Spoiler warning: This review discusses the whole film, including the ending, sexual coercion, self-harm, and violence.
I am obsessed with Obsession. Yes, I understand what I just did there. I wasn’t going to write a Knee-Jerk Reaction to this because I just did a horror movie in Backrooms, but Curry Barker’s film has been sitting with me for about a week, and the longer it stays, the more certain I become that this is an A+ horror movie. I liked Backrooms a hell of a lot. I like this even more, because beneath the One Wish Willow and the terrifying behavior, I recognize the emotional bargain.
Bear wants Nikki to love him with an intensity that removes uncertainty from his life. The wish gives him that certainty by taking her life away from her. What keeps haunting me is the real Nikki trying to break through while this other version holds her back—and Bear repeatedly treating evidence of her suffering as a complication in his love story. He gets the kind of love his wish describes. She gets trapped inside the consequences.
Official Mary & Blake Rating: A+
A darkly & viciously funny, deeply upsetting horror film whose scares grow out of its characters’ wants, evasions, and choices.
The Scariest Thing in Obsession Is That Nikki Is Still There
A monster replacing someone is frightening. A person remaining conscious while something else uses her body is worse. Every flicker of the real Nikki changes how I read the scene around it: the smile becomes a cover, the affection becomes a performance, and the apparently romantic moment becomes another stretch of time she cannot get back. Inde Navarrette makes those changes so immediate that I keep searching her face, hoping to catch the person who needs help.
That is the movie’s great cruelty. Bear has spent so long wanting Nikki’s attention that he struggles to recognize her when she finally demands his attention for something other than loving him. When she asks for escape, he hears a judgment on his desirability. The horror lives in that failure to listen, and it gives every supernatural eruption a painfully recognizable foundation.
Why I Like Obsession More Than Backrooms
The comparison is inevitable: Curry Barker and Kane Parsons came through YouTube, and their theatrical horror successes have made the industry pay attention. They belong in a conversation about young filmmakers creating enormous audience demand; they also deserve to be discussed as filmmakers with particular instincts. Barker’s instinct here is to build a nightmare out of the familiar discomfort of wanting different things from the same relationship.
My preference is personal. Backrooms gave me a world I wanted to explore and fear. Obsession made me keep examining the people inside its world—and then myself. The magical object is unusual; needing reassurance, rehearsing a difficult conversation, protecting a fantasy, and confusing intensity with intimacy are ordinary enough to make the whole damn thing feel close.
The Conversation Bear Won’t Have
I keep wondering what happens if Bear simply says how he feels and lets Nikki answer. Maybe they try something. Maybe she turns him down. Maybe their friendship changes, and it hurts. Any of those possibilities would require him to encounter a person whose feelings exist independently of his hopes. The wish lets him skip that encounter, which is exactly why it destroys the possibility of an honest relationship.
I also wish the people around them communicated more clearly, including Nikki and Ian. But clearer communication does not mean Nikki could have prevented this by finding the perfect way to manage Bear’s feelings. She gives him an opening; he denies what he wants. Her uncertainty, affection, or possible lack of romantic interest never creates an obligation to give him a relationship.
A Horror Movie That Made Me Appreciate My Marriage
What surprised me most is how much this movie made me appreciate my marriage. Not because I suddenly needed a reminder that supernatural captivity is bad. Because it makes the smaller habits visible: hoping your partner reads your mind, wanting reassurance without admitting you are scared, or turning their separate needs into evidence that you matter less. The film takes those recognizable impulses somewhere monstrous, but the recognition is what lets the horror linger.
We all bring things into relationships that we need to own. Love requires room for the other person to speak, disappoint us, change, and remain a person. Barker makes that space disappear until a bedroom, a dinner, a party, and even a declaration of love become traps. A week later, I am still thinking about Nikki trying to get out. That is why this film earns the A+.
Inside the full NerdClan KJR: We’re breaking down Nikki’s competing performances, the flower scene’s sustained dread, Bear’s moral turns, the customer-service nightmare, Sarah and Ian’s roles, the ending, and the relationship questions that make this so personal. Pull up a chair in the NerdClan.
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