Obsession (2025 film)
2025 American horror film by Curry Barker
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Obsession is a 2025 American supernatural psychological horror film[6] written, directed, and edited by Curry Barker in his cinematic debut. The film follows Bear (played by Michael Johnston), a music store employee who buys a supernatural toy that grants him his wish for his friend Nikki (played by Inde Navarrette) to fall in love with him, resulting in horrifying consequences. Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, and Andy Richter also appear in supporting roles.
- James Harris
- Haley Nicole Johnson
- Christian Mercuri
- Roman Viaris
- Michael Johnston
- Inde Navarrette
- Cooper Tomlinson
- Megan Lawless
- Andy Richter
| Obsession | |
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Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Curry Barker |
| Written by | Curry Barker |
| Produced by |
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| Starring |
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| Cinematography | Taylor Clemons |
| Edited by | Curry Barker |
| Music by | Rock Burwell |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 109 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $750,000–$1 million[2][3] |
| Box office | $108.8 million[4][5] |
Obsession premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 5, 2025, as part of its Midnight Madness section. It had a theatrical release in the United States on May 15, 2026, by Focus Features. The film received positive reviews and has grossed $108.8 million worldwide.
Plot
Baron "Bear" Bailey has romantic feelings for his childhood friend Nikki Freeman, who work with their friends, Ian and Sarah at a music store. He returns home to find his cat, Sandy, has died after accidentally consuming oxycodone. Bear shops for a gift for Nikki at an occult shop, and buys her a "One Wish Willow", a novelty toy that claims to grant one wish per person when broken. Later that night, Nikki directly asks Bear if he likes her, which Bear denies nervously. Frustrated with himself, Bear breaks the One Wish Willow, wishing for Nikki to love him more than anyone in the world. Nikki asks to sleep at Bear's house, confiding that her estranged father is dying of cancer. While in bed, she kisses him, but abruptly screams and pulls back.
The next morning, Nikki creates a memorial with the remains of his cat, disturbing Bear. That same night, she explains her erratic behavior was a result of taking MDMA and admits her feelings for him. Nikki and Bear start happily dating. Ian later tells Bear that Nikki told Sarah she only saw Bear as a friend shortly before they began dating, and that she lied about her father's cancer. That night, Bear wakes up to see Nikki watching him sleep, and she accuses him of not loving her as much as she loves him. The next morning, he is horrified to discover that Nikki made him a sandwich using his cat's remains.
Ian accuses Bear of using Nikki and observes that her behavior has radically changed. Bear calls One Wish Willow's customer support to cancel his wish. The voice on the other end says the wish will only expire when Bear or Nikki dies, then puts a hysterically screaming Nikki on the line. Nikki accompanies Bear to a party at Ian's house that night, despite Ian's protests. During a game of drunk Jenga, Nikki recites a violent, incestuous retelling of Hansel and Gretel. Bear draws a block daring him to kiss the person to his left, which is Sarah. Nikki ousts Sarah from her seat and kisses Bear instead. Nikki then starts screaming before stabbing her own face with a broken bottle. Later that night, Nikki threatens suicide to make Bear join her in bed. Sarah texts Bear to meet at the park and talk. While Bear attempts to leave, a lucid Nikki awakens, claiming that her obsessive persona is asleep, and begs Bear to kill her. Sarah reveals to Bear that Ian and Nikki had been hooking up casually for two years, and is concerned that Nikki is using him get back at Ian. After she hints at her own attraction to Bear, Nikki appears and murders Sarah by slamming her head into a brick. Nikki instructs a traumatized Bear to return home while she disposes of the body.
Bear buys the last two One Wish Willows from the occult shop and tries to reverse his wish. Bear explains everything to Ian and begs him to undo the wish. Ian, in disbelief, instead wishes for a billion dollars, which causes cash to rain from the ceiling. Bear returns home with the last One Wish Willow to get Nikki to reverse his wish. He discovers Sarah's mutilated corpse and sees Nikki wearing Sarah's clothing. Nikki threatens Bear and herself at gunpoint. Ian enters the house only to be immediately shot dead by Nikki. Bear locks himself in the bathroom and consumes the last of the oxycodone, but quickly changes his mind and tries to induce vomiting. Outside, Nikki uses the last One Wish Willow. A wish-controlled Bear emerges from the bathroom and kisses Nikki before dying. Heartbroken, Nikki prepares to shoot herself, but the real Nikki emerges and starts wailing when she sees the carnage around her.
Cast
- Michael Johnston as Baron "Bear" Bailey, a music store employee
- Inde Navarrette as Nikki Freeman, Bear's co-worker and childhood friend
- Cooper Tomlinson as Ian, Bear and Nikki's friend
- Megan Lawless as Sarah Harper, Bear and Nikki's friend and Carter's daughter
- Andy Richter as Carter Harper, the music store boss and Sarah's father
- Haley Fitzgerald as Viola, a mystic shop employee who sells Bear the One Wish Willow
- Curry Barker as the voice on the phone, the One Wish Willow customer service representative
Production
In 2023, Curry Barker wrote and directed the short horror film The Chair and uploaded it to YouTube.[7] Film producer James Harris of Tea Shop Productions reached out to Barker to adapt it into a feature, at which point Barker pitched him Obsession instead.[8] Barker initially wrote Obsession as a film about an obsessive relationship. While preparing to watch a live episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia that he appeared in, he caught an episode of The Simpsons where Homer interacts with a monkey's paw, which inspired him to incorporate the wish element.[9][10] The concept led to him being signed by William Morris Endeavor and receiving an offer to direct the film with a $1 million budget.[7] Barker took eight months to complete the screenplay while working with the film's production companies, which, in addition to Tea Shop Productions, include Under the Shell and Capstone Studios.[11][12] Barker developed the design of the One Wish Willow with his mother, a graphic art designer.[8]
Casting was underway by August 2024, with principal photography expected to begin in October.[11] Inde Navarrette was cast as Nikki after Barker felt that she "nailed" a balance between crazy and scary. After a chemistry read with Navarrette, Michael Johnston was cast as Bear.[8] Obsession was filmed in 20 or 26 days, covering 5–6 script pages daily, in the Los Angeles area.[13][14][15] Barker worked with cinematographer Taylor Clemons to shoot the film "center-composed" with "extra head space" because he "wanted it to feel uncomfortable in its loneliness".[9] Production designer Vivian Gray remodeled a house in Burbank, California, to serve as Bear's home.[9]
Obsession underwent reshoots for a new opening scene and, according to Barker, to "do a better job of showing why [Bear] doesn't want to fix it right away", adding the scene where Bear confronts Nikki for cutting his hair to emphasize "that he wants to make it work".[10] The production had to forgo reshoots of the party scene after the house they filmed it in burned down in the 2025 Los Angeles fires.[16] For the ending, they filmed one take of Bear trying to make himself throw up after ingesting the pills at Johnston's suggestion that Bear would be too "coward by the end of the day, he doesn't want to die, he thinks of himself."[14][17] Barker initially wrote and filmed an ending inspired by Romeo and Juliet where Nikki kills herself after breaking free from Bear's wish. On the advice of his playwright father, who wrote the Hansel and Gretel monologue, and others, Barker shot one take of a different ending where Nikki survives, which he ultimately chose for the theatrical cut.[14][18][19]
By March 2025, Obsession was in post-production with Barker as editor.[8][20] A scene depicting a character getting their head smashed had to be cut down by "six or seven smashes" to avoid an NC-17 rating from the MPA.[21] Jason Blum joined the film as an executive producer under his Blumhouse Productions banner after the film's festival premiere in September;[3] his involvement was revealed in December 2025 when the first teaser was released.[22] Rock Burwell composed the score in his debut as a feature film composer.[23] The album consists of 18 tracks and was released on May 15, 2026, the same date as the film's release.[24]
Release
Obsession premiered during the Midnight Madness block at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on September 5, 2025.[9] Two days later, Focus Features entered talks to acquire distribution rights to the film for the world, excluding France, New Zealand, and Russia, for $14–15 million, the highest price commanded by a genre film in TIFF history, with Universal Pictures International handling distribution outside the United States;[25][2][26] the deal officially closed in October 2025, with a screening at the inaugural FocusFest on October 18, at the Universal Studios Lot.[27] The film was theatrically released in the United States on May 15, 2026.[28]
Reception
Box office
As of May 29, 2026[update], Obsession has grossed $86.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $22.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $108.8 million.[4][5]
In the United States and Canada, Obsession was initially projected to gross $8–10 million from 2,615 theaters in its opening weekend.[29] After making $7 million on its first day,[30] estimates were raised to $14 million.[29] It went on to debut to $17.2 million, finishing third at the box office behind holdovers Michael and The Devil Wears Prada 2.[31] The film then made $32 million over the subsequent four-day Memorial Day frame, including $24 million over the second weekend (a 39% increase from its opening).[32][33] "Unprecedented" for a film already in wide release, especially in the horror genre, it marked the biggest second-weekend increase for a film playing in more than 2,500 theaters outside of the Christmas holidays. Its success was attributed to word-of-mouth and turnout from the 18–34 demographic, which made up 75% of audience members.[34][35]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 96% of 241 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.0/10. The website's consensus reads: "Taking an icky conceit and twisting it to deviously crowd-pleasing ends, Obsession is dauntingly disturbing while also skillfully amusing and thrilling."[36] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 77 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[37] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale, while 70% of those polled by PostTrak said they would "definitely recommend" it.[29]
Christian Zilko of IndieWire gave the film a B+ grade, saying it was "proof that the Cregger-ification of 2020s horror is in full effect, as its combination of sadistic violence, ironic needle drops, and comedy mined from people responding to tragedy in pathetically self-serving ways will merit plenty of comparisons to Barbarian and Weapons."[38] IGN's Matt Donato gave the film a score of 8/10, writing that it "plays on familiar romance and monkey's paw tropes, turning a wish against the wisher, but Barker's execution takes things to the next level. In the film's simplicity lay the chance to go for broke, putting all efforts into the lengths Nikki is willing to go for her beloved."[39] Lou Thomas of Empire rated the film 4 out of 5 stars, writing that it "is so fresh and exhilarating, one can forgive its familiar origins".[40]
Accolades
| Award / Festival | Date of ceremony | Category | Recipient(s) | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toronto International Film Festival | September 14, 2025 | People's Choice Award, Midnight Madness | Obsession | Runner-up | [41] |
| Sitges Film Festival | October 19, 2025 | Best Feature Film | Nominated | [42] | |
| South by Southwest | March 19, 2026 | Festival Favorite Audience Award | Nominated | [43][44] | |
| Seattle International Film Festival | May 17, 2026 | Best Performance | Inde Navarrette | Won | [45] |
Future
In May 2026 following the critical and financial successes of Obsession, writer/director Curry Barker confirmed his intentions to develop a sequel. The filmmaker acknowledged that this may be in the form of a theatrical movie, or an anthology television series where similar to the original installment each episode explores a different character receiving a twisted version of their wish exploring the nightmare scenarios they experience.[46]
