Obsession Review: Love as a Horror Trap

This Obsession review starts with the thing the film makes impossible to ignore: Inde Navarrette is gut-wrenching. Curry Barker takes a simple wish-gone-wrong premise and turns it into a small, sick, breath-holding nightmare about control. The film works because it keeps the world tight, the performances raw, and the horror personal.

TL;DR

• Obsession is a nasty, intimate horror romance built around the One Wish Willow and one very bad wish.
• Inde Navarrette gives the film its sharpest edge as Nikki, a character who feels broken, haunted, and painfully human.
• Curry Barker’s direction works because the film stays small, controlled, and emotionally ugly.
• As of May 16, 2026, Obsession is a theatrical horror release worth seeing with an audience.

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• What is it about?
• Why does Nikki work?
• How does Barker control it?
• How does it sound?
• Should you see it?

What does this Obsession review say the film is really about?

Obsession is about the terror of getting love without consent, then realizing desire can become a locked room with no clean exit.

The clean read is simple. Bear, played by Michael Johnston, breaks the mysterious One Wish Willow because he wants Nikki, played by Inde Navarrette, to love him back. The official NBCUniversal Obsession explainer frames the premise as a hopeless romantic getting exactly what he asked for, then discovering the price.

That is the hook. The film’s bite is sharper. Bear does not ask for a conversation. He does not risk rejection. He asks the world to rewrite Nikki for him. Barker turns that tiny selfish act into body horror, romance horror, and social horror at the same time.

That is why the movie hit me so fast. I was immersed from the first few moments because the setup feels almost childish, then starts to rot. The horror is not that the wish fails. The horror is that it works.

Why is Inde Navarrette so gut-wrenching as Nikki?

Inde Navarrette makes Nikki terrifying because she plays every version of her as human first, even when the spell turns violent.

Navarrette is wickedly delicious here, but the performance does not work because she goes big. It works because she gives every glance, smile, twitch, and silence a reason to make you hold your breath. Nikki feels haunted before she feels monstrous.

In a May 16, 2026 People interview with Inde Navarrette, she said she wanted Nikki to read as a person before the extremity of the role took over. That choice is all over the screen. Even when Nikki becomes terrifying, the sadness stays visible.

The film would collapse if Nikki became a gimmick. She never does. Her broken, possessed devotion feels like a wound that keeps opening. That is why the performance is heartbreaking from beginning to end.

How does Curry Barker make a tiny world feel destructive?

Curry Barker keeps Obsession focused by treating the One Wish Willow as a simple tool, then making every consequence feel physical.

Barker had a vision and saw it through. The movie does not overbuild its mythology. It gives us a wish object, a crush, a mistake, and a chain reaction. That restraint makes the world feel smaller, meaner, and harder to escape.

NBCUniversal notes that Obsession premiered during Midnight Madness at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival on September 5, 2025, before its May 15, 2026 theatrical release. That festival context fits the film. It has the crowd-pleasing snap of midnight horror, but it also has a nasty emotional undertow.

The spaces feel boxed in: the music shop, Bear’s home, bedrooms, parties, cars, doorways. Nothing feels casual for long. If you like compact genre storytelling, this sits near the same lane as my piece on writing an A24-style story, where the threat grows from one clear emotional problem.

How do the score and sound make Obsession feel sick?

The score works because it stays close to the characters, letting unease build through restraint, repetition, and ugly emotional pressure.

The score is subtle, beautiful, and upsetting. It does not tell you when to be scared in the cheapest way. It sits beside Bear and Nikki’s sickly obsessiveness, then lets the emotional pressure do the damage.

That restraint makes the louder moments land harder. Screams, pauses, and sudden shifts in behavior feel like cracks in the room. The sound world follows the same rule as the visual world: keep everything close enough to hurt.

That is where Obsession earns its scream-inducing texture. It is not loud all the time. It is patient enough to let dread curdle. For another recent horror review about body, control, and performance, read my review of The Substance.

Should you see Obsession in theaters?

Obsession is worth watching in theaters because its best scares come from shared silence, nervous laughter, and sudden, ugly violence.

Yes, with the right warning. This is not comfort horror. It is funny at points, but the comedy has teeth. It is romantic only in the way a locked door can look like shelter from the outside.

As of May 16, 2026, Obsession is playing only in theaters after its May 15 U.S. release. In a spoiler-heavy Entertainment Weekly interview about the ending, Barker described how much thought went into the final emotional shape of the film. You can feel that control without reading the spoilers first.

There is also a real career-story charge around Barker. A May 14, 2026 Guardian interview with Curry Barker traces his jump from online horror work to a Focus Features theatrical release. Still, the film does not feel like a calling card. It feels like a filmmaker grabbing one cursed idea and squeezing until it screams.

I absolutely enjoyed every minute of it. If Sinners showed how grand horror can feel when myth and music swell, Obsession shows how nasty horror can feel when the whole world shrinks to two people and one poisoned wish.

Obsession works because it understands the difference between being wanted and being trapped. The film is small, destructive, confusing, and alive in the ugliest way. Read more horror and film writing in the Movie Review archive.