Dir. Curry Barker, US, 2026, 109 mins

Cast: Inde Navarrette, Michael Johnston, Megan Lawless, Cooper Tomlinson

Review by Colin Dibben

This Gen Z ‘when relationships go wrong’ horror allegory is masochistic, claustrophobic and intensely disturbing. That is all largely down to a continuously ambiguous performance from Inde Navarrette as Nikki, the victim of a drippy chap’s wish come true.

Slightly whiny Bear (Johnston) has the hots for his co-worker Nikki. They are good friends, spending their evenings hanging with chums Ian (Tomlinson) and Sarah (Lawless), who also work at the audio retailers.

Bear can’t bring himself to ask Nikki out. After he fluffs it one more time, he makes a wish with an odd product called One Wish Willow that he has picked up in a New Age shop. Bear, of course, wishes that Nikki will love him more than anyone else in the world.

The One Wish Willow is a 1950s retro-styled fake willow twig that the wisher snaps in half while mouthing the words of his or her wish. Bound to work, right?

Except it does and Nikki turns fast into much more than Bear bargained for. We see less of the great sex that Bear was probably wishing for, and more, much more, of the possessiveness and jealousy that you associate with troubled, asymmetrical relationships.

This may sound like a recipe for a misogynistic disaster of a movie, a sort of Gen Z Fatal Attraction. But you would be wrong.

Bewitched Nikki is hardly the dream girlfriend. As Bear says to Ian pretty soon after his wish comes true, “She’s being weird”, which says more about his own uncertainty about what he has done than anything else. Nikki fluctuates constantly between adoration and torment but nails the situation at one point: “I can’t be me because of you and what you have done”.

Writer-director Barker and actor Navarrette obviously worked on keeping Nikki’s torment multivalent, positing at once and at different times the tyranny of projected desires, the universal question ‘what do I really want from a sexual relationship, apart from rubbing uglies?’, and suggesting some sort of autonomy – with related ‘rights’ – for the bewitched beloved … all the while keeping it gory and darkly comic as well as traumatic and disturbing.

There are times when the real Nikki manages to come through. On the other hand, it is the nature of the bewitched or possessed Nikki that is the real tease here and keeps the audience on its toes. She is insanely possessive, sure, but one part of her torment is due to her perception that Bear is repelled by what he has made of her. He is repelled because he knows her love isn’t real; he merely wished it and it came true. She is tormented by sensing this. This suggests a remnant of autonomy in bewitched Nikki or the possessing entity (if it is one) or both, as well as moments of clarity for Nikki.

The film feels claustrophobic because it plays out from Bear and Nikki’s increasingly hysterical perspectives, largely in Bear’s apartment once the two of them are gruesomely loved up. This claustrophobia gives it a Miss Julie kind of vibe too. It is, in part, that serious!

Some will see Obsession as just another gory horror film. I found it a totally frightening depiction of poisonous relationships and the nightmare of projected desires. Inde Navarette’s Nikki scared the hell out of me, but so did Bear’s diluted neediness.

If they can give an award to Isabelle Adjani for 1981’s Possession, surely Navarette deserves one for this.