Obsession review – nasty horror sees a wish for true love go horribly wrong | Toronto film festival 2025

This yr’s Sundance noticed the real-life couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie play with the grotesque actuality of being actually caught to 1 one other within the physique horror Collectively, a wincingly efficient lark that turned codependency right into a curse. It didn’t actually discover its viewers upon too-wide launch this summer time, a marketing campaign that couldn’t succinctly clarify the plot or convey a tone that went from horror to comedy and again once more.At Toronto, YouTuber turned film-maker Curry Barker’s equally themed Obsession ought to be a better promote when it will get swiftly purchased and packaged (it’s coming into the competition as a sure-to-be-fought-over gross sales title). It’s a cleaner, extra concise pitch – love spell gone incorrect – and its reaction-securing moments of horrible violence much more alarming, a Midnight Insanity winner that can most likely stay on previous the witching hour.It’s the right subsequent chapter for Barker, who discovered fame final yr when his $800-budgeted on-line prankster horror Milk & Serial made headlines for being much better than it had any proper to be (and higher than nearly all of horror movies with far larger manufacturing prices). Obsession is satisfyingly slick proof that he is aware of simply what to do when levelling as much as a distinct platform, and whereas his debut may need been a movie designed round a really fashionable type of horror, this time he’s wanting again, his set-up utilizing components of a basic fable and the form of grabby schlock you’d see in a video retailer again within the Nineteen Eighties.It’s the story of a person making a want he lives to remorse, a well-recognized horror trope given a extra cannily thought by therapy than we’re used to seeing (Wishmaster this isn’t). The person is Bear (Michael Johnston), a music retailer worker with an apparent crush on his co-worker and childhood good friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette). They’re dwelling within the “finishes one another’s sentences” sitcom stage earlier than a boy-girl duo finally ends up having intercourse however he can’t appear to make any progress and regardless of her longtime affection for him, it doesn’t appear to be she’s all that occupied with redefining what they’ve. When she drops her crystal necklace down the drain, he capitalises on the possibility to show his romantic aspect, choosing up a alternative at an area witchy retailer. However whereas shopping, he spots a novelty present that guarantees to grant you one want …The preliminary phases, as Nikki instantly finds him totally irresistible, give Bear the whole lot he ever needed. An insatiable sexual urge for food, an countless want to spend time with him, a endlessly plus one, a finger snap transformation to precisely what he’d been dreaming about. However the realities of whole timeless love quickly begin to grate. Shut turns into clingy and rationality fully disappears alongside along with her character, a creature tirelessly dwelling for only one objective. There are additionally unprovoked freak-outs, as if she’s briefly possessed by one thing or another person, the horrific curdling of the right girlfriend.It’s a extra severe movie than one may count on given the silliness of the set-up however Barker nonetheless avoids dropping himself within the tiresome dirge of po-faced trauma horror. It’s tangentially just like final yr’s The Substance – dream-come-true product turns into nightmare – however the tone is someplace nearer to the gory grimness of the Smile motion pictures, with Barker additionally overdosing on eerily overexaggerated sound design. He takes the hokey premise and digs in to take care of the day-to-day realities of how torturous it could actually change into. What wouldn’t it really feel wish to have your No 1 crush lastly need you again? Would that individual nonetheless be the identical one that you just fell for? And what if you happen to didn’t just like the individual you’ve made them change into? And what does any of this make you? Barker treats unconditional, and creepily non-consensual, love like a demonic curse, making Nikki sick along with her all-consuming should be nearer and nearer to Bear. It torments her, modifications how she acts and who she is and Navarrette is astonishingly, chillingly good on the intricacies of such a metamorphosis, her voice and physique warping into one thing inhuman and finally unrecognisable (her from-the-pits-of-hell screams are onerous to shake). There’s a seat-clenching unpredictability to no matter Nikki goes to do subsequent that retains us on an uncomfortable edge, even when we discover that the clues had been there all alongside …Just like the Philippou brothers, who additionally got here from YouTube to make the horror hit Speak to Me, Barker has a ardour for the visceral repulsion of head-smashing and in a single notably nasty scene, is aware of the right way to make the aftermath even more durable to look at, and hearken to, than the occasion itself. His shocks are brutally environment friendly however as a director of principally shorts, he’s nonetheless but to grasp tempo. There’s one thing just a little indulgent in regards to the movie’s 108-minute size, which within the final act provides bagginess to what might have been a tightier, punchier horror. Barker isn’t any by means alone with this subject within the style, although, and he’s acquired time to determine that out with super-producer Jason Blum signing Barker up this week. It’s the form of dream ascent that any film-maker would want for.