#308: Obsession

Release Date: May 15th, 2026

Format: DCP (Regal Edwards Metro Pointe in Costa Mesa, CA)

Written by: Curry Barker

Directed by: Curry Barker

3.5 Stars

There’s a short story by English writer John Collier called, “The Chaser” (pub. 1940), that I’ve taught in past English classes, about a lovelorn boy who seeks out a mysterious shop in London that sells potions and other curiosities. 

Once inside the shop, the boy wishfully asks the old owner behind the counter if he has a love potion. 

Why yes, the owner replies, as a matter of fact I do have a love potion. And not just any love potion, but a love potion so strong that any young lady who imbibes it will fall intoxicatingly in love with the giver. She wouldn’t want to spend a single moment without him, and couldn’t bear the idea that he might take on another lover, or even think about anyone else but her. 

How wonderful! the boy exclaims. But how much?

Just a dollar, the old man tells him.            

One dollar! That’s wonderful.

Ah yes, the old man explains, I’m able to sell my brilliant love potion to young men such as yourself for a price you can afford, because later in life you’ll be back for more expensive potions, such as my life-cleaner potion, which I never sell for a penny less than five-thousand dollars. 

What’s a life-cleaner potion? the boy asks.

That’s a special potion, dear boy, that one must save up for. It’s imperceptible to taste and smell…and known methods of autopsy. 

You mean it kills people! the boy exclaims. I don’t need anything like that, just my love potion, thank you. 

Of course, the old man says, ringing the boy up. 

Thanks mister, the boy says.

Au revoir, the old man replies.

I was reminded of this classic short story while watching writer/director Curry Barker’s horror flick, Obsession, this evening. Own up to it Mr. Barker…did a long-ago 9th grade English class spark this script idea of yours?

Not that 9th grade was that long ago. Barker is only 26-years-old, and he’s part of a new wave of young auteurs who are making genre-bending, moody, high-production-value-but-modestly-budgeted horror flicks that have gone mainstream over the past 10 years or so. Maybe A24 is the culprit of popularizing the subgenre, or maybe it was Jordan Peele’s Get Out that was the big bang that spawned a galaxy of similarly-styled thrill flicks that are as much about atmospherics as they are about scares.

But is that true? I remember seeing Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin in theaters back in 2013, a ponderous thriller that stylistically is very much like the particular horror that is popular right now.

I’ve written about this subgenre before, in my review of Bugonia (#262): “It’s a niche genre that I think has been a net positive to the state of American cinema, but I can’t help but wonder when it will eventually run its course and fall out of favor with mainstream moviegoers.”

It seems as if it hasn’t run its course yet. 

The theater for Obsession was packed on a weekday night, and the audience was buzzing as they filed out into the lobby. Credit this to Barker’s fun plot conceit (a young man’s tragic wish that the girl he secretly loves will love him back, more than any person in the world), his beautiful photography (his use of shadows is incredible; much of the film’s menace and sadness takes place at the boundaries of what we can see), and maybe most importantly, his lead actress, relative newcomer Inde Navarrette.

Barker hangs the movie on her shoulders, and she delivers. It’s a star-making performance. Her possessed character, Nikki, elicits fear from us, sure, but she’s also sad. She’s funny. She’s pathetic. She’s ultimately a victim.

She seems destined to enter the classic horror character canon, alongside Chucky and Regan and Pinhead and many more. 

I do have a few small qualms, though, with Obsession. Barker’s plot gimmick isn’t exactly airtight. So, there’s an actual company that makes real One Wish Willows? With a real human operator answering their helpline? And there is a real shop owner that knowingly and apathetically sells them to his customers? 

It’s a plot that’s spilling over the rim in the final act, and Barker dumps that mess directly onto our poor, innocent Nikki, who is left to deal with the ramifications of all the horribleness that has happened around her. 

I understand why John Collier tastefully ends “The Chaser” before the boy gives his love potion: It leaves the disastrous aftermath to our imagination. 

Curry Barker instead chooses to show us the aftermath, to bathe us in the aftermath, to smash our faces into it. It’s scary, and it’s fun, and it’s a mess in the end.

Poor, poor Nikki.