Obsession (2026) Review: Careful What You Wish For

Is Obsession worth watching?

Yes. Obsession is a sharp, gleefully uncomfortable horror romance that takes the oldest warning in the genre, be careful what you wish for, and makes it feel newly pointed. Curry Barker finds comedy and dread in the same premise and never lets one cancel out the other, and Inde Navarrette gives a performance that is by turns sweet, funny and genuinely frightening. The reservation is tonal: the film swings hard between cringe comedy and brutal violence, and some viewers will find its escalation more punishing than playful.

What is Obsession about?

Bear Bailey (Michael Johnston) works in a music store and has quietly pined for his co-worker Nikki Freeman (Inde Navarrette) for longer than he would like to admit. When he gets hold of a novelty “One Wish Willow” charm, he breaks it and wishes that Nikki would love him more than anyone in the world. The wish comes true. Very quickly, what looked like a dream becomes a supernatural compulsion, and Bear finds himself trapped with a devotion he cannot control or undo.

Obsession is an American production in English, directed by Curry Barker, with Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless and Andy Richter in the supporting cast. It runs 109 minutes, screened at TIFF in 2025 and reached cinemas in May 2026.

A monkey’s-paw story about entitlement

The film’s smartest idea is where it places the horror. Bear is not a villain in the usual sense; he is a shy, awkward young man, and the opening stretch plays like a gentle workplace romantic comedy. But his wish is a way of skipping the part where another person gets to choose, and the film slowly makes that uncomfortable truth impossible to ignore.

Barker handles this with real control. Rather than lecturing, he lets the audience enjoy the fantasy of the wish for a few scenes before it starts to rot, so viewers are implicated in the same desire the story is punishing. It is a horror film about consent and possession that works first as a very dark joke and then, increasingly, as a nightmare.

Inde Navarrette’s unsettling double act

The film belongs to Navarrette. She has to play Nikki as a real person before the wish and something much stranger after it, and the shift is chilling precisely because she keeps traces of the original character visible. Her line readings can be sweet and terrifying within a single scene, and several of the film’s biggest laughs come from the same moments that make an audience flinch.

Michael Johnston is well cast as Bear, a man never quite clever or brave enough to get out of the trap he built. His panicked reactions ground the comedy, and the film wisely does not ask the audience to like him too much.

Where the escalation gets heavy

Barker’s background in comedy shows in the timing, which is excellent, and in the confidence with which he stages awkward silences and sudden shocks in ordinary spaces like a shop floor or a small apartment. The more demanding part is the later escalation. The violence becomes graphic, the film touches on self-harm, and the tone grows markedly bleaker as it goes. It is consistent with the premise, but at 109 minutes the relentlessness can wear, and the humour gets harder to find as the stakes rise. For most horror fans, that bleakness will be part of the appeal.

Who should watch Obsession?

It suits fans of horror with a comic streak, viewers who enjoy genre stories built around a single cursed idea, and anyone curious about a new voice in American horror. It also works as a pointed date-night film, though couples may come out arguing. Content considerations are significant: bloody violence, self-harm, disturbing psychological scenes and strong language.

Three good companions:

• Get Out, for horror that begins as social comedy and uses discomfort as its main weapon.
• Send Help, Sam Raimi’s horror comedy, for a similar blend of laughs and nastiness.
• Bram Stoker’s Dracula, for an operatic take on love as a supernatural force that consumes.

The verdict

Obsession is a wicked, witty and genuinely disturbing take on a wish gone wrong, with a fearless central performance from Inde Navarrette and a director who knows exactly how long to keep the audience laughing before the floor drops away. Its later violence will be too much for some, but as a horror film with something real to say about wanting love on your own terms, it is one of the year’s standouts.