The indie horror film Obsession has grossed $443 million at the time of writing – 591 times its production budget of just $750,000. Clips and images from the film have gone viral in the months following its release. When I heard that Curry Barker – a YouTube content creator whom I had first discovered through his comedy sketches – had generated such buzz, my interest was piqued: I had to see what all the fuss was about.
What I found was a film as technically impressive as it was thematically disappointing. Like a well-told lie, Obsession is expertly fashioned – its script, acting and cinematography all demonstrate remarkable craftsmanship – which makes its failure to communicate the truth all the more damning.
In the lead-up to watching the film, I became better acquainted with Curry Barker’s longer-form work on his YouTube channel, ‘That’s a Bad Idea’. It was not long before the recurring themes became apparent. Each video, whether short or long, displayed the same irreverent humour tinged with obscenity, often coloured by the deviant, if not the outright grotesque. They were consistently well made, but they also left one with an unmistakable sense of unease. In retrospect, I should have expected nothing less from his feature-length debut. (Spoiler alert: The following contains major plot details for Obsession.)
Bear, the film’s protagonist, wishes for his crush Nikki to love him by means of a supernatural One Wish Willow. The joy of their new relationship is short-lived as it quickly becomes apparent that something is deeply wrong with Nikki. The story descends through deception, mutilation, murder and finally Bear’s suicide.
Credit where it is due: the cinematography is excellent, the performances are startlingly believable, the pacing is brisk but controlled and the dialogue lands. The first half captures modern loneliness and the awkwardness of male-female relationships with surprising authenticity. These strengths only make the film’s failures all the more disappointing.
To begin with, Bear has no meaningful character arc. He begins the film as a weak and passive coward, and he ends it the same way. Even in the final scene, the film goes out of its way to show that Bear is still too cowardly to free Nikki; the plot itself must intervene to force his hand.
The One Wish Willow premise ultimately becomes little more than a vehicle for escalating misery. The story plays as though it is a mystery whether Nikki is being controlled by Bear’s wish, yet it is immediately obvious from the moment the wish is granted that she has fundamentally changed. There is no gradual corruption, no mounting uncertainty, no genuine ambiguity. Apart from a brief montage, Nikki is unmistakably transformed from the instant the wish is made until the film’s conclusion.
This undermines not only the mystery but also the moral stakes. Bear is certainly responsible for making the wish, but the film immediately reveals that the consequences lie beyond his understanding or control. Nikki is so obviously transformed by an external supernatural force that she herself is rendered largely morally passive. Rather than watching a man gradually corrupted by his own disordered desires, we watch a man trapped by a magical mechanism whose consequences he neither foresaw nor controls. As a result, the ensuing tragedies possess all the moral agency of an avalanche: they are catastrophic, but hold no moral weight. The film appears intent on condemning Bear, yet he is ultimately as much a victim as everyone else. All of them are simply caught in the machinery of a sadistic storyteller.
The film leaves only despair. Evil and the occult are the only powers that seem genuinely effective in this world. There is no redemption, no grace and no suggestion that goodness possesses any real power. In this respect, Obsession succumbs to one of the worst temptations of modern horror.
There is nothing inherently un-Christian about depicting evil, nor must every story conclude happily. The greatest horror stories understand this. Their terror arises precisely because goodness is real and therefore worth defending. Obsession, however, presents a world in which evil appears to possess the final word. Love cannot redeem, characters are too cowardly to sacrifice, repentance is absent and grace never enters the story. Evil is no longer portrayed as a corruption of the good but as the deepest truth about reality. That, more than the violence or gore, is what makes the film spiritually hollow.
Although the One Wish Willow promises mystery, the film ultimately delivers grotesque violence and sexual degradation, reducing the human person to mere flesh. It left me with the same impression I experienced during my brief encounters with the works of H. P. Lovecraft: the touch of the abyss – a vision not merely of terror, but of hell. Barker seems less interested in exploring evil than in luxuriating in it.
I am not one of those people who reject horror outright. Horror has an important place in storytelling, but it should illuminate truth rather than merely revel in darkness. A Quiet Place leaves the audience with hope amid loss; it does not use its premise to descend into nihilism. The Sixth Sense is a meditation on grief and reconciliation, where the horror ultimately serves healing rather than despair.
Obsession wastes a genuinely compelling premise on gruesome spectacle. It is technically accomplished, spiritually empty and ultimately not worth your time.
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.” (Philippians 4:8)
