Obsession review
By Joel Humphries · Watched 05.14.26
★★★★½ 4.5 / 5
Spoiler-free review
Obsession begins almost like a romantic comedy about a weak-willed man unable to tell his longtime friend how he feels, then gives him a magical way to force the answer he wants. What follows is a feature-length Twilight Zone punishment: disturbing, violent and increasingly twisted as desire curdles into consequence. The jump scares worked, the atmosphere kept tightening and by the end my heart was pounding. Horror rarely frightens or even interests me; this left me simultaneously exhilarated and vaguely traumatized. It is excellent filmmaking that I do not need to experience again soon—which is about as strong a recommendation as this genre can earn.
Full review — contains spoilers
I don’t know what I expected from this, but by the end my heart was pounding. It starts out almost like a rom-com about a weak-willed guy who has been friends with a girl for six or seven years without ever telling her how he feels. He keeps trying to work up the nerve, and you can see him get right up to the edge of saying it, then never do it. And she pretty clearly does not feel the same way.
Then he finds a magical way to force her to fall in love with him, or so he thinks. And it goes very wrong, in a very twisted way.
It’s basically a movie-length Twilight Zone episode: someone gets exactly what they want, and then gets punished by the thing they wanted. There are a lot of jump scares, and they got me. There is graphic violence. Terrible things happen to animals.
Honestly, I came out of this feeling traumatized and exhilarated. This was excellent, but I don’t think I want to see it again soon. I think it may have changed me in some way. Not really, obviously, but rhetorically speaking. I don’t want to go through experiences like this often.
But the movie is very well done. It’s everything you want from this kind of horror movie. I’m famous for not finding horror movies scary or even interesting. Usually I just find them funny.
This wasn’t funny. This was disturbing. And this was very interesting.
Go see this if you like horror on any level. It won't disappoint. Just don’t walk in all casually thinking you’re just going to have a good time and move on. Some of this stuff is gonna get to you.