Composer Rock Burwell's Obsession score drew early Oscar talk

Rock Burwell wrote the score for Obsession, the horror film that took more than $400 million on a budget of under $1 million and became the breakout hit of summer 2026. As the film moved to streaming in July, the score picked up early awards attention alongside it.

The moment he points to comes early. Nikki walks back out of her house after her boyfriend snaps the One Wish Willow to make her love him, and a groaning synthesiser underneath her smile tells you something is wrong before the film does. "From that point on, there's a tinge of darkness," Burwell said of the cue, called R U OK, describing the aim as something disorienting, weirdly playful and concerning at once.

Burwell is 31 and grew up working with a musicians' collective in his native New Hampshire before moving to Los Angeles in 2019 with a rapper friend and networking hard on no-budget projects. He met the director Curry Barker in 2024 through Barker's comedy team, That's a Bad Idea, producing a comedy song for them. Barker got Obsession greenlit during those same weeks and asked him to score a feature.

The score works by decay. Day-spa keyboard swells are wrung out past recognition, You Wished for This careens from ambience into shredded digital noise, and the two parts of Love is in the Air turn a classic Hollywood love theme into something bloodied. Burwell traces the impulse to bingeing Twin Peaks, and the uncanny valley of something beautiful, raw and dark at once.

The soundtrack has sold on its own terms, blowing through a couple of vinyl pressings. The part that surprised him was messages from people who had not seen the film and could not stop playing the record. Ethel Cain, Flying Lotus and Kid Cudi have all praised it publicly.

He is set to score Barker's follow-up, Anything but Ghosts, about two cynical paranormal investigators who meet the real thing, and is hoping to be asked for Barker's A24 reimagining of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. He would like to write for a full orchestra one day without, as he put it, cosplaying as a classical composer, and has released singles from a shoegaze side project called Museum Complex.

Asked what advice he would give aspiring composers, he named proximity rather than craft: he and Barker lived five minutes apart and could meet in person, and that mattered more than anything else. More of our film music coverage sits on the electronic hub, alongside the row over generative AI in album artwork and Luminate's read on AI in creative work.