Vague Visages’ Obsession review contains minor spoilers. Curry Barker’s 2025 movie features Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette and Cooper Tomlinson. Check out the VV home page for more film criticism, movie reviews and film essays.

For the past decade, it seems like every buzzy horror movie has cared more about heavy-handed allegories for grief and unprocessed trauma than actual scares. You could blame the paradigm-shifting success of Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014), but her film is effectively creepy at face value. It’s harder to view many of the horror directorial debuts which arrived in its wake, bearing an obvious influence, as anything more than belabored metaphors. Obsession, the feature directorial debut of YouTube sketch comedian Curry Barker, feels like a breath of fresh air in this regard, as the filmmaker doesn’t attempt to make an explicit thesis statement on a weighty topic. In a time where a horror movie needs to be about overcoming trauma to be taken seriously, a low-budget shocker like Obsession can be nasty and nihilistic on its own terms.

Obsession isn’t all guts and no brains, however, as Barker’s screenplay incorporates subtle satires of two dusty character tropes: the unwittingly toxic Nice Guy and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl of his fantasies. In Obsession, Michael Johnson portrays Bear, a music store employee pining after his co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarrette), who seemingly views her admiring colleague as a little brother, rather than a potential beau. One day,  Bear purchases a “One Wish Willow,” a discontinued novelty product from the 1980s which grants a single wish to anybody who breaks it in half. That same night, he fails to ask Nikki out when driving her home, and then wishes that she would love him more than anyone in the world. Immediately, Navarrette’s character becomes co-dependent, often unable to leave her house due to an overwhelming need to please Bear. It’s a classic Twilight Zone-style premise about being careful what you wish for.

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Barker has admitted that The Simpsons’ “Treehouse of Horror” series directly inspired Obsession, specifically a season 3 segment in which Homer gets a monkey paw. However, Bear’s poor wish-making decision isn’t positioned as a cautionary tale, and the character is never let off the hook for wanting to exert control over a woman’s emotions. This is a depiction of a man who lacks the self-awareness to comprehend his domineering, misogynistic impulses, but it’s not an overbearing commentary on toxic masculinity, as Barker keeps any social views firmly in the background so the protagonist can gradually become aware of the havoc he’s created on his own terms. Bear isn’t given the chance to atone for his sins, and everybody in his orbit suffers a fallout from the emotional torture he unleashes. With a protagonist like that, Barker more than earns the right to succumb to his most mean-spirited impulses.

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There’s an admirable simplicity to Obsession’s high concept. The wish can’t easily be reversed — you only get one wish, even if you buy more — and the director even makes fun of the idea that there would be further lore behind the device, with a phone number on the back of each pack leading to an ominous dead end. During a first watch, my mind went back to Richard Kelly’s The Box (2009), another modern riff on The Twilight Zone, where a married couple learns they’ll be given $1 million if they press a button in a mysterious box, even it will kill two strangers. The director lapses into full conspiracy thriller territory by revealing that the protagonists could eventually be the next victims, thus building out lore that connects their fates to various shadowy government agencies. A weaker iteration of Obsession would have followed those same impulses, refusing to accept the characters’ fates as granted and bending over backwards to develop convenient plot loopholes to save them. Barker’s screenplay is effective because it stays true to established rules, never deviating from Bear’s self-imposed path.

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Johnston and Navarrette are both excellent in the lead roles, with the latter performer standing out for sustaining an intense caricature of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype, highlighting how an Annie Wilkes-style sociopath (see the 1990 film Misery) lurks just below the surface of a romantically idealized trope. This is also aided by a plot which never lets viewers forget that Nikki acts against her will, as she momentarily snaps back to reality before being dragged back to her sunken place of servitude. Navarrette’s character is drawn far richer than any trope, simplified to aid a man’s power fantasy. The cruelest, most mean-spirited action emerges when Nikki’s agency is robbed, ensuring she still receives punishment alongside the man who wished for it. But every toxic, coercive relationship has collateral damage, and Barker paints this in stark extremes without pausing the horror to reflect and make his commentary overt and overbearing.

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Obsession refuses to underestimate the emotional intelligence of the audience and refrains from spoon-feeding viewers monologues about abuse and trauma. These themes have always been inherent within the horror genre, but the past decade of over-explaining them has proved a hindrance to anything which could be positively shocking. Obsession reminds moviegoers that the most effective way to approach dark topics is to experience them on your own terms.

Alistair Ryder (@YesitsAlistair) is a film and TV critic based in Manchester, England. By day, he interviews the great and the good of the film world for Zavvi, and by night, he criticizes their work as a regular reviewer at outlets including The Film Stage and Looper. Thank you for reading film criticism, movie reviews and film reviews at Vague Visages.

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Over the last few weeks, acts like Post Malone, Zayn, Meghan Trainor, the Pussycat Dolls and Kid Cudi have canceled major tour dates. Whatever their reasons behind the scenes (they range from finishing new music to spending time with family), some have cited “Blue Dot Fever” as a possible cause — a tour staring down too many unsold seats to make the numbers work.

It’s a tough environment for all but the biggest acts right now — gas is eye-wateringly expensive, fans’ concert habits changed post-COVID, ticket prices are higher than many would like, and social media fame doesn’t guarantee a crowd in person.

The Times spoke to Michael Kaminsky, the founder of music management firm KMGMT, Inc, a partner in the Vans Warped Tour and an instructor in USC’s music industry program, to gauge if “Blue Dot Fever” is real, what expenses acts are facing on the road now, and how a digital audience is no guarantee of a packed house anymore.

Is this phenomenon of “Blue Dot Fever” real, or is it just a coincidence for specific artists amid a tough economy?

I’ve represented artists for 20 years, and a lot’s changed. There used to be a lot of steps up the ladder — you’d play clubs at your band’s start, then theaters, then go onto bigger things. What I see now is the middle class eroding, and it’s harder for everyone there. Expenses are way up, some have tripled from even a few years ago.

For a lot of artists, it’s increasingly difficult to tour and have a healthy business. A lot of this is fans’ sensitivity to ticket prices, but kids also have a lot of options now, and going to concerts is not as ingrained in their culture.

Is this in part a generational shift for kids that grew up in the pandemic?

I meet a lot of 18- to 21-year-olds at my university. Growing up, kids going to concerts was a rite of passage. As a teen, friends took you to shows and it was cheap to learn to love live music. Over COVID-19, kids were not able to have that experience. Instead, it was making friends online.

Now, for lot of people, they’ll go to one or two big events a year, it’s like going on vacation for them. I’m a small part of a big festival (the Vans Warped Tour), and I’d say a third of people tell us it’s their first concert they’ve ever been to.

What feels different about the calculations acts have to make about touring now?

What I’m seeing is a lot of bands deciding not to tour in the first place. It’s too expensive, too risky, and there’s not as much upside as there used to be. You see some acts canceling tours, which is a bit systemic, but you’re also not seeing all the things behind that decision — the erosion of the middle class of artists and higher expenses.

Gas prices spiking has to play a role there.

It’s not just gas. A bus used to be $1,000 per day to rent, now it’s $3,000 per day. If you take one night off, for a midsized band, that’s very difficult to absorb now. You see bigger artists playing just 10 cities, but doing multiple nights. They’re essentially saying “If you want to see us, fly out.” That traditional way of thinking about touring is changing or has already changed.

You hear a lot griping about high ticket prices, but artists and promoters set those prices as a reflection of what their costs are. Is there a disconnect with fans’ expectations there?

It’s complex. If you’re Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, there’s still lots of profit to be made. But a big dilemma for artists is that fans feel like art needs to be accessible and valued as such, and tickets should be priced below what their value is to be fair. Then they watch tickets get bought by scalpers and flipped for multiples, so the person making the most money on a ticket is the scalper. But as soon as an artist charges fair value, fans get upset and say they’re being greedy.

It’s hard to watch the person doing the least work, who has not contributed anything to the tour, reaping the biggest rewards. You’re finally seeing artists saying “I can’t price a ticket just because it’s fair. I can’t price it below what someone will pay.”

At the advent of streaming, everyone said that you can make your money on tour. If touring is no longer profitable, how will artists survive? Is every band just a T-shirt company now?

Everyone wants to move to the superfan model. Everyone already pays $10-$15 month for streaming services, so there is new emphasis on merch and VIP experiences. What’s more exciting to me is seeing a whole new subculture develop — all-cash shows at nontraditional venues, and releasing your own music offline. We’re seeing a lot of analog consumption and fashion come back, which ties to an overall broader need for artists to endear themselves to fans, so they find more ways to appreciate meaningful art. We’re seeing the fringes of electronic music rise, and very heavy rock music rise. There’s a tidal change happening in youth culture that is tied to inaccessibility, a response to the devaluing of making art, that’s exciting to see.

I have kids who come through our school and their aspirations are not to play club shows. They want to play backrooms at record stores with 500 kids paying $15 and it’s only prominently advertised in a Discord group. They’re listening to music on cassette. Kids are sick of this AI-accelerated push, and they want to enjoy real art again, and see an appreciation for it as political and subversive.

Is it damaging for artists’ careers to pull down dates over low sales? You see some acts being more candid about that, which is surprising and honest.

When artists are having these problems, they know why these tickets come down. That’s OK, the economy has changed, culture has changed and there’s not much you can do about that. They’re pushed into it.

I’m sure it’s embarrassing, but I don’t know if fans think so. Yet a big part of being famous is people acting like they’re famous. You need momentum and hits to stay famous.

These are obviously fraught times politically and economically. How do these macro-level challenges impact on touring?

It’s getting very hard. I have a lot of tours on sale now, and the day the Iran war started, my daily ticket counts took a huge dip. Gas was up, and even for low-priced tickets it was difficult for people to say that three months from now they’ll have money, so they’re not gonna buy a ticket.

Even with all these new digital metrics and tools, is it getting harder to know what an act’s real, ticket-buying audience is?

It’s extremely difficult to tell what will move tickets. You can have a hit song or be huge on TikTok and sell zero tickets, but I’ve got artists who have played for 20 years, and put them in the right rooms and price appropriately, they’ll sell out.

Tickets are more disconnected from album sales than ever before. Some artists stream like crazy and can’t sell, others stream low numbers but super-serve a touring audience and have fans that want to come back over and over. Data can make you informed, but it takes a smart, dedicated team with history and knowledge.

There are lots of new tools, but there’s still an old-school mentality that’s resistant to new tools. I’m excited by whats happening with the next generation that communicates differently, and you can go to where they are.

All these seem like compounding trends for all but the biggest acts. How do you keep a fan base invested in seeing you live?

At the end of the day, people value art and artists need to value fans equally. More than ever, it’s very important to build and find unique relationships. It isn’t just putting out a song and having them perform. Be respectful, be appreciative. You have to find new ways to speak to them. All my artists make 100% of their living from being artists. Part of that job is understanding the fan base and showing that you value them, and every time you show up you knock their socks off and keep them coming back.

Russia in the early 1990s is a fascinating and mysterious place. The entire country essentially was transformed overnight with the fall of the Soviet Union, followed by several years of trying to figure out what kind of a nation they’d become. We now know the direction Russia ultimately took, of course, but the behind the scenes machinations are ready made for cinematic treatment. So, a film like The Wizard of the Kremlin, while decidedly a throwback sort of work, very much scratches that itch. The movie has elements that hit and elements that miss, but a couple of strong performances ultimately rule the day.

The Wizard of the Kremlin arguably could have been made into a compelling miniseries, but going about it as a film does keep things from sprawling out too widely. Now, the pacing is lax and the running time is a bit bloated, but the core of what makes this flick interesting is consistently in evidence. It’s a work that now seems like a throwback, though the issues it’s tackling are very much still on our minds today.

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After we set up the framing device of a writer (Jeffrey Wright) speaking to our protagonist, we officially meet Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano), a former avant-garde theater director and reality television producer that will grow to be a shadowy figure in government. In the early 90s, Russia had Boris Yeltsin in charge, so ineffective and drunk that he’s literally propped up for speeches. When oligarch Boris Berezovsky (Will Keen) assembles the Unity party, a group of the wealthy elite hoping to find a figurehead to replace Yeltsin. Berezovsky recruits Baranov to help, and they settle on Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Jude Law), the director of the Federal Security Service. He seems happy as a spy and skeptical of politics, but with only a time bit of convincing, he’s set to become Prime Minister.

Soon, Prime Minister becomes President when Yeltsin resigns. With Putin now elevated to power, the changes come hot and heavy. In short order, any hope of Russia becoming like the west goes away, reduced to a fearful gangster state. As Barnov becomes the right hand man of Putin, he’s conflicted about what he’s seeing, all the more so when he rekindles a relationship with Ksenia (Alicia Vikander), a woman from his younger days who gives him a potential way out.

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Paul Dano and Jude Law are both quite good, with the former getting a rare leading role, while the latter gives layers to what could have been a caricature. Dano also takes his fictionalized character and adds the complexity that never makes him feel out of place. It would be easy to have Baranov seem like a writer’s creation, though Dano allows him to fit in. You see the moments where he has doubts about you believe Dano, too. Law doesn’t show up until almost halfway through, and once he’s on screen, he’s effectively unsettling. He doesn’t play him as a monster, even as he does awful things, but he plays him so convinced of his own authority that it’s deeply creepy. Alicia Vikander is solid, though a bit wasted, while Jeffrey Wright has almost nothing to do. In addition to Will Keen, supporting players include Tom Sturridge, amongst others.

Filmmaker Olivier Assayas directs while co-writing with Emmanuel Carrère, and it’s an effort that should get him more consistent English language work if he wants it. While not on the level of a Clouds of Sils Maria or a Personal Shopper, his European sensibilities pair well with this look at Russian dealings. Now, Assayas does let things run long, as this goes far past the two hour mark, while some elements of the story are more interesting than others. Assayas and Carrère never figure out what to do with Wright’s character, either, so he feels superfluous. However, as a fly on the wall, watching as Dano’s character puppeteers it all, it’s never less than compelling.

The Wizard of the Kremlin would have been an Oscar hopeful two decades ago, when this type of flick was awards bait. Now, it stands as a bit of an odd duck, though even with that, it’s a compelling film with some strong acting contained within. Could it have been better? Sure. Could it have been a lot worse? Absolutely.

SCORE: ★★★

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