME SPOILERS AHEAD
I finally saw Obsession, which is still screening in cinemas around the UK. The film is another offering from a You Tuber and, like The Backrooms, is a welcome validation of the talents behind making videos for the platform.
Obsession has a lot to offer and has provoked fascinating interpretations of its central conflict, particularly around who really is the villain of the piece.
The plot is yet another take on the message of W.W. James’s 1902 short story, “The Monkey’s Paw” i.e., be careful what you wish for. For his part, director Curry Barker has claimed to be influenced by a pastiche of the story in The Simpson’s Tree House of Horror II.
The younger generation eh, what are they like? I suppose he hasn’t even seen Pet Sematary? I wondered, because the story opens with its young male protagonist, Bear, coming home to discover his pet cat dead on the carpet, having O’D on his oxycodone supply. So when Bear gets a chance to make a wish come true, it is obvious what he will wish for – a young woman co-worker to love him more than anyone else in the world.
The woman in question, Nikki Freeman by name, is a bright, bubbly friend whose social ‘signals’ Bear has difficulty interpreting, perhaps wilfully so. Uncertain whether Nikki really has romantic feelings for him, Bear uses a “One Wish Willow’ to make matters clearer. The moment he makes his wish, Nikki’s behaviour dramatically changes, becoming scarcely into Bear to the point of duct taping the door of his home shut so he can’t leave. He does, but things become so much worse.
What makes Obsession so powerful is that there can’t be many of us who haven’t been placed in the situation of wanting a romantic relationship with someone who just wants to be a friend. The combination of being too embarrassed to simply clarify the situation, and not being able to just accept relationships as they are, can be absolutely excruciating. Even more so if, like Bear, you just can’t read the room. Worse still, Bear has two colleagues who seem to be making out just fine.
The burden of storytelling falls on the shoulders of its personable cast. Michael Johnston, from the MTV series Teen Wolf, captures his character’s inner turmoil well. In appearance, he reminded me of a young Bruce Campbell, although Bear lacks the broader, slapstick comedy of Ash. We watch Bear become more and more desperate as he realises the only way to break the wish is to die.
Much of the praise has focussed on Inde Navarrette’s performance as Nikki. Navarrette’s previous appearances include the CW’s Superman & Lois (2021-24) and Trap House (2025), but Obsession is likely to become one of her most memorable. As Nikki, the actress is absolutely terrifying. As the story progresses, we learn she has had a troubled past involving drug use, something her friends latch on to explain her erratic behaviour.
Again, part of the power of the film is that however insane things become it is still possible to relate to the characters and find, hopefully, less extreme examples from friendship groups and young people’s not even particularly MDMA fuelled “party scene”. Cooper Tomlinson’s Ian and Megan Lawless’s Sarah provide welcome examples of the “normie” world that becomes further and further out of Bear’s reach.
Writer-director-editor Curry Barker has a background in YouTube sketch comedy. People have found Obsession has a comedic feel to many of the bizarre situations. But I wasn’t laughing. I was involved by the sheer horror of the characters’ situation – a cloyingly close relationship that is playing havoc with the character’s enforced life together.
Nikki is, in effect, possessed by Bear. She is forced to act out his wish, but, somewhere, she is able to look on her own behaviour in horror. Her true self exists as if in a parallel dimension. When Bear is offered a chance to speak to her over the phone, for example, all he hears is screaming.
At times, Navarrette reproduces the creepiness of supernatural J-Horror characters, but, seemingly, without any camera trickery, just her own performance – walking backwards, jerkingly moving as if by stop motion animation. There’s an incredible physicality to her performance that must have been exhausting for the actress.
There are a couple of scenes that inject a particularly creepy ambiance to Bear’s home. A shot from the end of his bed introduces dark blue tones swathed in shadows. Then you spot that one of the shadows is Nikki, who has been silently watching him all night. The fact that he is staying at his grandmother’s house gives his home a grim, fairy tale quality.
Obsession also contains the most disturbing scene of a character uncontrollably urinating since The Exorcist (18). I wonder if that was parodied in The Simpsons?
I hear that almost the entire film has been cut up into tiny slices and shared as brief clips on Tik-Tok, and other platforms. It is fun that the film has elicited such playful involvement from the audience, but I hope what doesn’t get lost in the process is Obsession’s dark take on a young woman whose life is destroyed by a man who can’t have what he wants.
Nikki may appear to be a “bunny boiler”, but it was Bear who turned up the hob.
Tim Robins
Obsession is still in select UK cinemas. The film initially stream on NBCUniversal’s streaming service, Peacock, after its extended theatrical run, followed by a PVOD digital release on platforms like Amazon Prime Video
• Follow Curry Barker on Instagram | “That’s A Bad Idea” YouTube Channel
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A freelance journalist and Doctor Who fanzine editor since 1978, Tim Robins has written on comics, films, books and TV programmes for a wide range of publications including Starburst, Interzone, Primetime and TV Guide.
His brief flirtation with comics includes ghost inking a 2000AD strip and co-writing a Doctor Who strip with Mike Collins. Since 1990 he worked at the University of Glamorgan where he was a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies and the social sciences. Academically, he has published on the animation industry in Wales and approaches to social memory. He claims to be a card carrying member of the Politically Correct, a secret cadre bent on ruling the entire world and all human thought.
Categories: Features, Film, Other Worlds, Reviews
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