We were joined on Popternative by Obsession writer-director Curry Barker, alongside the film’s stars Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston. After premiering at TIFF and earning rave reviews as one of the standout horror films of 2026, Obsession is now playing in theaters. Marking Barker’s feature film debut, the movie has already made a major impact, currently holding an impressive 94% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Obsession follows Bear (Johnston), a shy man who turns to a mysterious novelty item known as the “One Wish Willow’ in hopes of winning over his longtime crush, Nikki (Navarrette). His wish is granted almost immediately, as Nikki begins to fall for him, but the enchantment soon takes a dark turn. What starts as romance quickly turns into something dangerous, as she becomes trapped in an obsessive, aggressive state. The cast also includes Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, and Andy Richter.
On how she prepared for the scenes where Nikki shifts from zero to one hundred instantly and displays extremely erratic behaviour, Inde says, “It was a lot of just preserving my energy and then the moment that [Curry] called action, sending it as hard as humanly possible. I knew that I had to do it that way. But that was a process and I felt super safe and it was a lot of fun. We just had a lot of fun. At a certain point it was just [like], how much more fun could we have?”
Johnston reflects on filming the group scenes compared to the more ones shared with Inde: “Most of the movie is just me and Inde, and also the way we shot, [it was] very out of order, for example, Bear’s house is almost half of the entire movie and we filmed those all back-to-back. So, if I’m being honest, the group scenes out at the dinner and the party were a really nice breath of fresh air because [I was] interacting with other people and getting out of the crammed house.”
Barker shares that he would like to eventually create a director’s cut of Obsession, noting that there is a significant amount of unused footage: “I would love to do a director’s cut of this just because there’s so many things that are not in the movie. That would be really fun. But it would literally be a project for me. I would have to set aside some time to really dive into the footage again. It would have to be something that Focus [Features] really wants and I would be like, “Yes, let’s do it.””
Watch the full conversation with Curry Barker, Inde Navarrette, and Michael Johnston below.
Obsession is now playing in theaters.
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