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| Images courtesy of Focus Features |
There is something in the water at YouTube. Multiple creators from that platform have pivoted from short-form comedy skits to directing critically acclaimed horror films. It might be the fine line between laughter and screaming, the way that a viewer might giggle nervously at a scary scene in a movie. Both of these reactions, fear and humor, are involuntary for the most part, and the way they are constructed, with a buildup and a punchline, exists in parallel with each other.
Obsession (2026) is a modern take on the classic Monkey’s Paw story, but with enough subversion to make it intriguing. Bear is a young man with a crush on his coworker Nikki (Inde Navarrette), but he’s too timid to tell her how he feels about her. While browsing a New Age shop, he comes upon a product called One Wish Willow, a stick that grants the user a single wish when broken in half. Of course, Bear wishes that Nikki would love him more than anything, because wishes aren’t real, right? Unfortunately for him, One Wish Willow actually works, but his wish gets him more than he bargains for.
Inde Navarrette’s performance as Nikki completely elevates what could be a tired “women be crazy” trope, and it is completely over-the-top in the best way. She loves Bear now, definitely, but she loves him more than anything, and that includes herself. She goes between adoration and obsession at the drop of a hat, often exploding into bursts of intense violence, as though there is a battle happening right under the surface of her personality.
Her physical performance is incredible, and through frame-rate tricks and clever editing, it also seems like she is glitching, which routinely triggers the audience's uncanny valley fight-or-flight reaction. One sequence made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, and I recoiled in my seat.
The more interesting aspect of the film hides in plain sight, as a revelation two-thirds of the way in completely recontextualizes the first two acts in a way that is profoundly disturbing. It’s a commentary on Nice Guy Syndrome, but also on the way that some men feel like they are entitled to women’s love and even their bodies. Bear’s arc spends a bit of time in a moral grey area in the first act, but it becomes apparent that the minute he made that wish, which takes away Nikki’s body autonomy, he damned them both. Director Curry Baker effectively employs the show-don’t-tell technique to convey exposition, allowing the message to come across naturally.
Wildly gruesome and occasionally hilarious, Obsession is a morality play about the male loneliness epidemic and how society has conditioned men to feel entitled to love rather than addressing the real problem: their insecurities.
—Michelle Kisner