I’ll be honest, Obsession found me through Instagram. Clips kept popping up in my feed, and every one was a short, unhinged moment of a young woman acting completely psychotic, so I finally gave in. My husband and I watched it at home on the TV, and I went in expecting creepy, with a surface-level idea of the story. It turned out to be way more disturbing than I expected, and it left a strong impression on both of us.
Content note: Obsession includes graphic, bloody violence, disturbing images of dead bodies, the death of a pet, self-harm, a drug overdose, and nudity. It’s rated R in the US and 청소년관람불가 (19+) in Korea.
What it’s about
Bear (Michael Johnston) is a shy guy who works at a small music store and has quietly been in love with his co-worker and friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette) for a long time. When his feelings don’t go the way he hopes, he picks up a cheap novelty toy called the One Wish Willow. The rule is simple: break it, make a wish, and it comes true. Bear wishes that Nikki would love him more than anyone in the world.
It works. Almost immediately, Nikki is all in, and at first that looks like a dream come true for Bear. Then her love keeps going past where any normal love should stop. That’s all I’ll say without spoilers, because the fun (if you can call it that) is watching how far “more than anyone” can go.
The rest of the cast fills out the music store crew: Cooper Tomlinson as their friend Ian, Megan Lawless as Sarah, and Andy Richter, yes, Conan’s Andy Richter, as Carter, the store owner and Sarah’s dad. The film runs 109 minutes, and it was written, directed and edited by Curry Barker.
The $750,000 movie that made over $500 million
The story behind this movie is almost as wild as the movie itself. Curry Barker is a twenty-something former YouTuber who co-created the sketch comedy channel “that’s a bad idea” with Cooper Tomlinson, the actor who plays Ian. Obsession is only his second feature, after Milk & Serial in 2024, and it was made for a budget Barker says topped out at around $750,000. They shot it in the Los Angeles area in October 2024, in just 26 days.
It premiered in the Midnight Madness section of the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2025, where it came second for the People’s Choice Award in that program. Focus Features then bought it for a reported $14 to $15 million, which was a record for a genre film at TIFF. Blumhouse came on as a producer too.
Then it hit US theaters on May 15, 2026, and did something movies almost never do. It opened in third place with $17.2 million, and instead of dropping in week two like basically every horror film, it went up. Its second weekend was bigger than its first, and its third was bigger again. It ended up crossing $500 million worldwide, making it Focus Features’ highest-grossing film ever, mostly on word of mouth rather than a huge ad budget. Focus Features says it had the biggest second-weekend jump in modern times outside of Christmas, three straight weekends of growth outside the holiday season (something last pulled off by E.T.), and the best fourth-weekend hold ever for a horror film, dropping only 7 percent. Even Christopher Nolan has pointed to it as an example of young filmmakers connecting with younger audiences.
The critics agreed with the crowds. It holds about 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, 77 on Metacritic, and an A minus CinemaScore, which is high for a horror movie, since horror audiences tend to grade harshly.
Inde Navarrette is the reason to watch
Both leads are good, but hands down, Inde Navarrette is the star here. She is SO good at playing someone who’s lost her mind. There are moments where she’s sweet and almost normal, then her face shifts and you can feel the room temperature drop. She’s not doing a cartoon villain, either. Part of what makes it so disturbing is that you can still see flashes of the real Nikki underneath, and that makes everything worse.
What impressed me even more after watching is that none of it is CGI or AI. Navarrette’s performance relies on practical makeup and her own physical acting, and you can tell. Some of what she does with her body and posture in the later scenes is genuinely hard to watch, in the best way. You might recognize her from 13 Reasons Why or as Sarah Cortez on Superman & Lois, but this is a completely different level. She’s already won a Best Performance award at the Seattle International Film Festival and Best Actress at the Astra Midseason Movie Awards for it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if more follow.
Michael Johnston holds his own
Michael Johnston has the harder, less flashy job. Bear has to be likable enough that you understand why he made the wish, and pathetic enough that you’re a little mad at him for it. Johnston pulls that off, and as things spiral, his panic feels real. He may look familiar from Teen Wolf, where he played Corey, and he also voices young Nathan Summers in X-Men ’97.
The scenes that stuck with me
I’ll keep this spoiler-light, but a few moments stayed with me. There’s a scene where Nikki watches Bear while he’s asleep and slowly loses it because she feels he doesn’t love her back the same way, and it’s one of the creepiest things in the film. There’s a late-night conversation in a parked car that goes about as wrong as a conversation can go. And there’s a moment involving another wish that I didn’t see coming at all, which is darkly funny right up until it isn’t. The final stretch is a mess in every sense, and I mean that as a compliment. I break all of these down in my ending explained post.
What didn’t work as well for me
The beginning is slow. Before Bear makes the wish, the film spends a while setting up the music store, the friendships and Bear’s crush, and I was waiting for things to kick off. Once the wish happens, though, the pace picks up fast and never really lets go.
The concept itself is also a bit familiar. A wish that comes true in the worst possible way is an old idea, the classic monkey’s paw story, and Barker has actually said a Simpsons episode with a monkey’s paw was part of his inspiration. What saves it is the execution. The idea isn’t new, but the way it plays out between two specific people is.
Some critics have also pointed out that the film stays almost entirely in Bear’s point of view, so we don’t get much of Nikki’s side, even though she’s the one whose free will gets taken away. I noticed that more after the movie than during it, and it’s fair.
How gory is it?
Pretty gory. It’s rated R for strong bloody violence and graphic nudity, and that’s accurate. There are badly damaged dead bodies, one murder in particular is genuinely brutal, and there’s an image of Nikki standing in the same spot waiting for Bear to come home, covered in disgusting fluids, that I won’t forget anytime soon. There’s also a pet death that’s handled in a deeply upsetting way.
So if you’re squeamish, a big animal lover, or sensitive to self-harm, this might not be for you. If you can handle a few hard-to-watch images in exchange for a really unsettling story, it’s worth it.
Is it worth watching?
Yes. It’s disturbing, but it’s so good. I’d specifically recommend it if you like psychological horror where the scariest thing is a person, not a ghost, and if you enjoy dark comedy that makes you laugh and then feel bad about laughing. It’s also a great pick for a movie night with your partner, as long as you’re both okay with gore. We talked about it for a while afterward.
Skip it if you’re looking for jump-scare fun or a light Halloween watch, or if gore and animal harm are dealbreakers for you.
In the US, Obsession is streaming on Peacock now and comes to Netflix on November 17, 2026. It’s also available to buy or rent digitally and on Blu-ray and 4K. In Korea, it was released in theaters on September 2 as 옵세션.
What stayed with me most is how simple Bear’s wish sounds. Wanting someone to love you more than anyone is something almost everyone has felt at some point. The movie’s quiet point is that love you have to force isn’t really love, and watching that idea get pushed to its most horrible conclusion was more thought-provoking than I expected from a horror movie I found through Instagram.