Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

The misplaced obsession over “Obsession”

Touting Curry Barker’s perfectly fine horror film as an instant classic reveals the depth of its flaws

Published June 4, 2026 12:00PM (EDT)

Sixteen minutes into “Obsession” — the massively popular, shoestring-budget horror film breaking box office records and bucking expectations left and right — writer-director Curry Barker gives it all away. Driving home from bar trivia, best friends and coworkers Bear (Michael Johnston) and Nikki (Inde Navarrette) chat about life, and all the differences between where they are and where they want to be. Bear can barely hide the hearts in his eyes as Nikki speaks, wondering if this might finally be the time to confess his love for her, when she beats him to the emotional punch: She’s fed up with her job and has put in her two-week notice. Nikki wants to write full-time and believes that a lack of love in her life is stifling her manuscript. The word piques Bear’s curiosity, causing him to wonder aloud if Nikki’s writing a romance. “It’s not a romance, it’s a love story,” she immediately corrects him. Laughing, Bear replies: “Isn’t that the same thing?”

As “Obsession” so painstakingly reminds the viewer over the next 90-some minutes, a romance and a love story are not the same thing, and our ability to so easily confuse the two is Barker’s point. Love is overwhelming but can still be one-sided, an imbalance that love’s all-consuming nature disguises. Romance, on the other hand, implies a unique feeling two people share, a spark that can be nurtured together as their lives intertwine. “Obsession” is the latter: a tale of love and all of its foibles and frailties, devoid of any actual romance — something that, given the extended pause after Bear’s question about their interchangeability, Barker clearly wants the audience to remember.

(Focus Features) Inde Navarrette as Nikki and Michael Johnston as Bear in........

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