Truly, we are living in wondrous times. Here we have a film that I’ve been eagerly anticipating for the past several months, ever since I first saw the trailer — something that isn’t a huge franchise tentpole — and it’s good. That’s so depressingly rare in the history of this blog. So, what miracle do we have here?

Obsession is the feature debut of writer/director Curry Barker, previously best known as half of the YouTube sketch comedy duo “that’s a bad idea”. The two previously made a microbudget found footage horror short film called Milk & Serial. You can watch the whole thing for free right here.

This is the story of four lifelong friends who work together in a music store owned by one of their dads. One of them is Barry (Michael Johnston), though his friends all call him “Bear”. (Like the “man or bear” debate, get it?) Here we have a guy with a massive crush on Nikki (Inde Navarrette), who’s also his co-worker, so that’s Red Flag #1.

More to the point, Bear is a young man pathologically incapable of acting on his crush because he’s caught in between so many contradictory pressures. Flatter her but not too much, tease her by being mean to her in a funny way, be tough but also be vulnerable, and so on. All of it adds up to a guy so embroiled in toxic masculinity that he’s incapable of being vulnerable or honest with his feelings.

I need hardly add that Bear is afraid of screwing things up with Nikki, with their social group, and with their job. Oh, and did I mention that all four of these people are assholes? Because Ian (Cooper Tomlinson, the other half of “that’s a bad idea”) is a dipshit responsible for so much of Bear’s bad relationship advice, and Sarah (Megan Lawless) is no help either. As for Nikki herself, she seems particularly aggressive in friend-zoning Bear.

…Okay, maybe I’m being a little harsh on them. Sure they may be assholes, but they’re not necessarily bad people, just young adults with no idea how much they don’t know. I might add that they’re particularly entitled, as they’re all working for Sarah’s dad (blink and you’ll miss Andy Richter playing him), and Bear is living in a huge house left to him by his late grandmother. By all appearances, the most traumatic thing that’s ever happened to any of them is the death of Bear’s cat at the start of the film. (Yes, the film opens with a dead cat. CONTENT WARNING.)

Things change in a big way when circumstances bring Bear to an antique shop that’s selling “One-Wish Willow”, an obscure ’80s novelty that supposedly grants one wish — and only one wish. Buy all the One-Wish Willows you want, you only get to use one. Word online shows an unclear consensus as to whether or not it actually works. Bad news, Bear: it totally works in this particular case.

See, Bear makes the spontaneous choice to wish that Nikki “loved him more than anyone else in the world”. And she immediately does. She goes hardcore limerence with behavior that gradually goes from erratic to outright psychotic.

(Side note: “Limerence” would’ve been such a better title. More people need to know that word.)

So, let’s recap. We’ve got 1) a lovelorn schlub who 2) madly dotes upon a girl and 3) has no idea how to act on that attraction in a healthy way, so he 4) uses a device he doesn’t fully understand, which means 5) he radically and knowingly alters her personality in such a way that 6) she’s more easily seduced against her will.

CONTENT WARNING, folks: We’ve got us a sexual assault allegory.

Yes, the trailers have already spoiled that Nikki gets increasingly violent towards Bear and others as the film goes on. Not just physically violent, but psychologically abusive as well, in nightmarishly unspeakable ways. But we’re never allowed to forget that Bear is directly responsible for everything that happens. Bear may be a victim of decisions that he made of his own free will, but Nikki is a victim of actions that Bear made without her knowledge or consent. They’re not the same.

And sure, Bear will have to live with the guilt of his own actions, and the suspicions of everyone he ever knew and respected. But Nikki is a prisoner in her own body through all of this. She sees everything that’s being done with her own hands and to her own body against her will. We even see a few brief flashes when Nikki reclaims control of her own body just long enough to visibly react in abject soul-crushing terror. Whatever happens, she will have to carry all this barbaric trauma for the rest of her life. Maybe even longer.

All of this started because Bear made one stupid mistake that completely robbed Nikki of her ability to say no. In so doing, he started a process that leads to the gradual erasure of Nikki’s entire personality. Everything that made Nikki interesting and attractive is entirely gone, replaced with this cruel one-dimensional mockery of her. (Except, you know, for the part where the real Nikki is still in there somewhere, screaming and crying in the Sunken Place.)

But what’s interesting is that Nikki becomes so single-minded in her all-consuming passion that she starts acting violently if she starts to think that Bear doesn’t love her to an equal extent. As a direct result, and in a roundabout sort of way, Bear starts forcibly losing parts of his own personality and consent at the very hands of the same woman he forcibly took personality and consent away from.

Obviously, this whole concept is only as strong as the actors involved, and calling their performances “dynamic” would be a gross understatement. Johnston runs the full gamut with this one, and Navarrette turns in a goddamn tour de force. Seriously, literally everything Navarrette does — from the extreme to the subtle — is tragically creepy as fuck. What’s even more impressive is that these filmmakers freaking love to shoot Nikki in silhouette or keep her offscreen. We can’t see the character’s face and she’s still goddamn terrifying, that’s how amazing Navarrette is here.

Unfortunately, Tomlinson and Lawless aren’t quite as capable of elevating their respective characters, but they support the plot well enough. I got a kick out of Haley Fitzgerald and Darin Toonder, providing some brief yet welcome comic relief. But the MVP is easily Curry Barker himself, who makes a brief yet show-stopping voiceover cameo as a customer rep for One-Wish Willow. The trailers have already spoiled most of his best lines, but they haven’t spoiled a bone-chilling sucker-punch that comes at the end of the call.

Obsession isn’t really scary in the traditional “slasher” way, though the kills and mutilations are outright grisly when they come. No, this film is far more harrowing as a work of psychological/emotional horror. Nikki and One-Wish Willow operate in ways that are unpredictable and gut-churning precisely because they’re so complex and nuanced. The filmmakers speak a language of social anxiety, heightening modern taboos and fears to a psychotic extent that hits so much harder than a few dozen gallons of dyed corn syrup.

Couple all of that with star-making turns from the two leads, and you’ve got a must-see work of modern horror. Even by the standards of so many wonderful socially aware prestige horror films we’ve seen in the past few years, this one’s a game-changer. Don’t miss out.