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By Jess Jones.
Release dates: Sept. 5th, 2025 – TIFF / May. 15th 2026 (Theatre release)
Obsession (dir. Curry Barker), originally shown at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) back in September 2025, has just gotten its international release in May 2026, and the responses from the audience to this film have varied.
It is a supernatural horror. It can’t be denied there are some funny moments throughout, scenes where you are meant to laugh, other times the laughter in question can be more to fill the awkward silences or the reaction to overwhelmingly scary scenes.
Our main character is Bear (Michael Johnston), the self-proclaimed ‘nice guy’ saying caring things to the camera as if the girl of his dreams was in our place. Only for his loud, obnoxious-in-comparison friend, Ian (Cooper Tomlinson), to pipe up and disregard all of it. He dismisses the waitress who was standing in as this girl, and gives his own version of a tough-love interaction about how Bear should just be mean to her instead, telling him to not be so direct with his affection.
Ian’s advice is terrible. It’s not certain if it could have been an attempt at sabotage, but Bear tries his own method. After learning the girl in question, Nikki (Inde Navarette), had lost her crystal necklace, he seeks out a replacement for her. He doesn’t find the right one, instead stumbling across a nostalgia-bait collectable item called the ‘one wish willow’. The shopkeeper explains, once you snap the stick contained within the box, it guarantees the person’s wish will come true.
The catch? You only get one wish, so make sure you word it just right.
He doesn’t think to use it initially, sticking by his gut and rehearsing his romantic speech in his head as he attends a trivia night with his friends. Bear is met with pushback from Ian throughout, but eventually Bear offers to give Nikki a ride home and sees his opportunity. However, they make it all the way to Nikki’s house, holding a conversation even after they are parked, and she even offers up the question of whether he likes her or not.
But, as a line from the film states, this is a love story, not a romance, and his naivety or ignorance gets the better of him. He pushes back at the question, and uses a mean nickname for Nikki from high school, making her mad. If it couldn’t get any worse, he impulsively uses the one wish willow, asking it to make Nikki love him more than anyone, and the expected chaos to come from this kind of wish ensues from there.
I will admit, I went into this film blind. Watching no trailers, asking no questions to my friend who made the recommendation to go to the cinema. I was expecting a generic story about a crazy girl and the helpless guy trying to fight her off. It gave this impression for longer than I thought, Bear coming across as a stand-up guy, I just didn’t anticipate Nikki to seem like a nicer person than him.
We do seem to delve more into Nikki as a character before her change takes place. It doesn’t just jump straight into the action; it shows us the type of person Nikki Freeman is. She talks well with all her friends, encouraging Bear to come out for trivia night to make himself feel better after the death of his cat. Her passion for writing is shown when she makes the decision to quit her job, freeing her from distraction. She only becomes an agent of Bear’s needs and feelings when she’s meant to in the story, when she has no other purpose under his control.
Personal rating: 4 stars. It is owed great respect for making do with its smaller budget. The actors were mostly unrecognisable, Curry Barker and Cooper Tomlinson being real-life friends, previously collaborating on Barker’s YouTube skits. Inde Navarette is the new scream queen; her memorable performance of Nikki is already being noted as the hit Halloween costume for 2026.
My only complaint is that some of the gory scenes were dragged out for a little too long. While it is understandable why they were present in the film, I think a particular scene involving Nikki and Sarah (Megan Lawless), a good friend, could have been shorter to avoid me taking my glasses off for the remainder of the scene.
But, if you like gore, an unconventional story where it makes you sit in your seat to think about what just happened, I would definitely recommend contributing to its box-office success. We hope the positive public reaction will influence production companies to give more small creators a chance to bring their stories to the big screen.
