Jered Mabaquiao
Obsession (2026) directed by Curry Barker breaks new ground for horror cinema. In its own ways, it fondly reminds me of It’s What’s Inside (2024), Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022), or even Y2K (2024) with its strong attention to dialogue, soundtracks, and an atmosphere that speaks directly to older Gen Z sensibilities. I think it’s clear that a new generation of directors and writers are here to reshape fear in refreshing ways. Barker is amongst a new line of YouTuber-to-filmmaker directors, along with Danny and Michael Philippiou (Talk to Me and Bring Her Back), Mark Fischbach, aka, Markiplier (Iron Lung), Chris Stuckmann (Shelby Oaks), and Kane Parsons (Backrooms). With an approximate budget of around $750k to $1 million, Obsession’s domestic opening weekend brought in $17.2 million with a total global opening of $27 million. (Obsession is, apparently, the cheapest film to top the box office in 17 years – a record held till now by Paranormal Activity.)
Check out the trailer for Obsession:
Obsession follows an early post undergrad friend group who all seem to be keeping some secret from each other. We meet Bear (Michael Johnston) in a diner, rehearsing how to confess his feelings for his friend Nikki, played by Inde Navarrette. Two supporting characters, Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) and Sarah (Megan Lawless) both play their part in orchestrating how Bear should (or shouldn’t) make his crush explicitly known. Bear cannot muster the courage to express his feelings. As the plot unfolds, he obtains an occult shop gimmick called The One Wish Willow, which supposedly grants its user one wish.
Man vs bear
In April 2024, a viral TikTok trend asked women if they’d prefer being stuck in the woods with a bear or a random man. Many women said they’d rather be with the bear. It may be entirely possible that the cast of Obsession had seen this trend given the film’s on-the-nose nickname for our antagonist.
As a kind of wink at internet culture, this cultural internet moment shores up the film’s central ethical problem: the inability, or refusal, to accept what cannot be changed: as an internal attribute already instilled, Bear cannot accept Nikki’s autonomy, he doesn’t accept such ambiguities, and does not own up to his mistakes.
Obsession’s notable rhetoric stems from Barker and his team’s appeal to a uniquely perceptive audience who are well aware of incel subcultures and the manosphere. This audience is a part of the memetic “chronically online” discourse but also finds stakes in a hyper digital socially dysfunctional society where online engagement only widens the gap between what is genuinely wanted and what is complete fantasy. For example, we see Bear scrolling through Nikki’s Instagram with a sense of yearning, performing a kind of digital longing that substitutes real connection for selfish projection. Bear’s attachment to the idea of Nikki is amplified for us and opens up pathways for dangerous and demoralizing fantasies to take hold.
Obsession works well precisely because it refuses to shield us from the contradictions of Bear’s decisions. Actually, the film makes us complicit in witnessing his behaviors, justifications, and moral deterioration. We observe how Bear was this new kid in town and how Nikki’s genuine kindness and welcoming nature was likely mistaken for romantic interest. Because Bear is too uncertain, he stays suspended, encountering an emotional impasse, and still unwilling to do the work to actually pursue intimacy.
Ambiguity assigned
Nikki remains in the background of Bear’s desire
A lot of Bear’s behavior keeps him ambiguously displayed which, at first, feels like an honest attempt at creating a male character worth reading with some generosity. However, an early line of Bear’s dialogue critically reveals his irresponsibility and the (lack of) ethics he could’ve had regarding Nikki’s loss of agency. As Bear comes home to find his cat, Sandy, accidentally overdosed on old medication, he states something like, “How did you get into this?” This subtle shift in assigning blame towards the cat, rather than declaring his own mistake in misplacing the medication, shows us that Bear might’ve never had a sense of ethical responsibility or accountability.
Reading Bear as simply shy or socially awkward flattens his destructive tendencies. This is observed when Pre-Wish Nikki repeatedly pushes back, attempting to break through the fantasy he has cast around her when they talk in the car. In the age of the manosphere, we might place Bear in the realm of the Nice Guy, (complacent, chivalrous even) who never explicitly demands sexual or romantic reciprocity. However, when met with rejection, the “Nice Guy” becomes resentful and entitled towards any woman that rejects his advances. Bear’s ineptitude to “read the room” is a characteristic increasingly revealed through his actions, amplified by the way post-Wish Nikki increasingly opposes Bear’s desires with Nikki’s own fight for agency.
On loving yourself
Obsession shows us that Pre-Wish Nikki is genuinely kind. She’s brave enough to move through the world with a self-confidence that others probably find enviable and even threatening. Nikki is flirty and determined, and the film instructively frames her kindness when she takes $20 from Sarah and gives it to an unhoused person after trivia night at the local bar. When Nikki and Bear talk inside his car, she’s uniquely perceptive about how she’s being perceived. Nikki’s self-awareness, I think, is a critical point that perverts Bear’s wish.
The vanishing Pre-Wish Nikki
It’s inevitable with the buzz around Obsession that the crew’s takes and internal/creative tensions are being weighed against the film’s textuality. Some interviews with Inde Navarette suggest that Nikki may have had some genuine feelings for Bear, but that his inability to confess them signaled to her that a real relationship wouldn’t be worth pursuing.
I think that Nikki loved herself more than “anybody in the whole world.” Nikki demonstrates a strong attitude of self-love and respect which is not to say that this attitude wasn’t without any growing pains. Nikki struggled with using Molly, for example, and so when Bear begins touting their relationship, there is a suggestion she’s relapsed. However, the Nikki we initially meet is a girl that knows herself, knows her limits, and knows what a relationship with Bear could and couldn’t offer her. Bear’s wish can’t erase this self-knowledge. Obsession sharply notes this and represents how Nikki continues to hold these conflicting feelings, actions, and attitudes in her body. As Post-Wish Nikki sticks to the hellish script, she’s been thrust into, Pre-Wish Nikki’s psyche is broken down just a bit more with each decision that Bear makes for her.
For what it’s worth, Obsession reminds me of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s provocative aphorism, “Love is giving something you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it” (most traceably in Seminar XII 1965-65). This phrase captures nearly every relationship in Obsession: Bear giving a kind of devotion he cannot truly manage to a version of Nikki who never asked for it; Ian and Sarah enabling an intimate dynamic they can’t control; and even Nikki’s self-love functioning as something Bear is inherently unable to come to terms with. Obsession gives the object of lack room to run, and in doing so offers a new generation of horror viewers a distinct takeaway: Maybe we should be wise enough to never really ask for our deepest desires because maybe, this is what happens when we actually get what we want.
Jered Mabaquiao (he/him) is a Filipino-American, PhD Candidate in the English department at the University of Texas at Arlington. He also teaches rhetoric and composition, and American literature classes at Dallas College. Jered also serves as an executive board member for the Dallas Asian American Historical Society which works on building Asian American communities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Previously a fellow for the Crossing Latinidades research initiative, Jered works broadly on projects interrogating racial melancholia, identity, and trauma in racialized narratives. His current project underscores political and financial economies, psychosocial politics, and popular culture in Asian American entertainment media. He has previously published for Horror Homeroom on Hannah Whitten’s upcoming novel, Reliquary.
