Mark Kermode reviews Obsession

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]So obsession, okay? 18 for strong violence and gore and that's why you're probably not going to enjoy it. So IndieWire talking about obsession said it was proof that the Kriegerfication of the Kriegerfication of 2020's horror is in full effect. And what they meant was that this is the latest horror film from someone who like the Philippou brothers who made Talk to Me and Bring Her Back and Zach Cregger who made Weapons which you really liked and and Barbarian um made their name in comedy often in online comedy shorts and then went on to make really sharp, really nasty horror movies. Bear in mind that you know, you could go back to Jordan Peele and Get Out because he obviously has a background in comedy as well. So there is this definite sort of train of people coming into horror through through comedy and then doing really interesting stuff. So FrightFest have been doing screenings of Obsession which I knew in advance so I kind of knew okay, it's got the FrightFest um you know, stamp of approval. Written and directed by Curry Barker who made a spice in a sketch comedy duo called That's a Bad Idea, was making short comedy and and horror shorts for YouTube, made his feature directorial debut with a found footage horror film called Milk and Cereal.

[00:01:07]Now this Obsession. So this follows Bear played by Michael Johnson who is this sort of shy, retiring guy who works in a music shop and he's got a massive but unstated crush on his friend and workmate Nikki.

[00:01:23]She's his closest friend but he wants to let her know that he wants her to be more than just a friend. And actually we meet him at the beginning practicing the speech in which he says to her, "Look, you know, you mean more to me." And then it cuts away and actually he's just practicing it and his best friend is going, "That's rubbish, you know, that's absolute rubbish. You're not going to get anywhere with that." He can't get up the courage to tell her that he loves her. Instead, she loses a crystal necklace and he goes into a crystal store, you know, in a sort of hokum store to buy one. He can't find the right one but what he does find instead is this thing called a one wish willow and it's a box >> That sounds like trouble. Sounds like trouble with a willow in the middle of it and when you take it out it makes a funny noise and you break it in half and you make a wish, okay? And he says, yeah. And of course it as is the way with horror films, you know, it's it looks like it's like a novelty, it's a kind of retro thing, but on the other hand it's the thing might work. So, he buys it for her to give it to her and it's it's kind of, you know, because it's cute, but then he doesn't give it to her. What he does is as she gets out of the car as he's dropping her off, he breaks it in half himself and he says, I wish that Nikki would love me more than anybody else in the world.

[00:02:28]Which happens with very bad results. It I mean, on the one hand there's sort of there there is a tradition in movies like, you know, in Big it's the thing about oh, the fairground thing, you know, you make the wish and it will actually come true. And then what do you then do with it? Well, apparently the writer-director was in first got the idea for this he was watching an episode of The Simpsons and it was an episode of The Simpsons that refers to The Monkey's Paw. So, The Monkey's Paw, as you'll know because you're a big Stephen King fan, that's one of the kind of the urtext tales of horror which is basically be careful what you wish for because your wish may come true and in this particular case that is absolutely what happens that he wishes for something and then it does come true. Now, on the one hand that's a kind of, you know, that's an outlandish fantasy. The reason it works however is that underneath it is a very real story about coercion, about control. I mean, the fact is he he makes this wish that then effectively imposes his will on somebody else. I mean, it's not a million miles away from spiking somebody's drink. There is something really sinister about the fact that he has done this and from then on what happens is that she becomes more and more cracked because what's happened is that her free will has effectively been overtaken and the laughter and the smiling in this film is really really scary. Remember there was that those horror movies, the smile movies, in which you smile and it really bad things happen. I talked about Mia Goth at the end of Pearl, in which there's just this one shot of her smiling and it holds it and it holds it for 3 minutes and the smile becomes really, really terrifying. This has got really, really, really scary smiling in it and then it's got the kind of the moments of what's described, as I said in the BBFC, as you know, violence and strong gore that kind of remind you of the the grizzly moments of Bring Her Back. I mean I thought it I thought it was really, really well done. There's a bit of Ringu in the people moving in a strange way going on there. There's a little bit of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, but most of all there is this whole really weird story about imposing your will on somebody else and then then having to deal with the effect of that. Performances >> Does Does a wish counter that? Well, that's I mean that that's the point.

[00:04:45]It's like it's, you know, it's it's it's a horror trope.

[00:04:48]As I with all horror films they only actually work if they make some kind of sense. And the monkey's paw thing is always it is literally be careful what you wish for. And that is something which people say in the real world, not just meaning wish for. It means be careful what you long for, because the thing is you might get the thing that you long for and that may not be something that you actually necessarily want. There is a great central performance by Inès de Clermont-Tonnerre who plays Nikki and she is amazing in the film, but I thought the whole thing was really well done. I came out afterwards and a colleague of mine Oh, actually um Boyd said >> Boyd Hilton Boyd Hilton and he said that was really, wasn't it? And I said, "Yeah, it was really." And then we both it was really >> It was really really, really messed up.

[00:05:33]We had a great time, but it was as twisted as anything and it's it's uh yeah, it's it's full-on and I really liked it and it's there are things in it that are really, really, really