His creepy score made 'Obsession' a blockbuster. What's Rock Burwell's next wish?

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Set us as preferred Before you know something is wrong with Nikki in “Obsession,” you feel it in the music.Seconds after her aspirant boyfriend, Bear, snaps the One Wish Willow to make her fall in love with him, she walks back out of her house, a little sheepish and newly smitten.But the groaning synthesizer underneath her bashful smile tells you something is off — a crystalline tone now distended, unnerving.“From that point on, there’s a tinge of darkness,” composer Rock Burwell said of that signal moment in “Obsession.” “It was a complex scene to figure out, because it’s such an intimate moment.

How can we kind of get this feeling that’s disorienting, weirdly playful, but also twisted and concerning? It’s the personification of that wish manifesting in real time, and the viewer becoming aware that something is awry.”That song, “R U OK” is a standout moment in Burwell’s score for “Obsession,” the breakout horror hit of the summer.The film shot Curry Barker onto the A-list of new directing talent and made a star of Inde Navarrette and her virtuosically unhinged performance as Nikki.Directed by YouTuber turned filmmaker Curry Barker, the movie peps up a functional script with an ace performance by Inde Navarrette as a woman under a dark spell.As “Obsession” hits streaming after two months of dominating theaters, the film is getting preemptive Oscar buzz, too.

Part of that attention is aimed at Burwell’s score, a masterpiece of electronic minimalism in which pitch bends and hard clashes create the dread and whiplash that make the film so tense.As artificial intelligence and corporate consolidation threaten film and TV budgets and opportunities for emerging artists, Burwell’s work on “Obsession” is a potent argument for reinvesting in young, edgy talent.“I’d be lying if there w...