‘Obsession’ Crashes IMDb Top 250 with Staggering Numbers

Horror has seen its fair share of unexpected successes, but few stories have unfolded like that of Curry Barker’s debut feature. The 26-year-old YouTuber-turned-filmmaker shot ‘Obsession’ in just 20 days on a budget of approximately $750,000, a figure that barely registers against typical Hollywood productions.

Before ‘Obsession’ premiered at festivals, Barker was primarily recognized for his viral 2024 short ‘Milk and Serial’, a thriller featuring a pair of YouTube pranksters that he released for free online. Nothing in that backstory hinted at the seismic cultural impact that was about to unfold.

The film debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 5, 2025, as part of its Midnight Madness section, and the audience’s reaction transformed everything. Following the screening, studios engaged in a bidding war for the project, with Focus Features ultimately winning out over Neon and A24 for domestic rights, acquiring it for a reported $14 million.

Universal Pictures International was then brought on board to manage overseas distribution. The premise that sparked all this excitement is deceptively simple: a hopeless romantic breaks the mysterious “One Wish Willow” to win his crush’s heart, only to find that some wishes come with a dark, sinister cost.

That cost has been repaid many times over. As noted by Geek Vibes Nation, ‘Obsession’ has now made its way onto the IMDb Top 250 Films of All-Time, currently sitting at number 248 with an impressive rating of 8.1 based on over 82,000 user votes.

The film also boasts a Certified Fresh 96% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, along with a Verified Hot 95% audience score—figures that are almost impossibly rare for any horror release, let alone a micro-budget debut. Critics on Rotten Tomatoes have described it as creatively grotesque and darkly funny, praising Inde Navarrette’s performance and establishing Barker as a filmmaker to watch.

The box office trajectory has been equally astonishing. The film opened to a domestic debut and achieved matching 94% scores across critics and audiences, before doing something nearly unheard of in the industry. According to producer Jason Blum, ‘Obsession’ is the only wide-release horror film on record to experience growth in its second weekend at such a scale, earning $22.4 million, a 30% increase over its opening.

It then experienced another 10% jump in its third weekend, pulling in $26.4 million domestically. The film has now surpassed $234.5 million globally, making it the highest-grossing horror film of 2026 and landing in the top 10 highest-grossing films of the year overall.

The film’s success has already put Barker in high demand, with the director set to helm the next installment in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, while his Blumhouse follow-up ‘Anything But Ghosts’, starring Bryce Dallas Howard and Aaron Paul, is currently in post-production.

A sequel to ‘Obsession’ is also a possibility, though Barker has suggested the idea of an anthology series where other filmmakers can offer their own interpretations of the world he created. For a film that began as a passion project shot in under three weeks by a YouTuber with a $750,000 budget, an IMDb Top 250 placement feels less like a milestone and more like an inevitability.

Whether ‘Obsession’ will climb even higher in that ranking or fade as the votes settle, it has already secured its place in horror history. Now the real question is what you think: does ‘Obsession’ deserve a spot in the all-time Top 250, or does its rapid rise feel too swift and too fresh to comfortably sit alongside the classics?