Obsession (2025 film)

Obsession is a 2025 American supernatural horror film written, directed, and edited by Curry Barker. The film follows Bear (Michael Johnston), a music store employee who buys a supernatural toy that grants his wish for his friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette) to fall in love with him, which makes her become obsessed. Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, and Andy Richter appear in supporting roles. A YouTube sketch comedian, Barker uploaded his short horror film The Chair to his channel in 2023. When producer James Harris approached him to adapt it into a feature film, Barker took the opportunity to pitch Obsession, a different film idea of his partly inspired by The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror II". The film was shot in Los Angeles in October 2024 on a $750,000 budget. It is Barker's second feature-length film, after Milk & Serial (2024), and first to be released in theaters. Obsession premiered on September 5, 2025, at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), where Focus Features acquired the distribution rights for $14–15 million, the highest price commanded by a genre film in TIFF history, and Jason Blum came on board as an executive producer under Blumhouse Productions. The film was theatrically released in the United States on May 15, 2026. A critical and commercial success, it grossed $519 million worldwide and set multiple box-office records as the tenth highest-grossing film of 2026 and fifth highest-grossing horror film of all time, unadjusted for inflation.