'Obsession' (2026): Inde Navarrette Gives the Horror Performance of the Decade

There's a version of Obsession playing in my head that lives up to every ounce of the hype surrounding it, and there's the version I actually watched. They're not the same movie, and reconciling that gap is most of what this review is about. Curry Barker, making his theatrical debut (he'd already shot a feature before this one, just never released it, so calling him a total newcomer undersells what he brought to set), directs with a confidence that rarely announces itself. He lingers on faces a beat too long, lets shadows swallow half a frame, and trusts stillness to do the work most horror films outsource to noise – barely a jump scare in sight. The dread here is architectural, built room by room, and that restraint alone tells you this isn't a filmmaker coasting on his internet fame.

And then there's Inde Navarrette (13 Reasons Why), who is doing something I don't say lightly: this is the best breakout horror performance in years, full stop. Ahead of Mia Goth's committed extremity in X, ahead of Amy Madigan's unnerving control in Weapons, ahead of Naomi Scott (Smile 2), Sophie Thatcher (Companion), Sophie Wilde (Talk to Me), and every other name that's rightly been part of this genre's recent renaissance. Navarrette isn't just playing scared or menacing. She's playing two distinct people wearing the same face, and the seams never show. Her unraveling Nikki is feral, physical, all-in, the kind of go-for-broke transformation that makes you forget you're watching a performance at all. Michael Johnston (Teen Wolf) holds his own as Bear, particularly in the movie's quieter, more pathetic early stretch, but he's not meant to compete with what she's doing, and he doesn't. This is Navarrette's film, and she treats it like the opportunity of a lifetime.

Where things get complicated for me is the story itself. The premise is a good one, but "good" and "inventive" aren't the same thing, and once the wish is made, Obsession settles into a rhythm that never really surprised me: Nikki gets stranger at night, the escalation ticks forward on schedule, and the back half plays out roughly how you'd expect from the moment the concept is introduced. I also wished – no pun intended – the movie to actually reckon with what it's depicting. It brushes up against consent, against the idea of someone's autonomy being quietly stripped away, but it never pushes that idea front-and-center directly, never lets the weight of it land the way it should. It's gestured at, not grappled with. That's a meaningful gap in a film clearly capable of more depth than it settles for.

What does land, and lands hard, is the reversal buried in its final stretch. Barker doesn't ask you to dread becoming Nikki. He asks something worse: whether you'd have made Bear's wish yourself, back when it still felt innocent, before you understood what wanting something that badly could cost someone else. Watching a man who thought he was harmless slowly realize he's become the obsessive one, the one who can't undo what he set in motion, reframes everything that came before it. It's a smart, quietly devastating piece of writing tucked inside a movie that otherwise plays it safer than its ambitions suggest.

Obsession isn't the horror landmark some made me believe it is. It's something a little more modest and a little more human: a genuinely great performance in a good, occasionally too-comfortable film, and proof that sometimes wanting something isn't the dangerous part. It's what you're willing to take from someone else to get it.

Rating: B+