The cinema is and remains the pinnacle. That’s why YouTube stars regularly make their way onto the big screen. But while for a long time there was only something like “Potato Salad”, “Smosh: The Movie” or “Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie”, there has recently been a 180° turnaround – especially in the horror genre: Instead of relying solely on their own online popularity with half-baked trash, there have recently been more and more serious projects that – in many cases rightly so – have generated hype far beyond the YouTube bubble:
The Australian video creators Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou landed a surprise hit that was celebrated worldwide with “Talk To Me”, which they were even able to follow up on with “Bring Her Back”. And when Mark Fischbach alias Markiplier couldn’t find a studio for his video game adaptation “Iron Lung”, he simply self-distributed the submarine horror to cinemas – with a success that was not thought possible and that shook the whole of Hollywood.
From YouTube joker to horror phenomenon
But currently at the forefront of the YouTuber-pushing-into-the-cinema wave is Curry Barker, who rose to fame as one half of the Internet sketch duo “that’s a bad idea” and has now made his second film at just 26 years old. His debut “Milk & Serial” (2024) cost just $800 – and was released directly on YouTube after an unsuccessful studio search, where the psychological shocker, which was created with practically no budget but with so many ideas and twists, created such a huge buzz that Blumhouse (“Five Nights At Freddy’s”, “M3GAN”), among others, gave him a million dollars for his follow-up project.
But where the fuss surrounding “Milk & Serial” was already pretty exaggerated and the film exceeded expectations, especially “for a YouTube video”, the hype surrounding “Obsession – You Should Love Me” that has persisted since its premiere in the midnight section at the Toronto Film Festival is absolutely justified: what a brilliant (and extremely nasty) variation on the well-known “be careful what you wish for” scenario!
After his wish, hardly a moment goes by when Bear (Michael Johnston) doesn’t feel like he’s being watched.
Bear (Michael Johnston) works in a music store with his best friend Ian (Cooper Tomlinson, the second half of “that’s a bad idea”). While his good friend Sarah (Megan Lawless) obviously has his eye on Bear, the hopeless romantic has a huge crush on his colleague Nikki (Inde Navarrette). However, this has made him feared for years Friend zone banished – and besides, he would be far too shy to confess his feelings to her anyway.
When Bear comes across a “One-Willow-Wish” – a kind of toy that looks like a willow branch and grants you a wish if you break it – in an esoteric shop, he knows that it’s nonsense and will never work, but he still can’t resist: So he wishes that Nikki would love him more than anything else in the world – and it doesn’t take long before he regrets exactly that more than any other decision in his life…
Sounds familiar, but it’s not!
No question, the plot sounds like you’ve seen the whole thing 100 times. At least. When it comes to wishes that backfire, it’s not just the “Wishmaster” series that has long covered the field extensively. But you can tell that Curry Barker is so much cleverer and more ambitious in his script from the very first scene, which comes with the first little twist. But it only really starts with the wish – and then things quickly become very uncomfortable: we know enough love magic scenes where the victim then sticks to the wisher like a burdock. But with “Obsession” everything is much more subtle and ambivalent. Nikki’s sudden openness seems “off” from the start – including brief hints that something or someone in her may still be resisting being with Bear now.
There are no moments – like in the bloody sex doll grotesque “Companion” – that are initially carefree and romantic, but then turn into horror. Instead, “Obsession” offers pure, brilliantly written and acted cringe horror right from the start – including provocative references to the topic Consent. There’s only one sex scene – and it’s also very short – but it doesn’t even need any additional shock elements to make you squirm in your cinema seat (and want to take a shower as quickly as possible afterwards). Curry Barker shows no mercy in this respect – neither for the audience nor for his characters, as he takes the scenario once set in motion to its logical conclusion with ice-cold relentlessness. But gore hounds don’t need to worry either…
It is precisely in the car that the gore outbreak takes place, because of which “Obsession – You Should Love Me” was almost given an NC-17 rating, which is extremely rare for studio films.
… because Curry Barker not only doesn’t do things by halves when it comes to psychological thrills, but he doesn’t take any prisoners either. In one of the film’s most violent scenes, a head is smashed against a stone slab over and over again until all that’s really left is a mushy pulp of blood and brains. A truly shocking spike in violence – which was originally intended to be even more violent: As the filmmaker has since revealed in interviews, he even had to cut out a whole series of head-to-stone blows because otherwise “Obsession” might have been given an NC-17 rating – and in the USA, as is well known, that means a financial death sentence at the box office (at least as long as the film is not titled “Terrifier 3”).
As much as Curry Barker deserves all this praise, one should definitely not forget Inde Navarrette (“Trap House”) – because with what she does here, she not only embodies the TikTok-viral grin faces from “Smile” and “Smile 2”, but also contributes significantly to the fact that the scenes and dialogues in the script develop such a profoundly disturbing effect. Sometimes grotesquely funny, sometimes blood-curdlingly shocking – and almost always so cringe-worthy that it almost physically hurts to watch.
Conclusion: Rarely has one experienced such a leap in quality between a first and a second film! Curry Barker has become famous as a sketch comedian on YouTube – and at the age of just 26, he is also launching a career as an outstanding new voice in horror cinema! “Obsession – You should love me” is one of the most ambiguous, clever, nastiest, densest and violent shockers in a long time – and alongside Curry Barker, the leading actress Inde Navarrette is also an absolute discovery!
We saw “Obsession – You Should Love Me” at the Fantasy Filmfest Nights 2026, where it celebrated its German premiere as the opening film.