This past Sunday, I had a really nice dinner with my friend David after the worst week of probably both of our lives in a long time. Truth be told, we had both been through real life versions of a horror film as we both lost our longtime companion cats this week completely out of nowhere so the grieving has been real, here in Seoul. That kind of loss is simply unendingly painful and unspeakable and the experience is truly horrific so we needed a day to decompress and so we went out.

During our meal, as we are wont to do, we started speaking about cinema, more specifically, horror films. I had just finished catching up on a collection of titles on Saturday that I had been trying to watch and so we chatted about the Good, The Bad and the Ugly of these works. Annnnnnd, of course, the term “elevated horror” came up. We agreed on many points but the main one being that it’s a slightly condescending and/or silly term that has the unfortunate ability to undercut and undermine current horror cinema works but also disregards the caliber of previous work.

Thus I have decided to write a few pieces on “elevated horror” for Spooky Month, 2026. I’m going to start with a film that I had very serious issues with because some friends asked me to explore that in a larger setting than a simple Letterboxd review or Bluesky post. I am, of course, happy to do because there were many things about Curry Barker’s Obsession (2025) that I found not only objectionable but flat-out upsetting.

First I want to talk about what a sensation this film is here in Korea. It’s HUGE. And that alone is unsettling in a country where, statistically, young men do not play well with their ladyfriends. Stalking is massive here. I have had more women friends and acquaintances than I can count relay horror stories to me about having to deal with an ex who evolved into a horror-film-style stalking presence in their lives. Not that this doesn’t happen in the Western world but in my almost 7 years of living here, it’s one of the bigger negative issues I’ve noticed that stands out in a way that it never has in any other country I’ve visited or lived in.

So how does this relate to Obsession? Well, the popularity of this film here in Korea concerns me as a) not all the representations are positive (many are flat-out negative) and b) I think it’s a clumsy attempt at social commentary costumed in the gown of this whole Elevated Horror thing.

A film synopsis (SPOILERS AHEAD!): a young man named Bear has a hard-core crush on his friend, Nikki. She doesn’t seem to be returning his affections, so he makes a wish on a novelty item for her to “love him more than anyone else” and it becomes a Monkey’s Paw situation but worse (if I ever thought that to be possible). The horrors that reveal themselves after Nikki becomes possessed with the obsession are not only terrible to watch and manage to be so toxic that they leave everything and everyone in their lives and friend-group completely destroyed (and mostly dead). By the end of the film the person who is left to deal with literally all the consequences is the Real Unobsessed Nikki because the only way to break the wish is for Bear to die by suicide (which he eventually does).

So I do want to be clear that I think the film has had a lot of fascinating reactions, many of which are quite positive. But that doesn’t make it a good movie. In fact, I see these things as simply by-products of a film that is largely hateful towards women. There is an extensive discourse that has followed between couples and various men and women post-release that, in my eyes, is quite a good thing. Obsession has certainly created a space in which men can show their asses and women can reject them for being the asses that they have shown themselves to be. What am I talking about? Let’s do a bit of amateur sleuthing.

If you take a look on Reddit, TikTok, Instagram or even simply type in “couples breaking up over the film Obsession” there are now copious hits. You can find dozens upon dozens of videos, posts, rants, blogs and real-life internet horror stories about women who went to see the film with their partners only to discover, post-viewing, that said-partner (always a cis-male, usually white) was on the side of the character Bear and felt no sympathy (let alone empathy) for the character of Nikki. That part isn’t as interesting as the fact that these women are actively seeing this as a big ol’ red flag and ending their relationships over it. Over a movie. Which…I support. Because I do think this film kinda hates women. If it didn’t, it would have been far more meticulous and caring over the representation of Nikki. Even a horror movie has to love its characters. And the Obsessed “Freaky Nikki”? She did not get much love.

I understand that Barker likely never intended to demonize Nikki or make Bear the hero. But if you make a clumsy film, you get clumsy results. And, sadly, when you attach age-old misogynist tropes to a female character (even one who is “not herself” at the time of said-portrayal), it’s destined to backfire. While Nikki is clearly supposed to be a different person while she is Obsessed, Obsessed Nikki resonates far too well with areas of toxic masculinity that I virulently reject.

Haven’t we seen enough women acting like babies or being child-like for attention? This patronizing male fantasy made me physically ill. Nikki acts like she’s 7 not in her early 20s with her pouty-face, stomping and throwing tantrums. Barker makes the horror film-effort to take it to 11 and underscore Bear realizing that his fantasy is no longer so fantastic, but it’s the honoring and uplifting of a male fantasy nonetheless, while sacrificing a woman’s dignity.

Not only that, but clearly, with the film’s Wish Fulfillment (in the Freudian sense and the narrative sense), Nikki’s agency is not only denied but she becomes trapped in her own body which no longer belongs to her and also she cannot control. Even basic bodily functions like urination (which she does on Bear’s carpet, like an untrained animal), are no longer within her grasp. One might argue that this is a commentary about the patriarchy, but one might also be wrong. The kinds of suffering and humiliation that we watch this woman go through just because one dude was upset about being friend-zoned is just a bucket full of ladyhate. We see this everyday. Why exploit a woman’s body and soul just to show what a dick Bear is?

Literally, we get it. He’s not a good guy. He’s not the Nice Guy everyone thinks he is. Not every Nice Guy is a Nice Guy. Ok, fine. But I didn’t need to watch the woman protagonist/antagonist run through the litany of stereotypes that men have about “bad girlfriends”- I certainly didn’t need to see the nagging, screeching, needy cliché played out. That’s so old. And it’s not smart. This film certainly had potential but it missed the target with all the anger directed towards women. And boy howdy, that was a lot of anger.

I will freely admit that Inde Navarette, who plays Nikki, does a fantastic job. She plays the role perfectly. But it’s not a role that is meant to be liked. If anything she is meant to be pitied, and what woman wants to be pitied?

I think that Bee Dolores in her carefully considered critique of Obsession, said it best when she wrote:

The swell of the manosphere…has been devastatingly plastered inside Obsession in a way that’s neither cheeky (as good satire should be) nor poignant in deconstructing male rage against women. In 2026, I’m not advocating for subtlety (we’re long past that), but I do demand a far more careful and critical analysis of our culture, especially if you are a cis straight white man making movies.

So I ask- is this “elevated horror”? Is this what we are talking about when we are imagining this new “smart-scare” genre? I think not. It does not like or respect women and its inclusion in the new “elevated horror” continuum allows it to argue for its complexity and its social “responsibility.” Sure, it’s horror, but it’s ladyhatin’ horror. Which we certainly don’t need any more of these days.

A well-made film with great effects and great performances, but extremely problematic and emphasizes some of the issues in the “elevated horror” umbrella term. And sometimes you just have to call this shit out. Basically, in my eyes, if it looks like a duck, and it acts like a duck…well, fucking quack quack. It’s a damn duck.