Obsession (2026 theatrical release)

A wish for love turns out to be a demand for obedience.

Written and directed by Curry Barker · Approximately 109 minutes
Starring: Michael Johnston · Inde Navarrette · Cooper Tomlinson · Megan Lawless

Source-based first draft. Verdict and advisories are proposed; numerical Corny DNA remains unscored. Explore the 2026 additions.

Bear cannot make himself say what he wants to Nikki. He can, however, buy an object that promises to change what she wants. That is a concise foundation for a horror film: a man attempts to bypass the possibility of another person's answer, then finds himself terrified by the answer he has manufactured.

The official synopsis identifies the wish-granting novelty and Curry Barker's writer/director credits. Obsession is filed here under its 2026 theatrical release, as requested. The same official account records its September 2025 TIFF premiere; that earlier date explains sources calling it a 2025 film.

Before you watch

A coercive romantic premise and loss of bodily agency, extreme bloody violence and facial injury, sexual activity, self-harm and suicidal behaviour. A cat's death and disturbing treatment of its remains are also present. The BBFC advice supports the violence, sexual and self-harm warnings; specific outcomes remain behind the disclosure. The supernatural context does not make the coercion an ordinary consensual relationship.

Specific content details (contains spoilers)

Nikki briefly regains her own voice and begs for escape from the imposed attachment; the ending restores her autonomy after Bear dies.

The first bad decision has already been made

The wish is useful dramatically because its wrongness does not depend on a technical loophole in the magic. Bear wants a person to feel something she has not freely chosen. The escalation can therefore be frightening while exposing a problem that existed before the object worked.

Michael Johnston gives Bear an awkwardness that can invite sympathy without making him an innocent observer of the disaster. His discomfort is recognisable. The expectation that another person's independence should be adjusted to relieve it is more troubling.

That gives the film's comedy a target. A romantic hope can be clumsy, ordinary and understandable; turning it into a binding instruction changes its meaning. The horror takes the familiar wish to be adored and asks what happens when adoration no longer contains the possibility of refusal.

A face becomes difficult to read

Inde Navarrette has the harder physical assignment. Nikki's attachment must appear appealing, wrong and dangerous without making every moment play at the same pitch. The film needs the viewer to register a person and a distortion of that person inside the same performance.

Barker's official interview describes his use of obscured faces, long takes and concentrated locations. Those choices support a particularly intimate uncertainty: somebody is close enough to touch, but their next action has become unreadable.

The resulting threat is well suited to ordinary domestic space. Remaining in a familiar house lets repetition become uncomfortable. A habitual movement or a pause at a doorway can acquire a different meaning when the person performing it appears to have lost an ordinary limit.

The long takes also make waiting part of the action. Cutting away can supply relief or information; holding a shared space leaves the audience uncertain which will arrive first. The most effective passages make that uncertainty more important than the arrival of another visible injury.

The victim of the wish must remain visible

The film's ethical difficulty is built into its viewpoint. Bear experiences the result as a nightmare relationship, while Nikki has had her capacity to choose altered. A story can acknowledge both forms of danger, but the balance of attention matters.

When the film permits Nikki's original self to become perceptible, the premise becomes more disturbing. The problem is larger than an excessively demanding partner. Someone has made another person's feelings into a mechanism, and the person inside it has to live with the consequences.

The broad comic beats can complicate that understanding. If a scene encourages the audience to enjoy Nikki primarily as an outrageous girlfriend, it risks reproducing the perspective the wish ought to expose. The performance often keeps the discomfort alive; the framing is not equally precise in every passage.

Escalation cannot do all the emotional work

The later violence is forceful enough to change the experience substantially. What begins with social awkwardness and an absurd purchase becomes severe bodily horror. Viewers expecting the premise to remain a light black comedy should have that change made clear.

The increasing extremity can also make the supporting relationships feel functional. Friends become sources of information, jealousy or danger before they acquire the weight that the consequences deserve. The central idea is strong enough to survive some compression, though repeated demonstrations of instability do not always deepen it.

The recommendation therefore depends on tolerance for both the material and the film's chosen emphasis. It can generate intimate dread with considerable control. Its strongest moral question is more interesting than simply wondering how the protagonist can get out of a contract he regrets.

Corny DNA

The novelty-shop premise has deliberate absurdity, and the film is willing to find a laugh inside discomfort. Its most effective horror is sincere and invasive. The strange mechanism does not make its cruelty harmless, and grotesque excess does not automatically earn a cult recommendation. Numerical scores remain unassigned.

Verdict

Watch with caveats — proposed. Strong intimate staging and Navarrette's performance give the wish-gone-wrong premise real force. The caveats are severe violence, self-harm and animal material, repeated escalation and a viewpoint that sometimes privileges Bear's inconvenience over Nikki's dispossession. Best suited to viewers interested in a dark examination of entitlement who are prepared for an exceptionally nasty final movement.

Spoilers from here

Reveal the ending and detailed analysis

The person left with the consequences

Bear dies after a suicidal act, and his death releases Nikki from the imposed attachment. Her final response is horror at the violence around her. The scene account corroborates that outcome and her earlier moments of resistance.

That ending makes the restoration of agency different from a happy resolution. Nikki can choose again, but the damage performed through her body remains. The film's final emphasis is strongest when it allows her to become the person who must confront what the romantic fantasy has done.

Bear's inability to regard her wish for release as more important than his own hurt also sharpens the original premise. The flaw was never merely that he selected an unfortunate wording. Another person's refusal had become something he wanted the world to correct.

The ending should not be reduced to a triumphant punishment of an unpleasant boyfriend. It leaves a survivor whose freedom arrives inside trauma. That complication is a better reason to take the film seriously than the ingenuity or severity of any individual kill.

Sources

This owner-requested addition does not establish Seen-list status or approval of the proposed judgment.