Fall Deeply And Madly Into ‘Obsession’

Following his viral hour-long feature-film debut, Milk & Serial, which cost $800 to produce and publish on YouTube in 2024, Curry Barker hit theaters to top it. Obsession follows a hopeless romantic who purchases a mysterious and magical “One Wish Willow”, a commercial product that allows an individual’s one wish to come true. Using this item for personal gain, lead character Bear Bailey (Michael Johnston) wins the love of his crush—”I wish Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone in the fucking world”. She soon clings to him like, say, a cat would. However, his specific wish produces harsh, irrevocable consequences beyond imagination. Barker’s Obsession has been on my mind for the past week after catching an early press screening in New York City.

There’s something unique about the viewing experience—a tragic, traumatic motion picture with bits of dark comedy sprinkled in here and there. On the surface, the narrative constructs themes of grief over innocence and loss of love that push against the idea that “all you have is time”. In actuality, we are running out of time. Put together on a $1 million budget, I am envious that someone as young as myself has beaten me to the punch and accomplished a prideful project.

An Obsessive Production

Aided by assistant editors Leo Glam, Ethan Gulliford, and Romain Vaunois, Barker’s editing is meticulous, whether switching points of view during conversations or assembling a couple of montages, at least one poking fun at the modern romance genre.

Director of photography Taylor Clemons’s steady cinematography and production designer Vivan Gray, art director Sally Choi, and assistant art director Abel Ryan’s set pieces work hand in hand. Their work on a music store, a restaurant, Bear’s friend Ian’s (Cooper Tomlinson) home, and even a parked car is crafted with such an austere approach. Most of all, the set piece in protagonist Bear Bailey’s household—inherited from his late grandmother—captures the conflict’s horrid stagnation. Clemons frames scenes in ways that build up to various jump scares that may or may not occur. Action is seldom present; instead, the film relies on long takes, permitting the cinematography to create tension and unease by lingering on characters. There’s even a particular framing that separates characters by unoccupied space.

Gaffer Christopher Oh’s lighting is masterful and helps tap into the dualities of light opposed to darkness. Often bringing a silhouetted appearance to Nikki Freeman (Inde Navarrette) harkens back to Barker and Tomlinson’s 2022 short film, Heavy Eyes. In the short, a young man writes a cover letter for college while his mother is in the hospital. Then, a silhouette of what seems to be his mother appears at his bedroom door. In Obsession, there’s a moment wherein only Freeman’s eyes can be seen within her silhouette, a la O’Connell’s Remmick in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners.

Composer Rock Burwell’s ethereal scoring and some of the music supervisor Phil Canning’s song selections are fantastic in lending to feelings of otherworldly, supernatural despair. The music and supervising sound editor Ben Zarai’s sound designs confine Barker’s world and its visual components. Screams are one thing, but complete silence is another.

Barker’s Screenwriting and Direction

Curry Barker’s filmmaking continues to be one of the raddest feats in recent years. In his statement in Obsession‘s official production notes, he says: “I love putting ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, but what matters just as much is that every character reacts in natural, believable ways. … Horror lets you explore extreme ideas and emotions in a way that feels honest and visceral.” Notably, Milk & Serial has a layer of believability in its narrative, with Barker earning trust from his actors and viewers, and with characters placing their trust in one another. Trustworthiness carries on in his theatrical project, where the filmmaker does not relent in the story he aims to tell.

In late literature scholar Allan Lloyd-Smith’s critical text, American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction, he cites naturalism as a “new scientism [which] undermined notions of free will, presenting human life as subject to larger forces than any within the consciousness, which at their extreme promoted cruelty, a drive for survival at all costs, and an inability to adhere to conventional morality if put to severe test” (111). Madness, obsession, and the uncanny are also conventional tropes within the Gothic movement, which is feasible since the film examines love and connection as if they haven’t quite been seen before.

Obsession exhibits excellent efforts on both the production crew’s and the cast’s ends. Barker sets up horror tropes and clichés—waking up in bed next to a jump scare, or closing the bathroom medicine cabinet’s mirror to a jump scare—and abruptly avoids the predictable. With that said, as a horror fan, I prefer to be spoiled, like a child who gets McDonald’s on the way home from school. I saw one or two kills coming moments or even scenes ahead, but they still felt like a gut-punch to witness. The lack of fulfilling the One Wish Willow background truly doesn’t matter. Maybe that’s just the world in which these characters live.

Hear Me Out…

As a Blumhouse title, Obsession is one of the independent film production company’s more solid releases in the past decade, following Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us, Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei’s Cam, and Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade and The Invisible Man. It’s about as supernatural in the possession of Freeman as Get Out is a sci-fi horror story about Caucasians taking over Black bodies. The film also gives off Evil Dead vibes for this same reason that Freeman ceases to be herself.

Additionally, Bailey’s lack of wisdom in dealing with the One Wish Willow product parallels the narrative conflict in Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, in which a young woman abuses a product lowkey known in the Western world. At its worst, Obsession is as horrific as Damien Leone’s Terrifier movies, especially in Barker giving at least one character a disrespectful fate. In terms of the narrative conflict of Freeman suddenly becoming obsessed with and devoted to Bailey, Obsession parallels Nickelodeon’s The Fairly OddParents episode, “Just the Two of Us!”, in which the protagonist, Timmy Turner, wishes for him and his crush, Trixie Tang, to be the only two living beings on the planet (or galaxy).

The narrative plays out in a similar fashion to former Texas R&B/ pop boy band Brockhampton’s original music video for “Sugar”, i.e., the one before they decided to put out a second music video to the hit song shortly after Valentine’s Day 2020. In the music video, a Martian confronts his male human lover and shoots him dead in the middle of intercourse with a human woman. In Obsession, a possessed Freeman alienates herself from her friends and only finds satisfaction in Bailey. Even bearface and Ryan Beatty’s pre-chorus, chorus, and outro—”You’re the only one I want by my side when I fall asleep/ Tell me what I’m waitin’ for, tell me what I’m waitin’ for/ I know it’s hard but we need each other” and “So do you love me, love me, love me?”—align well with the film’s themes.

Themes

While Obsession is clearly focused on, well, obsession, I love the other themes Barker weaves into the narrative. The filmmaker continues commentary on the passage of time and on young people with futures. He executed this previously with Heavy Eyes and his 2023 short, The Chair. Obsession follows four people in their late-teens or early-to-mid twenties—two men and two women—sharing a dead-end job in what looks to be Southern California. Barker’s screenwriting does him favors when dipping into literary techniques such as irony. Freeman longs to be a writer; Sarah Harper (Megan Lawless) stops being a screw-up and applies to multiple universities; Ian is just kind of present, which would bother me if I invested hate into the character; and Bailey is deliberately stuck in his grandmother’s home.

Mirrors, windows, and building blocks exist as visual metaphors for characters’ relationships with one another. Barker offers opportunities for reflection, different lenses for observation, and development or deconstruction. His use of mirrors is reminiscent of The Chair, in which a mirror is placed in scenes between characters exchanging dialogue. Obsession‘s apparent antagonist takes us back to another Barker short from 2023, Warnings. Doppelgängers are not the point of his horror filmmaking; rather, death lies within us. The feature film’s car scenes are interesting, with Bailey sharing private social spaces with his friends, defining his perceptions of others for the sake of exchanging information.

Barker further blurs the lines between reality and surrealism, truth and falsities, men and women, light and darkness, and these dualities operate brilliantly as the narrative progresses. What I love about the script is that the characters are written to be multidimensional, but the writer-director knows when it’s time to pull the rug from under everybody. The subplot between Bailey and his house cat is one small, albeit sizeable example of this.

Performances and Character Developments

Tomlinson is great to see in the wingman supporting role, Ian. Compared to Barker’s short films and Milk & Serial, which they produce and upload together as a partnering YouTube duo, that’s a bad idea, Tomlinson is brought into Obsession only as a performer. Still, the actor brings a new side to him opposite Adam from Enigma or Seven from Milk & Serial. Ian wears a hat backward and is the face of levity… as it should be with a “dude”. The best guy friend archetype is played so gracefully that I have confidence in Tomlinson’s ability to expand his range. His career trajectory is very promising.

Lawless is smashing as the supporting female role, Sarah Harper. Unlike the others in the friend group, Harper tends to remain in her bubble. She tries not to interfere in affairs that do not concern her and is set on her own path. In juxtaposition with the possessed Freeman, the character is made with all the necessary measurements of sugar, spice, and everything nice. There is more about her that I would wish to say, but I suppose that requires a trip to the therapist’s office. At least, I can be sure to put Lawless’s future roles on my radar from now on.

The Hopeless Romantic

Johnston is unbelievable as the protagonist, Bear Bailey. The character intentionally irks me throughout Obsession, just because he can’t control the conflict and can’t get the right words out of his mouth. He doesn’t know how to speak to the girl of his dreams, and so she becomes, in a way, his sleep paralysis demon. He is quick to make his wish, but is unwise enough to understand the parameters surrounding his desires. Bailey ultimately lacks communication skills. Therefore, he loses friends and camaraderie in the process.

As a foil to the possessed Freeman, the character distances himself from the friend group in his inexperience with processing emotions. Evidently, he isn’t healthy in that department. Conversely, I believe it’s safe to label Obsession as queer horror—along the same lines as Jack Sholder and David Chaskin’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge—, noting that Johnston has been openly gay for over two years. With this in mind, it’s fascinating to regard Bailey as being in the closet and resorting to establishing a heterosexual relationship. In doing so, it might secure his future a bit better, or so he thinks.

The Star of the Show

Navarrette is the major highlight as the lead female character, Nikki Freeman. Whereas most of Obsession focuses on the spellbound Freeman, a good amount of the opening act showcases who she is in reality. She is a warm, sweet presence who demonstrates early on how much she cares for others. Her love solely lies in neither her social sphere nor her professional life. Her passion for writing is not much of a spoiler for the narrative. Rather, it corroborates the suggestion that Barker’s narrative isn’t romantic per se but surely a love story.

Viewers get to see a few more glimpses of the real Freeman afterward. However, those are just momentary, granted that the nature of the One Wish Willow easily overpowers her. The film focuses entirely on Bailey. Even then, I cannot help but empathize deeply with Freeman and her helplessness in any attempt to regain control of whatever possesses her. In the role, Navarrette is a beauty inside and out. As the entranced version of Freeman, the actor is a driving force for utmost ugliness. Intoxicating is the right adjective in this circumstance, considering the character is under the influence, as if by alcohol or hard substances, but also by a magic spell.

What’s in a Name?

In talking about this state of mind, I picture the character’s predicament as being blacked out and stuck in limbo. The film’s restaurant scene is already starting to remind horror fans of Betty Gabriel’s Georgina. It transcends that notion.

I strongly believe there is a good metaphor in here about women being subjected to men’s actions and the consequences that stem from it. The possessed Freeman is reasonable within her means and gives people the chance to get away with getting close to Bailey. Navarrette is inspired by Mia Goth’s Pearl in Ti West’s slasher film of the same name, but familiar line deliveries direct me to Sophie Thatcher’s Iris in Drew Hancock’s Companion. Freeman falls in the spectrum between these two young women.

Costume designer Blair James and makeup and hair department head Allie Shehorn do the most to capture the characters’ beauty and hideousness on-screen. Urine, feces, blood, pus, sweat, tears—it’s all incredibly outrageous, and the Australian-Mexican American actor deserves her abundance of roses and more. Perhaps, it’s safe to say that there is an irony in having the surname, Freeman, and not really being liberated from a wish, and Nikki can be as addictive as nicotine. (Maybe “Bear Bailey” sounds like beer belly?)

Final Thoughts on Curry Barker’s Obsession

What must we do or whom must we be, if accepted, without a larger force binding us to that which we yearn? In other words, what conditions should be met to reach certain goals? Obsession is brutal, bleak, barely beautiful, and I do not by any means intend to put that sentiment lightly. The film is more than heartbreaking; it’s soul-shattering and spirit-crushing. It’s a poetic cautionary tale reminiscent of works by Edgar Allen Poe and William Shakespeare.

Ultimately, Curry Barker’s film demonstrates the simulated failure to embrace metamorphosis through a spiral. As the late French philosopher Anne Dufourmantelle writes in her critical text, In Praise of Risk: “[The metaphor] establishes a link between two things, bringing them together, lifting a bit of meaning from the one in order to donate it to the other, and thus to imagine for both an augmented reality, a gentle astonishment” (172). Let’s go ahead and release the head-smash director’s cut!

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars