Obsession (2026) • Review • Spoiler Free

Directed by Curry Barker and starring Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette and Cooper Tomlinson, Obsession is the 2026 supernatural horror phenomenon that turned a $750,000 budget into one of the biggest box office stories of the year. When a hopelessly awkward music store employee wishes for his longtime crush to love him more than anything in the world, he gets exactly what he asked for — and everything that comes with it.

In this review, Fraser shares why he paused the movie convinced Apple TV was showing him the wrong version, the brilliant directing choice around Nikki that became his Frame 70 Moment, and how a YouTube sketch comedian ended up making a film with Oscar buzz swirling around its lead actress.

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Next Review: Ghost

Darryl takes on Ghost, the 1990 romantic supernatural classic starring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg, in a From the Vault deep dive. Does one of the most beloved love stories of the nineties still cast the same spell more than three decades on? And is the pottery wheel scene still the most famous romantic moment ever put on film?

Thanks for listening to Frame 70 Reviews. New reviews every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, along with classics revisited in From the Vault. Every review in full at frame70.com

Transcript

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What's up everybody, and welcome back to the podcast. I'm Fraser, your host, and today we're taking a look at Obsession, the 2026 supernatural horror film directed by Curry Barker and starring Michael Johnston, Inda Navaret, and Cooper Tomlinson. And as always, we're answering one simple question. Is it worth your time? Let's get into it. Now, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, you'll know I've said it plenty of times before. I am not a huge fan of horror gore. Buckets of blood being thrown at the screen for cheap thrills has just never been my thing. But over the last couple of years I've been deliberately stepping outside my comfort zone with this genre, and honestly, it's been paying off. I really enjoyed weapons. Sinners absolutely blew me away. And I loved that new movie, Good Boy, the one told through the eyes of the dog. So I've been slowly building up my horror credentials, one movie at a time. Just please don't hold it against me that nine times out of ten I'm watching these things during the day. Norman, my British bulldog, is not the greatest movie buddy for a nighttime horror session. If things got scary, he would not be leaping to my defence. He'd be fast asleep at the end of the couch snoring his head off. So daytime viewing it is. And that's exactly how I watched Obsession, a film I'd been hearing absolutely huge things about. People raving, review scores through the roof, and a story behind the scenes that is honestly just as fascinating as the one on screen. So let's set the scene. Obsession is written, directed, and edited by Curry Barker, a young filmmaker who came up through YouTube as one half of the sketch comedy duo. That's a bad idea, alongside Cooper Tomlinson, who actually plays Bear's bestmate Ian in this movie, which I think is a lovely touch. Barker first turned heads with a micro budget found footage horror film called Milk and Cereal that went viral, and that's what opened the door to obsession. And here's the part that blew my mind. This movie was made for around $750,000. That's it. And at the box office it has pulled in somewhere in the region of $400 million worldwide. Those numbers are just staggering. It's a very similar story to The Backrooms, which I'll be reviewing soon as well. And I think these movies are properly shaking up the industry. Young guys with serious talent discovered on YouTube making films for pennies and turning them into monster hits. And here's the thing. When you actually watch Obsession, it does not look like a $750,000 movie. It comes across like they spent millions on it. Absolute millions. It has the production value, the acting value, and the script value of a hundred million dollar film. That's the part that keeps amazing me. And there's a bigger pattern here that I find really interesting. Comedy seems to be becoming the secret pathway into great horror. Jordan Peel came from Sketch Comedy and gave us Get Out. Zack Kregger came from Internet Sketch Comedy and gave us Barbarian and then Weapons, which as I mentioned was one of the movies that pulled me into this genre in the first place. And now Curry Barker, a YouTube sketch comedian, has done the same thing. I think there's something in that. These guys understand timing, they understand how to set up an expectation, and then flip it, and it turns out those are exactly the same muscles you use to build a scare. Obsession is dripping with that. It's darkly funny in places, awkward and uncomfortable in that way that makes you laugh so you don't squirm. And then it uses that same rhythm to absolutely terrify you. The story itself follows Bear, full name Baron Bailey, played by Michael Johnston, who some of you will recognize from Teen Wolf. Bear is a socially awkward music store employee who has spent years quietly in love with his co-worker and childhood friend Nikki, played by Inde Navarette. He can't find the courage to tell her how he feels, and instead of just being honest with her, he stumbles across a cheap novelty trinket in an antique shop called the One Wish Willow. Break a branch, make a wish, and the wish comes true. And of course he wishes that Nikki would love him more than anything in the world. What could possibly go wrong? Now look, the underlying idea here isn't completely new. The whole make a wish thing has been done plenty of times, all the way back to Tom Hanks and Big, and the monkey's poor idea of a wish going horribly sideways is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Crushes an obsession at that age, also done to death. But what this movie does with those familiar ingredients is something else entirely. One thing I noticed straight off the bat is the aspect ratio. Barker has gone with this old school letterbox style framing, and I'll be honest with you, I thought Apple TV was showing me the wrong version. I rented this directly off Apple TV, and I actually paused it and went digging to check whether I was watching the right cut, because you just don't see that kind of letterboxing around anymore. But it's completely deliberate. My take is he's using it to create claustrophobia, to force your eyes into the dead center of the frame. With iMac and the bigger formats these days, so much happens visually out on the edges of the screen. This does the opposite. It boxes you in with these characters, and once things start spiraling, you feel it. And I love a movie that gets straight to the point, and this one does. It opens with what I'll just call the dinosaur scene, and straight away we're seeing the main character's emotions laid bare. It sets the anchor for the entire movie, then it throws the rug out from under you because you realize he's not actually pouring his heart out to the girl he loves. He's rehearsing it in front of his mates, showing them exactly what he wants to say to Nikki. And that one moment tells you everything about Bear. He can perform the feelings, he just can't say them to her face. It sets the stage for everything that's coming. The movie also kicks you right where it hurts very early with the death of Bear's cat, which shows us a few different sides of him straight away. He's clearly an emotional kid, and one of my biggest questions right off the bat was, How much medication is this poor guy on? There's a shot of his bathroom cabinet early on that's absolutely loaded with prescriptions, and I couldn't pause it quick enough to read the labels, but I'm assuming we're looking at something like depression or anxiety. And I'll tell you this now without giving anything away. Keep that bathroom in the back of your mind, because by the final scene it comes back around full circle. In a way that hit me hard. That's smart writing, nothing in this movie is wasted. There's also a lovely little detail where the bar in the film is named after the director himself, and later on there's an even better Easter egg when Bear finally rings the one wish willow customer helpline about an hour in, because the gentleman on the other end of that call is Curry Barker himself, and that phone call is the turning point of the whole movie. He lays out the rules of the game pretty brutally, and I won't go into what those rules are, because that reveal lands so much better on screen. But from that moment on you understand exactly how trapped Bear is in the mess he's made. And what a mess it is. Because the scene where Bear buys the one wish willow, the girl running the shop gives him warning after warning not to do it, and he still does it. He is knowingly selling his soul for his deepest desire, and that desire is Nicky. And what's clever is that the movie shows you there was an exit ramp right at the beginning. There's a moment where Nikki turns to him and straight up asks, Do you like me? If he'd manned up right there, actually confessed his feelings and been honest with her, this could have been a completely different outcome. But then you wouldn't have had a movie. It would have been a five-minute short film, and everyone goes home happy. Instead, his inability to just be honest drives the entire tragedy, and that's really what this film is about. It's not a cursed object movie. It's a movie about a guy who takes the coward's way into getting what he wants, and then has to watch what that actually costs. Now let's talk about Indonavarette as Nikki, because this is the performance everyone is raving about, and there is already serious Oscar buzz around her. Obviously, the Oscars are a very, very long way off, but you can absolutely see why people are saying it. Her flip from normal Nikki to post willow Nikki is pretty bloody remarkable. Before the Wish, she's warm, natural, a little bit sassy, completely believable as the childhood friend Bear can't work up the courage to talk to. After the wish, she becomes something else entirely, and the transformation just keeps escalating. Every single time she was on screen, I felt uncomfortable. Every time, the way she copies Bear's movements is properly freaky. Her snapbacks are chilling, those moments where she's clearly under the influence of something and then suddenly jolts back to reality. Because the real Nikki is still trapped in there somewhere. You get these outbursts where she's screaming, completely shocked, yelling that it's not me, and those moments are heartbreaking, because they remind you that underneath all the horror, this is a girl who never consented to any of this. She's the victim of the entire film. And Navarette plays both sides of that, the threat and the victim, absolutely flawlessly. And apparently the physical transformation stuff was achieved with practical effects rather than CGI, which makes it even more impressive. There's a scene at a party where Nikki recites this story she's written, and it's like something out of Hansel and Gretel. This creepy fairy tale that references a willow tree, and her voice keeps shifting tone all the way through it. The whole room just goes cold. It's one of the most unsettling scenes in the movie, and there's not a single scare in it. Just a girl telling a story. And that brings me to my frame 70, Moment for Obsession, and it's not one scene. It's a directing choice that Barker keeps coming back to. The way he shoots Nikki, she talks off screen a lot, so you hear her, but you don't see her. Or she faces away from the camera while she speaks. Or she's standing right next to someone but she's cast in shadow, and you can't read her reactions, sometimes you can only catch her eyes. There are moments where you don't even see her lips move, you just hear her. It's such a creepy, brilliant way of portraying this character, because it keeps you from ever fully knowing her, and it makes the moments where the camera finally does hold on her face land like a punch. Well, after the credits rolled, that's the thing I kept turning over in my head. A first-time feature director showing that much restraint and that much control. If this is what Barker gives us on his first proper swing, I am really looking forward to whatever he comes up with next. Michael Johnston deserves plenty of credit here too, because Bear is a tricky character to play. He has to be sympathetic enough that you stick with him and flawed enough that you squirm. You can tell this kid is morally torn between what's happening and what he's done, and even as Nicki's behavior becomes dangerous and invasive, he keeps embracing the fantasy because the girl he's loved most of his life is finally giving him the attention he always wanted. There's a montage of the two of them together that's fascinating for exactly this reason. She's becoming more and more infatuated. He's just soaking it all up, and meanwhile everyone around them is watching with these completely confused looks on their faces, like what on earth is going on here? I lost count of how many times Bear physically says some version of Nikki, you're starting to freak me out. Before he actually does anything about it, you end up yelling at the screen. Mate, the warning signs are right there. And on a complete side note, I'm also quite concerned about Bear's dress sense because this kid loves wearing some of the most disgusting looking jumpers I have ever seen. Just had to mention it. This type of psychological horror is draining in the best possible way. The deeper you get into the movie, the more it hits you with everything, and the more things spiral out of control. And that's exactly what the movie wants. It wants you to feel as useless as Bear does by the end, sitting there asking yourself, well, what options does he actually have left? It doesn't rely on cheap jump scares. It gets into your head and it just worms its way in. It makes you anxious, it makes you turn away, it makes you shout at the screen telling these characters to stop, or to do this, or to do that, because it all makes perfect sense to us and none of it gets through to them. That, for me, is the kind of horror I can properly get into. And the last 25 minutes of this movie will give you an absolute gut punch. It just spirals and spirals and spirals until this huge, insane finale, and I am not going to say a word about it. The final few minutes are wild. There's a moment where we simply hear a click, we see the two of them look at each other, and we just know what's happened. How it plays out from there, that's for you to discover, maybe with the lights on. What I will say is that the movie left me with more questions than answers, and I think that's exactly what I wanted it to do. I kept thinking, how do you put the pieces back once the worst has been done? How do you put the genie back in the bottle when all your desires come true? The movie doesn't hand you tidy answers to those questions, and I'm quite happy about that, because I haven't stopped chewing on them since. The Frame 70, Verdict for Obsession. This is a phenomenal piece of filmmaking and easily one of the most impressive horror movies I've watched since stepping outside my comfort zone. It's tense, it's darkly funny, it's anchored by a performance from Indy Navarrett that fully deserves every bit of the buzz around it, and it proves you don't need a hundred million dollars to make something unforgettable. If psychological horror is remotely your thing, or even if you're a nervous convert like me, rent it, watch it during the day if you have to, and enjoy the ride. But that's just how obsession landed for me. Entertainment is subjective, and a slow burn headworm of a horror movie like this might not be everyone's cup of tea, and that's completely okay. What unsettles one person might bore the next, and that's exactly the kind of conversation I love having. And on a personal note, after two hours of watching what obsessive wishing can do to a relationship, I have officially deleted my dating profile, just to be safe.