Obsession (2026)

Curry Barker's hugely impressive and deeply disturbing horror flick turns its simple premise into something far more sinister.

Obsession plays with a lot of ideas within its initial simple premise of a love spell gone wrong. Michael Johnston is Bear, a music store employee with a pretty obvious crush on Nikki (Inde Navarrette), a co-worker and childhood friend. When he finds a novelty gift that promises the owner one wish, Bear seizes the opportunity.

The film opens with Bear attempting to tell Nikki how he feels, resulting in a scathing response from his best friend Ian (Cooper Tomlinson). It feels like Bear's thoughts are all too obvious, and although we never get the impression that Nikki is completely blind to this, she also makes no attempt to put Bear out of his misery either way. This is all about to change in the most horrific way possible.

After finally being offered an attempt to tell Nikki how he feels, Bear falters, as we always knew he would. He then snatches a wish stick, originally bought as a gift for Nikki, and snaps it, using his one request to ensure she loves him more than anyone else in the entire world. It works, and after an initial honeymoon period in which Bear suddenly gets all that his heart desired and is oblivious to the early warning signs (or at the very least, puts them to one side), things start to get very messy.

Obsession received an 18 certificate from the BBFC, and although it earns such a certification, the bloody violence doesn't unleash itself until well into the drama. But Curry Baker's film appears to pull the rug from under all who have already seen and reviewed this. The reason Obsession is such a good film is not because it's scary, but because it presents an uneasy, disturbing portrayal of a deeply coercive, manipulative, and narcissistic relationship, cleverly wrapped up in what is easily marketed as a horror film. In the screening I attended, much of the audience was laughing frequently at the film's deliberately inserted humour, yet I remained stone-faced.

It's not that the lines aren't amusing, but more that they feel put there for those who simply see obsession as a straight-up horror with supernatural undertones. What Baker does so brilliantly is to make the film work as just that, but for those who read Obsession in the way I've suggested, it's a far more disturbing and effective piece than you might think. This would work just as well if the genders were switched. As it is, we get the illusion of a relationship that is at the height of unhealthiness, as Nikki reacts in increasingly violent ways to Bear's everyday living; even him going to work on her days off is torturous for her. She lives to serve his every need, and this in itself is problematic. I've read an interesting take on the film that sees Bear as an incel, and although I don't necessarily agree with the theory, it makes an astute assertation about the points I believe the film is making.

You're reminded of Paddy Considine's brutal Tyrannosaur (2011) and the hideously violent marriage that Olivia Colman is a part of. Baker ensures his film doesn't take itself seriously enough in terms of visuals or dialogue to take it in such a direction, but for those, like me, who sit there feeling increasingly uncomfortable, the parallels are undeniable. It might well be that I'm reading Obsession in a way nobody else is, but I doubt it.

Obsession works because it is chilling, and there are moments where it is so in the more traditional fashion. Facial expressions or brief sentences from Nikki that suggest the real human is in there somewhere and has been taken over by something else are genuinely disturbing and tilt the film back into the realms of true horror.

For many, this might well play out exactly as it's been sold. A Friday night popcorn horror that blends a simple idea and runs with it, intersected by some laugh-out-loud moments; a surface-level supernatural horror. But for me, it's far more than that, and I walked out thoroughly unsettled. I might well be wrong, but I think that's down to the superb multi-layered suggestions that Baker infuses his film with, and this marks him out as a horror director to be reckoned with. ★★★★ 8.0/10