Though it may make some older generations want to jump out of their skin, the future of horror<\/a> is on YouTube. With his leap from the social platform to the big screen, the internet sketch comic Curry Barker has joined Talk to Me\u2019s Michael and Danny Philippou<\/a> and 20-year-old Kane Parsons, whose highly anticipated debut Backrooms<\/a> is due in cinemas later this month, to form a new frontier for the genre \u2013 one that\u2019s as brutal as it is savvy.<\/p>\n Gone is any feeling of Gothic tenderness, of the misunderstood going bump in the night. Here, the generation exposed to what feels like only the very worst of the world has responded in kind, with horror in which punishment is swift, nasty, and arguably well deserved.<\/p>\n Barker made his debut with the 2024 found-footage, prank-themed horror Milk & Serial, shot for $800 and uploaded directly to YouTube, while Obsession riffs on episodes of The Twilight Zone and WW Jacobs\u2019 classic short story The Monkey\u2019s Paw. It\u2019s built as a shock to the system for the self-declared \u201cnice guys\u201d of the world.<\/p>\n Bear (Michael Johnston), a music-store employee with dark, soulful, vinyl-record eyes, has been quietly bearing a crush on his co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarrette). He\u2019s too timid to tell her, even when she asks him directly (and kudos to Johnston for making his denials physically painful to the ears).<\/p>\n He\u2019s not too timid, however, to pop into his local new age shop and pick up a \u201cOne-Wish Willow\u201d, a novelty toy that does, as it turns out, grant a single wish to whoever snaps it in two, with the usual nefarious caveats if you haven\u2019t worded said wish carefully. Bear, the fool, chooses \u201cI want Nikki to love me more than anyone else in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Barker\u2019s vision is a little slow to build. Nikki begs to stay the night, and the next, and the next, but peppers her adoration with typical, incongruous \u201ccreepy\u201d behaviour. She stands in corners at night and grins. It\u2019s only when Bear attempts to live with this cursed arrangement \u2013 it\u2019s his dream, after all \u2013 that the film finally lets loose, starting with an ingeniously staged party scene and ending in unrestrained, bloody chaos.<\/p>\n Obsession is delicately handled work, unafraid to find pockets of humour. Customer service is hilariously inept, even when it\u2019s a matter of life or death. But Barker, both as its writer and its director, is also interested in how the dynamic between Bear and Nikki starts to reflect real-life toxicity, and never plays too recklessly where it really matters.<\/p>\n Navarette proves to be extraordinarily agile in this department, too, frighteningly unpredictable in how she might next stretch her features, from grin to grimace, artifice to truth. She makes the most of what can be surprisingly limited screen time \u2013 the film, to underline its points of dehumanisation and inscrutability, often sticks her head in shadow or entirely out of frame.<\/p>\n But Obsession ultimately triumphs in how willing it is to make two monsters out of its cautionary tale. Bear, the lover boy who\u2019s yearned a little too close to the sun, is repeatedly reminded of the lack of consent in his great wish \u2013 at times in literal, startling fashion \u2013 and yet his reactions betray just how willing he is to violate that consent when convinced there will be no repercussions. It\u2019s certainly the right topic, then, to tackle in an era of cosmic punishment. Obsession will force this man to take accountability, one way or another.<\/p>\n Dir: Curry Barker. Starring: Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, Andy Richter. Cert 18, 109 minutes.<\/p>\n \u2018Obsession\u2019 is in cinemas from 15 May<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":958728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-958727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116571581246994331","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=958727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/958728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=958727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=958727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=958727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Inde](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/obsession-OBS_FP_00039_R_rgb.jpeg\")
Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston in Curry Barker\u2019s \u2018Obsession\u2019 (Focus Features)<\/p>\n![\"Director](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/obsession-OBS_FP_00073_R_rgb.jpeg\")
Director Curry Barker is also interested in how the dynamic between Bear and Nikki starts to reflect real-life toxicity (Focus Features)<\/p>\n