Obsession: The Girlfriend From Hell Doesn’t Boil the Bunny, But She Does Do Some Weird Things With the Cat

June 2026

 

You know that Girlfriend from Hell...

 

Who won’t let you go anywhere without her...

Creeps you out when she watches you sleep...

 

Tapes the door shut with electric tape to try and prevent you leaving for work...

Pees on the carpet because she won’t move ...

From her position in front of the door

Waiting all day for you to return...

 

You don’t?

 

Lucky you...

 

But poor Bear in Obsession...

Learned an important lesson in life...

 

Be careful what you wish for...

 

Because he made a wish that Nikki...

A co-worker who was keeping him in the friend zone..

Would love him more than anything else...

 

And boy did she ever...

 

Now the obsessive girlfriend is a time worn premise for a horror flick...

 

But YouTuber Curry Barker...

Took $750,000 and made a film that has grossed over $300 million to date

 

For good reason...

 

And it wasn’t just that cat sandwich...

 

Or the bloodied bodies... because in that regard Obsession is relatively restrained for this genre ...

 

Because keeping the audience off balance is Barker’s schtick...

As his characters toggle between love and hate/ sanity and insanity

In the blink of an eye...

 

So watching Obsession...

Made me wonder if Barker has ever had a girlfriend with borderline personality disorder...

Because that is what Nikki looks like...

 

Until she starts doing weird things with the cat...

 

Or maybe its because Barker’s mom was a psychiatric nurse practitioner...

So I bet he heard some interesting stories growing up...

 

And although Nikki doesn’t boil a bunny...

What she does with the cat...

Did strike me as a homage to Fatal Attraction...

Another film about obsession....

 

So Barker has obviously done his horror flick homework...

 

But it’s his originality with this genre that stands out...

 

Now Barker first made a name for himself ... and his partner Cooper Tomlinson...

When they dropped out of film school...

To make clever shorts they posted on YouTube...

 

Like My Roommate is a Robot

And The Vodka Stand...

 

And I’d encourage you to check them out... as they are actually quite funny...

 

But it’s clear Barker’s heart is in horror...

 

And his first foray into this genre was The Chair...

A horror short film which went up on YouTube in 2023...

And picked up 10 million views...

 

And in many ways foreshadowed what he did in Obsession...

And not just because he used flowers as a visual metaphor...

Or had people hitting heads...

Theirs ... and those of others....

On hard things like furniture...or bricks...

 

And The Chair, like Obsession, is a psychological drama...

Where characters change moods so quickly...

You have trouble keeping up...

 

And reality is so obscured...

You can’t tell who is sane and who is not...

 

Up next was the full length found footage film Milk and Serial in 2024...

About a couple of YouTubers....

Who prank and gaslight each other and their friends...

But what first looks like some innocent fun...

Ends up in murderous intent...

 

Barker made Milk and Serial for $800...

 

And to be honest, it shows...

 

But after two years...

When he was still unable to find a distributor...

He put it up for free on YouTube...

 

And bang......

 

The critics... as well as the audience noticed...

 

And so Barker has now hit the big time...

 

And Obsession.... his first theatrical release...

Shows he has honed his craft...

 

The Chair drags a bit...

And Milk and Serial a lot...

But Obsession doesn’t...

 

And unlike the unsatisfying... and confusing... ending of The Chair...

Obsession leaves the audience surprised...

 

And impressed...

 

There are still some hiccups...

And lighting is one of them...

 

But that may improve with a bigger budget...

 

But what makes Obsession worth a look is not its visual style..

But its storytelling finesse...

 

And the way it ends...

 

With Nikki... in a moment of real horror...

Recovering her memory...

 

Which will stay with you

More than all those bloodied corpses you see splayed on the floor

In the standard horror film...

 

So Obsession is a tribute to how...

 

A guy who...

Who dropped out of film school...

To work at Starbucks...

 

Used YouTube to make a name for himself...

 

And has now made it into the major leagues...

 

And deservedly so...

 

Now horror is my least favorite genre...

But I walked out of that theater wanting to see more from Curry Barker...

 

And that’s a tell....

That maybe you shouldn’t your waste money on film school...

Just buy a camcorder like Curry...

And start putting your films on YouTube...

 

Because if you’re good...

 

Like Barker, Glitch and Gooseworx...

 

You will be noticed...

 

And then more decent films will start showing up in our theaters...

 

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