Curry Barker’s incisive and excruciating horror takes romantic desire to startling ends.
Music store employee Bear longs for his coworker Nikki without hope of success, and on finding a wish-granting novelty gift asks that she love him “more than anything else in the world”. He immediately becomes the centre of hers, to the point of making him uncomfortable – and before long, her behaviour starts to tear their lives apart. Writer-director and Youtuber Barker (Milk & Serial) draws on classic horror tropes and more recent cultural discourse to tell a deeply unsettling and memorable story, where the small scale, sharp character writing, and imaginatively wrought violence build toward a horrifying conclusion. Each step feels all too real through brilliant acting from the leads: Michael Johnston as the desperate Bear and Inde Navarette as the trapped, unpredictable Nikki.
