Obsession takes the old adage “be careful what you wish for, because it might come true” literally in order to tell a contemporary story built around an archetypal premise. In suburban Los Angeles, a young man in love, pining for the affection of a longtime friend—the girl of his dreams—wishes for his love, which he has not dared to confess for years, to finally be reciprocated. Once the wish is granted, the consequences become infernal. Old recipe, updated package; it is good enough to create an effective horror-love story.

Written and directed by Curry Barker, his sophomore effort takes its time engaging with the characters before playing with genre tropes (from romantic comedy to horror) and later providing well-earned shivers. Sitting across the table at an ordinary diner, Bear (Michael Johnston) pours his heart out to his off-screen object of desire, explaining how long he has held onto his feelings and how much he wants to be more than friends with her. He looks sincere and wounded, yet full of hope. The next cut reveals a young woman listening to this confession. She smiles, seemingly delighted by the speech, though she is only a waitress playing a part in a rehearsal for the real moment.

The playful trick is revealed through the intervention of Bear’s best friend, Ian (Cooper Tomlinson), who dismisses every sentiment Bear has just expressed. But both men agree that Nikki (Inde Navarrette), their mutual friend since high school and now a co-worker at the same music store, would not respond well to such an intense confession. The guys, given that they are still in their early twenties, make the mistake of understanding women not as people in all their complexity, but merely as recipients of their longing.

Against Ian’s wishes—he doesn’t want to ruin the trivia nights they attend every week at the local bar—Bear decides he is finally ready to confess his love to Nikki that same evening. Nikki, meanwhile, has announced she has put in her two-week notice. She doesn’t know what she wants to do next, but she wants a change, one that may involve leaving the suburbs behind. Bear is not ready to let her go, much less abandon his feelings, but he cannot find the right moment to confess—not even outside her house after offering her a ride home. You can’t entirely blame him, since there are enough clues suggesting she only sees him as a friend.

Once she leaves, he instead decides to make a wish, breaking the One Wish Willow, a wooden stick he had bought at a New Age store as a prank gift for Nikki (which he didn’t dare give her). Aware of how ridiculous he looks and feels, he still wishes for Nikki to love him “more than anything else in the world.” The gift box carries warnings about the wish being irreversible, but this is just a trickster novelty toy, right? The results are immediate: Nikki returns to his car asking Bear to take her to his place. They spend the night together, and she is the first one to confess her love. It is a dream come true, until it isn’t. But Bear is far too consumed by his happiness to notice the warning signs.

Once Nikki and Bear become an inseparable couple, it becomes obvious that she is essentially an entirely different person, with no agency or independence beyond being in love with Bear. Their friends notice it too and begin suspecting that something is deeply wrong. This is where Obsession begins transforming into the promised horror film about an unhealthy, codependent relationship, with a dose of twisted comedy playing with the idea of the archetypal “toxic girlfriend” taken to its absolute extreme.

Navarrette’s performance is exceptional in its body language, suddenly transforming her into a menacing presence that makes you hold your breath even when she is simply standing in the dark watching her lover sleep or creeping around unexpectedly. By the time Bear realizes the magnitude of his mistake, it is too late to prevent the madness and violence soon to come, along with the fatal consequences that will also engulf their close-knit circle of friends.

Obsession wisely avoids relying on background lore or prior explanations about the One Wish Willow product. It’s the right decision. Too many films these days over-explain their mysteries—and their silliness—as an exercise in world-building meant to set up potential franchises, ultimately killing the allure of what the imagination can fill in on its own. However, there is also a component of surface-level entertainment here that occasionally crosses a delicate line, creating what partly amounts to a misogynistic nightmare/meme (the clingy girlfriend you can’t get rid of) without enough counterbalance in dissecting the male delusions that simplify women into fantasies or terrors—which is perhaps the foundation of Bear’s wish in the first place.

In any case, Obsession offers horror and romance fans alike the opportunity to intermingle over a twisted date-night movie. It perfectly plays with a nightmare scenario for those obsessed with keeping it cool: Love will make you look cringe, and you can’t avoid it.