Obsession Review 2026: A Disturbing Horror Story About Love, Control and Desire

Curry Barker’s Obsession, released in 2026, is one of the year’s most disturbing horror filmsa scrappy low-budget trip into a one-simple-wish scenario transformed into nightmare of possession, dispossession, and trombone. Penned, helmed, and cut by the ex-sketch comedian, it tells a story of Beara shy music store clerkwho’s had a thing forhis co worker at the shop Nikki for yearsbut could never really tell her so. One day fed up, he buys a small novelty Wishing Willow (a cheap magic-adventure cliche developed to perfection here), says that she should love him more than anyone else in the world, andcrash.

Inde Navarrette is the film’s true star, as Nikki. Before the wish, she’s fierce and self-sufficient, not at all interested in having any female competition with Bear. Afterwards, she’s a grotesque parody of girlfiendship, obsessively clingy manic insanely jealous, and breaking down by the moment. Occasionally still the real Nikki pops through the cliche, and those moments of pleading or confusion make it harder to think of her as truly possessed. Barker very obviously juxtaposes the crawling, bulging monster with her human form to bring to the front the ways that desire can easily slide into control. Bear asked for it, and it is precisely this fact that Barker, by letting Bear’s enjoyment and subsequent disgust play right next to each other, refuses to absolve him. His joy in watching it all unfold shows a quiet selfishness that plays to current trends.

The horror is achieved by tone not cheap thrills. Domestic spaces become cramped. Night becomes oppressive, transforming Nikki into an unseen watcher and giving her face a permanent shadow. When the violence finally comes it is even-handed, chaotic, and analytically sharp. The friends who challenge the relationship are simply impediments that must be eliminated. The film’s violence is intermittently graphic, but when it arrives it leaves you with a visual that persists longer than the blood. What stays in your mind longer than the blood is the knowledge that love inventively manufactured is no love at all. Forced love consumes and exhorts Nikki, taking away her will to define, to plan, and even to defend, and makes her romantic reverie a prison.

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Some reviewers have likened Obsession to a contemporary Monkey’s Paw story turned Google search into a Gen-Z panic attack about the loneliness of Tinder. It is both a supernatural thriller and a barbed parable of the ways we’d much rather spiff up our bitch’s feelings than suffer a flat rejection. Obsession doesn’t have to preach; it just lets the pain play out with icy finality. Navarrette’s breadth of physical and emotional expression drives the film as he ranges from a glisteny glow to a candle to a candle melting into cool blue: withering you inside and out. Johnston’s Bear is heartbreakingly recognizable: clumsy, adorable and good: ever so slightly guilty.

At just under two hours long, Obsession is tightly built and will only be rewarded with a rewatch as you try to make sense of all the hidden layers in this beautifully constructed story. It had its world premiere at TIFF in 2025, was picked up by Focus Features, and soon became a financial success after its May 2026 big screen release. Everyone knows you can’t just give a good movie away. This one laughs at you as it is killing you with the dark way. A little scary, very personal way.

Sometimes truth hurts the most when we think, in our minds, maybe a bit, that we deserve our desires and then end up wanting to own them. Barker has created a horror film that clearly understands that there is a huge gulf between being loved and being possessed, and it is that which is the real terror of the film.