Curry Barker’s Obsession is an absolutely crazy movie. If there is one feeling I want to get across in this Obsession movie review, it is the constant unease I felt throughout. This is a horror flick, but not the usual kind built around ghosts. It takes a very different approach to the horror that can emerge from something as familiar as a relationship.

While watching it, I realised that it wasn’t just a horror film. It was also a commentary on how some relationships actually are. When you start paying close attention to the minutiae, you realise that the movie is showing us what a relationship can become when you are so obsessed with a person that you stop understanding what boundaries are.

You have to give it to the leads: Inde Navarrette as Nikki and Michael Johnston as Bear. But Nikki was something else altogether. Navarrette’s acting is so brilliant that you are going to remember her for days.

She doesn’t just drive the horror forward. She also makes you cringe with discomfort on so many occasions that you forget where the thin line between acting and reality lies. She is absolutely phenomenal in this movie.

Constant Anxiety, Familiar Ground

Obsession is a phenomenal feat in cinema, a one-of-a-kind movie that gives you constant anxiety. I felt something similar when I watched Weapons: that same combination of fear and thrill. It made me feel as though I was watching another great horror flick built around a voodoo-like premise.

Even though this territory has been explored before, Obsession gives it another meaning. The way it so effortlessly introduces a concept that feels fictitious, yet gives you something very real to be afraid of, is remarkable. The backdrop feels familiar enough for you to imagine something happening to anyone. Even the violence and gore feel natural and real.

You are definitely going to be talking about this movie, and particularly Navarrette’s performance, for years to come. If the intention was to make you terrified of what a relationship could become, she absolutely killed it.

Obsession Movie Review: When Love Becomes Blind

Without going too far into the plot, I want to talk about the parallels with relationships.

Bear comes across as a naive young man whose heart is laid bare at the beginning. We see how vulnerable and emotional he is when it comes to matters of love, and how long he has had feelings for Nikki.

When he encounters a wish-granting stick, he ends up wishing that Nikki would fall in love with him. He isn’t entirely serious about the act itself, even though his feelings are serious. The movie builds on that thoughtless mistake: wanting something without thinking through what getting it might actually mean.

Once the wish begins to work, things become frightening. Yet Bear doesn’t immediately recognise that they are getting out of hand. At first, he is getting what he wanted: a relationship with Nikki.

When people say love is blind, this is the sort of thing I think of. You can become so caught up in your feelings that you stop seeing the problems, even the major flaws in the other person’s behaviour.

Nikki starts doing weird shit almost as soon as the relationship begins. But Bear keeps finding room to excuse it. That feels familiar: people overlooking mistakes, even blunders, and accepting increasingly disturbing behaviour because they are in love.

As an audience, we can see what is happening and desperately want him out of it. From inside that relationship, getting out seems much harder. His own feelings keep him from seeing clearly what would be best for him.

Obsession movie review: Inde Navarrette as Nikki standing in a lit doorway at night

“Well, I guess the good thing about a closed book is I get to read it from the start.”
Nikki · Obsession (2026)

Promotional still: Courtesy of Focus Features. Quote spoken by Nikki.

The Horror Beneath the Relationship

Nikki’s obsession may be heightened by the film’s supernatural premise, but the behaviour it brings out has recognisable parallels in reality. You don’t need a wish-granting object for someone to become possessive or lose sight of another person’s boundaries.

Her changes are obvious to the people around her, but they don’t seem obvious to Nikki herself. That is part of what makes it so unsettling. The movie takes emotions that can exist beneath the surface and pushes them to terrifying extremes.

Gradually, Bear starts to understand what is happening. Even then, he is afraid of what Nikki might do to herself. He also keeps reminding himself that he was lonely and that he wanted to be with her in the first place.

That is another painfully recognisable part of the relationship: sacrificing your own wants, freedom and space for your partner, while convincing yourself that you have to stay. The film’s exaggerated situation makes that conflict difficult to ignore.

Some of Nikki’s jealousy might initially seem stereotypical, but the emotions beneath it feel recognisable. Look at her reaction when Bear leaves the bed, or when he is asked to kiss the girl next to him. The film gives those feelings an extreme outward expression.

You find yourself thinking about how someone might feel when a person they love starts pulling away, and how frightening it becomes when those feelings turn into control. That is where the movie’s relationship commentary really works for me.

It remains a horror flick that can be watched for its gore, scares and thrills. At the same time, it quietly makes you think about the nuances of a relationship and the damage obsession can do to it.

Obsession Movie Review: A Performance That Stays With You

The title is absolutely apt. The movie justifies it completely, and I cannot praise these young actors enough.

Navarrette deserves particular credit for a performance that is so far outside the ordinary. She brings together horror and deeply unsettling behaviour in a way that keeps you trapped in a cubicle of anxiety throughout the film.

You are constantly wondering how and when Bear can escape the situation he has brought upon himself. For once, in a movie about love, I found myself rooting so desperately for the relationship to end.

That is what makes Obsession so effective. It gives you frightening ideas and scenes while making the boundary between its fictional horror and recognisable behaviour feel uncomfortably thin.

This is a highly recommended movie if you haven’t watched it already. Come for the horror, but don’t be surprised if you leave thinking about the reality of relationships as well.

For another look at control and captivity within a relationship, read my Berlin Syndrome review and analysis.