OBSESSION (2025)

Studio:   Focus Features/Blumhouse
Director: Curry Barker
Writer:   Curry Barker
Producer: James Harris, Haley Nicole Johnson, Christian Mercuri, Roman Viaris
Stars:    Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, Haley Fitzgerald, Darin Toonder, Andy Richter

Review Score:

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Summary:

An infatuated man wishes for his longtime crush to fall in love with him, only for his wish to come true in unimaginably horrible ways.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

With help from the waitress at the diner where they’re having lunch, Baron “Bear” Bailey and his close friend Ian try roleplaying a scenario in which Bear finally confesses his crush on Nikki Freeman, a longtime mutual friend who is also their coworker at Cassell’s Music, a store where they also work with their other friend Sarah Harper, whose father Carter runs the business. Although Ian is encouraging overall, he dissuades Bear from asking out Nikki at their weekly trivia night for fear of compromising the friendship between their core foursome.

Bear returns home to discover his cat Sandy died from eating oxycodone that belonged to his mother Barbara. Following an emotional breakdown, Bear takes a phone call from Nikki in which he learns she is quitting her job at the music store to pursue her dream of becoming a writer. The call ends when Nikki becomes upset after dropping her crystal necklace down a drain.

Bear goes to The Green Man mystical shop to purchase a replacement necklace as a surprise gift for Nikki. Bear instead ends up buying a “One Wish Willow,” a novelty item that supposedly grants its user one wish after breaking it in half. The store’s clerk, Viola, vaguely warns that some customers come back complaining about the results of their wish.

Bear, Nikki, Ian, and Sarah attend trivia together at Barker’s Pub. Partly due to repeated interruptions, Bear is unable to reveal his feelings to Nikki. When Ian and Sarah agree to go to karaoke together after trivia, Bear takes the opportunity to drive Nikki back to her house.

During their drive, Bear and Nikki engage in a conversation that is intimate, but also indicative that Nikki only sees Bear as a friend. Nikki asks if Bear and Sarah might be interested in each other. Nikki invites Bear to directly admit if he has a romantic interest in her, but Bear chickens out.

After Nikki goes inside, Bear pulls out the One Wish Willow he forgot to give her. A musical jingle plays when Bear removes the item from its packaging. Bear wishes for Nikki to love him more than anyone in the world and snaps the object in half.

Nikki reappears at Bear’s car to invite him inside. Nikki claims she needs comfort because her cat just died. Bear reminds Nikki it was his cat who died, prompting momentary confusion. Nikki also elicits sympathy by claiming her estranged father is dying of cancer. Despite unusual behavior that gives the impression of her vaulting between two personalities, Bear agrees to take Nikki back to his house.

At her request, Bear gets in his bed to sleep next to Nikki. Bear and Nikki begin making out. Nikki suddenly recoils aggressively when she realizes she and Bear are kissing. Seeing Bear’s surprised reaction, Nikki apologizes for scaring him before having an emotional breakdown.

Unable to sleep due to the situation, Bear does a brief online search for information about the One Wish Willow. Bear finds conflicting comments claiming the item is both real and a hoax.

Bear wakes the next morning to discover Nikki made him breakfast. Bear also finds that Nikki retrieved his dead cat from the trash and created a bizarre memorial with it.

At work, Bear excitedly tells Ian that Nikki spent the night at his place. He also recounts how Nikki told him her dad has cancer. Since Bear never actually confessed his true feelings, Ian questions if Bear might have taken advantage of Nikki’s emotional state or if Nikki might have been high on Molly. Nikki strangely stares at them throughout their conversation.

Although Ian drives Nikki home after work, Nikki soon returns to Bear’s house. Nikki claims her unusual behavior was due to her father’s health as well as her taking MDMA. She and Bear ultimately admit they have mutual feelings for each other. This begins an ongoing, intimate romance that confuses Ian and Sarah.

While dining with Nikki at a restaurant, Bear steps away to take a phone call from Ian. Ian tells Bear that his suspicions led him to uncover that Nikki’s father is perfectly healthy. Ian also tells Bear that Sarah told him about a private conversation she had where Nikki confessed she merely thought of Bear like a brother and wanted him in the “friend zone.” Ian warns that something doesn’t seem right with Nikki or her intentions.

Bear returns to the table. Professing her love for him, Nikki gifts Bear with a Tiger’s Eye stone that belonged to her mother. Bear asks Nikki for the truth about her father. Nikki throws a bizarre public tantrum until Bear calms her. The two of them return home and have sex.

Bear wakes that night to find Nikki watching him sleep from the corner. Nikki continues behaving oddly while crying that Bear doesn’t love her as much as she loves him. Nikki’s sudden screams further alarm Bear.

Bear wakes to see that Nikki cut his hair while he slept. When he leaves for work, Bear discovers Nikki duct-taped the front door shut to keep him inside. Bear exits anyway as Nikki stands in one place, smiling strangely before peeing on the floor.

On their lunch break, Bear eats a sandwich Nikki prepared for him while having a conversation with Sarah. Sarah casually mentions Ian is hosting a party. She also questions the unusual nature of Bear and Nikki’s sudden relationship. Bear comforts Sarah when her father Carter hands her another art school rejection letter. Bear then vomits after a note reveals he has been eating meat Nikki made from his dead cat.

Bear gives Ian a ride home. Ian questions how Nikki seemingly went from needing psychological help to Bear now claiming everything is fine. Bear questions why he and Nikki weren’t invited to Ian’s party. Ian responds that the optics are bad because it looks like Bear is taking advantage of Nikki’s unhealthy emotional state. Ian challenges Bear to attend his party alone to see how Nikki handles being separated from Bear for just one activity.

Once he is alone, Bear calls the customer service number on the back of the One Wish Willow box. The mysterious representative explains there is no way to alter or cancel a wish, and the only way to release Nikki is for Bear to die. The rep also asks if Bear wants to talk to Nikki. Bear hears pained screaming before abruptly ending the call.

Bear goes inside his house to find Nikki still standing where he left her, but she is now covered in vomit and feces from having never moved. Shocked to see her condition, Nikki immediately takes a shower. She also reacts angrily when Bear proposes going to Ian’s party alone.

To calm her, Bear brings Nikki to Ian’s party. During a drinking game, Nikki becomes upset when Bear has to change seats with another guest, moving him away from her. In addition to other odd behavior, Nikki recites a strange love poem about Bear. As part of the game, Bear is given an instruction to kiss Sarah. With a disturbing frown, Nikki pulls away Sarah to take her place and kiss Bear instead. Nikki publicly professes her deep love for Bear, unsettling everyone. Nikki suddenly recoils from Bear, screams “it’s not me,” and repeatedly bashes an object into her face, causing bloody gashes.

Back at home, Bear tries reasoning with an apologetic Nikki. Nikki weeps loudly when Bear proposes spending time apart. Bear asks her to just “be Nikki” again, prompting her to scream, “I can’t be Nikki!” Nikki’s strange physical actions frighten Bear. Nikki also insinuates she might kill herself if she has to sleep in Bear’s bed alone.

Sarah texts Bear during the night to insist he meet her in the park to talk. Parked in her car, Sarah again questions what is really going on with Nikki. She also breaks Ian’s confidence by revealing Nikki and Ian used to casually hook up and Ian now wonders if Nikki is dating Bear to get back at him. Sarah and Bear bond as she passes him an envelope from Luther Art School, which later reveals Sarah was finally accepted for admission, and mentions how they almost kissed at Ian’s party.

Nikki suddenly shatters Sarah’s car window, quickly puts a brick on the steering wheel, and violently smashes Sarah’s face into it until half of her skull breaks apart. With Bear in shock, Nikki attempts to comfort him while insisting he must help dispose of Sarah’s dead body so they can still be together.

After helping Nikki handle the bloody corpse, Bear returns to the store where he bought the One Wish Willow. Reacting to Bear’s manic behavior, a different clerk, Harry, explains a person can only make a wish one time, and if Bear wants to undo his, he has to get someone else to wish that for him. Bear buys the last three One Wish Willows. Despite Harry telling him he couldn’t, Bear tries snapping one of the sticks only to confirm it won’t break in his hands.

Bear rushes to Ian and frantically tries to explain how the One Wish Willow caused the situation with Nikki. Bear hands a One Wish Willow to Ian and begs him to ask for his wish to be undone. Disbelieving Bear’s seemingly crazy claim, Ian instead wishes for a billion dollars. Bundles of cash immediately begin raining from Ian’s ceiling.

Bear returns home to find Sarah’s naked corpse slumped in a chair. Wearing Sarah’s clothes and hair, and having drawn Sarah’s tattoos on her body, a bloody Nikki confronts Bear with accusatory screaming. Ian interrupts to exclaim that his money is real. Nikki suddenly shoots Ian dead with a handgun.

After Nikki again professes her undying love for him, Bear locks himself in the bathroom. Bear prepares to kill himself with the handgun, but he is unable to pull the trigger. Instead, Bear ingests a fatal amount of the oxycodone that killed his cat. Shortly after swallowing the pills, Bear has second thoughts and moves to induce vomiting.

Before he can vomit, Bear hears the telltale jingle of a One Wish Willow package being opened in the other room. With Nikki having wished for Bear to love her, Bear eagerly returns to the living room to happily reunite with Nikki.

As they kiss, Bear begins dying from the oxycodone. Sobbing, Nikki cradles Bear while he froths at the mouth. Distraught over his death, Nikki prepares to shoot herself with the gun. However, Bear’s death instantly returns Nikki to normal. Nikki breaks down in horror at the shocking carnage surrounding her.

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Review:

Hollywood has an adage advising against Oscar voters awarding actors who play drunks, cripples, or people with mental impairments. The reasoning is, such roles too easily attract audience sympathy and are comparatively easier to play since they often rely heavily on exaggerated physical actions. That sentiment can extend to similar parts where facial expressions, posture, and overblown behavior are crucial to characterization, which would certainly apply to portraying a psychopath.

Whether or not that logic makes sense is beside the point here. So is any discussion regarding whether “Obsession” lead Inde Navarrette deserves attention from anyone in a position to give out gold statues, which has previously been argued in some circles. Really, this is a roundabout way of getting to a side that says, even though Navarrette’s performance as Nikki strategically incorporates the techniques mentioned above, her turn into terror shouldn’t be dismissed or go unseen over errant assumptions about who she embodies or what she represents, because Nikki becomes so much more than a simple psycho.

One of four core friends at the center of “Obsession,” Nikki is the object of lovestruck Bear’s affection. “Object” is a deliberate word there, as that is how Bear sees her and treats her, even though he may not consciously realize it. “Lovestruck’s” application is more debatable, since Bear’s feelings for Nikki are based on unreturned infatuation rather than substantive interaction.

For her initial introduction, Nikki has a distinct liveliness to her. She’s not a straight stereotype. Not strictly a girl next door. Not a manic pixie dream girl. The group’s other young woman, Sarah, wears a nose ring and has tattoos. Nikki dresses in an undecorated denim jacket and cute boots. This doesn’t mean she’s a Plain Jane at all. She’s outwardly sweet yet sassy, inwardly observant and confident, but still apprehensive about the uncertain crossroads of a larger life she’s approaching fast. In other words, Nikki is “ordinary” in the most complimentary possible meaning of the term.

All of that changes when Bear uses a mysterious novelty item to wish for Nikki to love him more than anyone in the world. Nikki then goes from good-humoredly giving sh*t to her friends and giving cash to a homeless guy to making a macabre memorial out of Bear’s dead cat and creating chaotic scenes in public places. Her bizarre behavior only grows more unsettling from there, escalating into surprising situations inspired by her warping sense of how to express “love.” Bear should be learning the lesson warned by the movie’s tagline, “Be careful who you wish for,” but he’s too stubbornly committed to reshaping his ideal dream to fit the horrifying reality unfolding around him.

Through it all, Inde Navarrette develops Nikki into a uniquely disturbed and disturbing persona. Her actions aren’t unhinged so much as she is cruelly forced into performing them. An actor’s easiest option would be to exhibit a thousand-yard stare during moments of oblivious confusion or threatening death-gazes. Instead, Navarrette’s eyes hide welled-up pain. Rather than fashioning a scorned villainess or powder-keg crazy, “Obsession” presents Nikki as an alter ego where her original personality visibly battles to break out, which couldn’t be more thematically appropriate for a film about being trapped in a relationship where one person is in constant denial while the other is stripped of independent choice. It’s not a coincidence that Nikki’s last name is Freeman, although some might miss that mention since “Obsession” isn’t always overtly obvious about its details.

On only his second feature, with his first being the somewhat overlooked thriller “Milk & Serial” (review here), writer/director Curry Barker demonstrates the craftsmanship of a veteran with exponentially more experience. Vaguely echoing how Quentin Tarantino drafts scripts, Barker has an unblocked ear for designing organically conversational dialogue. Actors might repeat a line or stammer through another one for a particular effect. Then Barker finely tunes their performances to ensure everyone embodies an authentic character rather than autopiloting a mere plot facilitator reciting rehearsed words.

Barker’s creative collaborators are just as committed to being cinematic without compromising a realistic texture. Barker knows how to squeeze maximum suspense out of a scene through careful blocking with cinematographer Taylor Clemons. Together, they pick angles and time camera movements that allow them to position precise places for information to be revealed. Composer Rock Burwell does something similar. His music subtly enhances eeriness, swells, then becomes noticeable only when it abruptly cuts out to further punctuate a particular moment.

As consistently effective as it is as a creeper with clear commentary, red pen can still be marked on the final paper “Obsession” turns in. For one thing, the ending grows a tick too outrageous. That might seem like a silly quibble for a story starting from a “Twilight Zone”-type premise where a magical item grants supernatural gifts. But if, for instance, something else took the place of the money-related scene (remaining vague to avoid spoilers), “Obsession” could have remained closer to grounded territory rather than reaching into impossible fantasy. Certain plot beats are also predictable, though it’s arguable how much that matters given how most morality tales on a path toward an EC-Comics climax share that commonality.

And a modern fable winding its terror around a cautionary theme is exactly what Curry Barker and company have created. On top of outstanding acting and unnerving shocks, “Obsession” has held on to so much widespread attention because of how universally resonant it can be. Many people have been on Bear or Nikki’s side of an unrequited crush to some degree. Maybe they’ve even experienced both POVs, albeit with stakes far less deadly. In the end, that’s likely why “Obsession” will remain relevant, and disturbing, for a long time to come. Few things are as frightening as someone unwilling to take responsibility for circumstances they created because they’re afraid to confront the consequences of self-serving actions.

Review Score: 85

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