The supernatural premise is unsettling. More disturbing still are the film\u2019s pessimistic conclusions about human relationships. Loneliness is torture. But love is (maybe literal) hell. <\/p>\n
Barker is here working in the Monkey\u2019s Paw genre. As in WW Jacobs\u2019s story of that name, the protagonist wishes upon a weird bauble only for his greatest desire to arrive sheathed in nightmare. The convincingly nervy Michael Johnston \u2013 a ringer for Paul Mescal<\/a> \u2013 plays Bear, a music-store employee in the sort of dun-brown US suburb that hosts so many contemporary horrors. <\/p>\n For most of his life he has been in love with Nikki (Inde Navarrette), now his colleague, but he has never found enough courage to make the move. After one more failed effort, he reaches for a One Wish Willow, a vintage novelty item claiming to grant the owner any desire, and, as a distraction rather than with hope of results, asks that Nikki love him above all others. Within seconds she is at the window of his car wearing a pleading look.<\/p>\n Bear and his aghast friends are almost immediately aware that this is no ordinary crush. There is the fanatical nature of her devotion: she tapes over the inside of Bear\u2019s door to stop him leaving the house; when he does eventually leave, we get the sense that she is going to stand rigid in the centre of the room until he returns.<\/p>\n There is also the sense of a barely suppressed torment within her. Every now and then she will burst into a shriek. In one of the film\u2019s most uneasy moments, Bear, now insanely regretful, has a conversation with, perhaps, the old Nikki within her sleeping host. \u201cPlease don\u2019t wake her up,\u201d she says. \u201cJust kill me.\u201d<\/p>\n Navarrette\u2019s performance deserves all the prestigious awards it almost certainly won\u2019t get. (For all of Amy Madigan\u2019s success with Weapons<\/a>, horror remains an outlier.) She masters an intensity that skirts the parameters of everyday eccentricity before careering into the land beyond madness. Bear is initially frightened of her moods. Later he is frightened that she might actually murder somebody.<\/p>\n Johnston has, on the surface, the less challenging task \u2013 playing a largely passive introvert who gets in over his head \u2013 but the actor does a good job of balancing guilt with regret. <\/p>\n Some of the friends, unaware quite how harassed he feels, worry he may be taking advantage of a damaged psyche. Audiences will have wider concerns about just what the film is telling us about women and the men who yearn for them. <\/p>\n Online discourse being what it is, someone will surely claim the film sides with a misogynistic line that women are perpetually insufferable. But the picture is surely more a horrified critique of that incel-adjacent tendency than any sort of endorsement. It matters that Barker often casts a pall over Navarrette\u2019s face, making an archetypal spectre of her, a presence deprived of specificity. You don\u2019t need to side with the film\u2019s apparent negativity to feel its chilling grip.<\/p>\n![\"Inde](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/SIF62UDGLZHKBLQVJHEGHEDY7Q.jpg\")
Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston in Obsession. Photograph: Focus Features <\/p>\n