I’m Still Obsessed with Obsession
And apparently, so is everyone else
I love it when a horror film with a tiny budget comes out of nowhere to become a huge hit. “Tiny” is obviously relative, but I tend to think that any movie made for under $5 million falls under that category. Some recent examples include 2022’s Barbarian ($45 million at the box office on a $4.5 million budget) and Terrifier 2 ($15.2 million at the box office on a $250,000 budget), 2023’s Talk to Me ($92 million at the box office on a $4.5 million budget), 2024’s Terrifier 3 ($90.3 million at the box office on a $3 million budget) and Iron Lung ($51.2 million at the box office on a $3 million budget) earlier this year. The success of all of these films is pretty easy to explain. Barbarian had a couple of big name actors in the horror genre (Bill Skarsgard and Justin Long). Talk to Me had a unique premise and a fantastic marketing campaign. Iron Lung had a built in audience from director Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach’s YouTube channel and the fact it was adapting a popular video game. The Terrifier films featured a cult slasher icon (Art the Clown played by David Howard Thornton) and served an audience of gorehounds who rarely had a reason to go out to cinemas. This month has added another low budget horror hit to the list: Curry Barker’s Obsession.
I’m having a much more difficult time explaining this one. The premise of this one is pretty simple. It’s a classic “be careful what you wish for” tale in which a guy named Bear (played by Michael Johnston) acquires a magical object that allows him to make one wish, so he wishes for his longtime crush Nikki (played by Inde Navarrette) to love him more than anyone else in the world. This obviously backfires in a big way. You get it. This is a pretty standard setup for a horror film. Combine familiarity, a good trailer, and the fact that Curry already had a very successful YouTube channel, and it’s no shock that this movie had a strong opening weekend at the box office. It raked in $17.2 million at the domestic box office ($23.1 million globally) on a budget somewhere between $750,000 and $1 million (my understanding is that the initial film was made for $750,000 with some additional money for scenes that were added later once Blumhouse got involved). That’s a hell of an opening weekend, but it’s not outlandish considering the details I had previously outlined. What is shocking, however, is what the film has done since then. It vaulted up to number one at the domestic box office for four consecutive days heading into its second weekend, and now it has made a whopping $23.9 million in its second weekend at the domestic box office ($32.8 million globally). Yes, you read that correctly. This film made more money in its second weekend than it did in its opening weekend. That doesn’t happen. It’s practically unheard of in the modern film industry. It has already made over $80 million in a little over two weeks, and it seems like a lock to cross the $100 million milestone. What the hell is going on?! Side note: I keep having to go back and edit these numbers because the actuals keep ending up higher than the estimates. Wild.
Obviously I will need to conduct a full investigation into why this movie is doing so incredibly well at the box office. I’ll start by saying I totally understand the appeal on a personal level. Obsession is easily my favorite movie of 2026 thus far. It plays to all of the things I love about horror movies. That isn’t really indicative of what makes for a movie with mass appeal, though. I’m a horror addict (I know you’re shocked), so of course I would love this movie. This isn’t a traditional crowd pleaser either. This movie is mean. I love a mean horror movie, but that’s not typically the kind of film that does well with general audiences. People tend to like horror movies that aren’t too cruel to their characters and audiences. That ain’t this movie. So what gives? Here’s where I give the obligatory spoiler alert and trigger warning. I’m going to be examining key plot points throughout the rest of this piece. I also want to make it clear that there are plenty of topics that Obsession deals with that could be triggering that include sexual assault, physical and mental abuse, self mutilation, suicide, dead pets, and extreme gore. It can be a tough watch (or read in this case). With that out of the way, I’m going to break this down into different categories that might speak to the popularity of this deranged little movie.
The Scares
I know. People like a horror movie because of the scares?! This seems obvious. What I mean is that the nature and diversity of scares is appealing to a general audience. If there is one particular type of scare in a horror movie that you find especially effective, then you will probably find it in Obsession. Let’s run through some of them.
Jump scares: there are a few well placed jump scares throughout the film. A couple take place in a bedroom scene, one or two happen during an emotional scene between the two main characters, and one leads directly into the most violent scene of the film.
Body horror: Nikki has several scenes where she physically harms herself. She jabs a broken bottle into her face, she smashes a brick into her forehead, and she just generally has no problem bleeding all over the place.
Gross out horror: there is a lot more of this than you might imagine. Early on in the film, Nikki digs up Bear’s dead cat to make a memorial for her. Later she takes that same rotting cat and makes a sandwich out of it for Bear’s lunch. Yum! There is also a scene where she stands in place for around ten hours and urinates, defecates, and vomits all over herself. She also pukes directly into Bear’s face at one point.
Gore: there isn’t a ton of gore in this film, but the gore we get is pretty extreme. At one point, Nikki smashes a character’s face into a brick about twenty times until there isn’t really anything left. The camera then lingers on the pulpy remains. Pretty brutal! We also get to see the corpse displayed later in the film as well. As an aside, the face smashing scene was apparently edited down in order to avoid an NC-17 rating. Release the Face Smash Cut!
Supernatural spookiness: I was not expecting any creepy supernatural stuff in this movie despite knowing that a magical item that grants wishes is involved. I expected the obvious personality changes to Nikki based on the premise, but I didn’t realize that this would be presented almost as a possession. Nikki’s body is basically inhabited by an entity whose only goal is to fulfill Bear’s wish. That leads to scenes where Nikki is moving and speaking in unnatural ways. It also leads to moments when the real Nikki temporarily regains control of her body and is begging for help. I found all of these supernatural scenes to be the scariest.
When it comes to scares in horror movies, most don’t really impact me anymore. A jump scare might get me to jump here and there, but overall movies just don’t scare me after seeing literally hundreds of horror flicks in my life. The last movie that genuinely frightened me was Ari Aster’s Hereditary from 2018. His use of shadow to conceal the horrors and make them just barely visible worked extraordinarily well on me. I mention that because Curry Barker does the same thing with Obsession. There are so many moments where you can barely make out Nikki in the dark as she behaves strangely, and it really makes my skin crawl. I’m not going to project my own fears onto the rest of the world, but I’ll just say I understand why this movie might be scaring the shit out of general audiences.
The Characters/Perfomances
Obsession has a very small cast. It basically consists of four primary characters. The protagonist is Bear (played by Michael Johnston). He is in his twenties and has been infatuated with his friend and coworker Nikki (played by Inde Navarrette) for the past seven years. He is rather meek and timid, and he has never worked up the courage to tell Nikki how he feels. He presents himself as a stereotypical nice guy, but the truth is that he sucks. He’s selfish and doesn’t really love Nikki for the person she is. Instead, we see over the course of the film that he really just loves a version of Nikki that he has created in his head. His actions and statements throughout the film show what a piece of shit he really is, and it makes him significantly less sympathetic when terrible things start happening to him.
Bear’s friend and coworker is Ian (played by Cooper Tomlinson). He’s kind of a dick, but he’s the kind of dick every friend group needs to keep things from getting too serious. If you think your friend group doesn’t have one, then I regret to inform you that it’s you. He starts off as Bear’s relationship coach trying to give him advice on how to ask out Nikki. Once the wish is made that transforms Nikki into a completely different person, he becomes very wary of Bear and thinks he’s taking advantage of Nikki while she’s having some kind of nervous breakdown.
Sarah (played by Megan Lawless) is also an employee at the same music store where Bear, Nikki, and Ian work. The store itself is owned by her father (played by Andy Richter). She is wanting to go to art school to become a tattoo artist, and she definitely has that vibe. She also has a very obvious crush on Bear that he recognizes and does not reciprocate. Much like Bear, she does not actually vocalize her feelings. Well, she eventually does at the worst possible time imaginable. The irony of the character is that she seems to be the person Bear imagines Nikki to be. Bear says that Nikki is always there for him and how they can talk to each other about anything, but Sarah is the one who actually recognizes that Bear is upset about losing his cat at the beginning of the movie. She also comes to him for support when she is disappointed about being rejected by an art school that she applied to. We never really see these kinds of interactions between Bear and Nikki. They both just pay lip service to these ideas.
That brings us to the true star of the film: Nikki (played by Inde Navarrette). Holy shit. This girl is incredible. She has the difficult task of playing both Real Nikki (or Nikki Prime as Rob Secundus refers to her) and Imposter Nikki. As Real Nikki, she comes across as kind of witty and sarcastic. We know that she wants to be a writer, but we don’t really get any insights into that part of her life. We really don’t get much insight into her life at all beyond what we’re told by Bear (who might not be the most reliable source of information). Bear was giving me bad vibes from the opening scene, but the moment I completely turned on him is when Nikki point blank asks him if he likes her. He completely panics and says he only likes her as a friend. It’s at that moment that he wishes she would love him more than anyone else in the world. It’s such a selfish and pathetic reaction to the situation. Bear would have been a bad guy no matter what happened the rest of the movie, but to not even bother to find out how Nikki feels about him in the first place before stripping her of her autonomy is truly sickening. Anyway, enough about Bear. This is about Navarrette’s performance as Nikki. Imposter Nikki (or whatever you want to call this entity) is so radically different from Real Nikki. Navarrette starts off by playing her as kind of confused and immature. I’ve seen others describing her as a baby deer, and I think that’s an excellent comparison. She acts like she’s in a human body for the first time (which might be true), and her motor skills haven’t fully developed. The thing that jumps out to me immediately is how she looks so different despite being the same person wearing the same clothes we just saw. There’s something about the way she smiles that makes her look like a different person, and it’ll only get more obvious from here.
Throughout the rest of the film, Imposter Nikki becomes more and more unhinged. The way Navarrette plays it is so impressive. She can change the tone of her voice on a whim, and she’s able to contort her face in ways I don’t even know how to describe. She truly looks like a completely different person than what we saw at the start of the film even though we know for a fact that it’s the same actress. She has so many different unique smiles and the way she makes her eyes look that it often feels like she’s playing multiple different characters beyond just Real Nikki and Imposter Nikki. Speaking of Real Nikki, she will occasionally make an appearance in different scenes throughout the film. She will momentarily regain control of her body, freak out, and then revert back to Imposter Nikki. Each appearance she makes as the film progresses is even more desperate than the last, and she is pleading for help from those around her. It is so disturbing. During one particularly uncomfortable scene at a party, she regains control and attempts to kill herself by stabbing her face with a broken bottle. It’s horrific. We also hear her plead for Bear to kill her when she temporarily regains control while Imposter Nikki is asleep. Bear chooses to play the victim in response because he’s an irredeemable piece of shit. The last time we see Real Nikki is the final shot of the movie where she finally regains permanent control of her body and proceeds to scream and sob as the credits roll. There has been a lot of buzz about this performance, and it’s all justified. I really hope she gets the recognition she deserves.
Based on everything I’ve seen and read about what people are taking away from this movie, the performance by Navarrette is the biggest draw. She is so talented that it’s impossible for most audiences to not be impressed. It’s also the driving force behind most of the scares. I don’t think the horror elements would work if a lesser actor was in the role. The movie simply wouldn’t work if she wasn’t able to sell the idea that what we’re seeing is terrifying and not silly. It’s a tricky tightrope to walk, and she does so magnificently. It also helps tremendously that the other three actors are able to believably convey their reactions to the horrors they are experiencing. Lastly, Barker’s direction is also a major factor. He gets the performances he wants from his cast, and he does an excellent job as the editor of the film as he assembles his final cut. I’ll be very excited to see what all of these folks do next.