After some success with short-form content, including a horror short titled Milk and Serial (2024) amassing 2 million views and counting on YouTube, Curry Barker’s debut feature film, Obsession, premiered on September 5th as part of TIFF 2025’s lucrative Midnight Madness program. The film follows a young man faced with the dire consequences of wishing for his crush to love him unconditionally. 

At first glance, the film seems like a cut-and-dry “be careful what you wish for” story. However, it soon devolves into an unrelentingly dreadful experience due to Barker’s impressive writing and direction. The audience is told to indeed be careful what they wish for, as Bear (Michael Johnston) gives in to selfish tendencies and wishes for Nikki (Inde Navarrette) to love him “more than anything in the world.” 

I was incredibly nervous about how the film would handle Bear’s arc, as it’s very easy for many filmmakers to make the audience feel bad for a character regardless of the role they play in their situation. Obsession changes this misogynistic trope by repeatedly showing the audience how much of a mess Bear has made for himself, refusing to redeem him at all. This is also thanks to Johnston’s incredible lead performance as Bear, depicting a deep and inner loneliness that almost makes you think of Bear as a victim–almost.

The subject of Bear’s desire comes in the form of coworker Nikki, who at first is portrayed as a manic-pixie-dream-girl. After the fateful wish, Navarrette shows the audience just how ballsy she can get as an actress, snapping back and forth between doting and horrific with ease and precision. Navarrette is a powerhouse with the ability to make the audience feel deeply concerned at any sight of her character. Nikki is a character people will undoubtedly be both terrified of and root for.

What makes Obsession so special is how well it deals with themes of autonomy and relationships through the lens of horror. As stated, Bear is a victim of his own creation and must converse with the fact that he has taken the autonomy away from someone he genuinely cares about. At the same time, he has gotten what he wished for and spends a good portion of the runtime trying to justify his actions to himself. A man realizing the impact his misogynistic behavior has on the women around him is inherently terrifying, and Barker plays into that through impressive scares that use sight and sound to create that. 

Obsession is nothing without its scares, and boy does it deliver. Barker has proven himself and is one to watch in the horror space, expertly crafting an ambience of discomfort and anxiety within every frame. The film left me and will likely leave many people with an intense feeling of dread and a fear of any dark corner that could have something lurking within.

Barker’s Obsession proves once again that the Midnight Madness program selects filmmakers with the willingness to push audience limits and drive them to cinematically horrifying places. It’s a monstrous storm of nightmarish audiovisual prowess. I can’t believe this was my first Midnight Madness premiere, and I hope to see the name Curry Barker on a poster for my local theater very soon.

Review Courtesy of Nadia Arain

Feature Image Courtesy of TIFF