Obsession (2026)

I had genuinely never even heard of Obsession until people started coming out of early screenings talking online about how much they loved it. That’s usually the exact kind of thing that gets my attention. Horror fans are either the most dramatic people alive or the greatest marketing team on earth, because the second I start seeing reactions like “this movie messed me up” or “I can’t stop thinking about it,” I immediately need to know what everyone is talking about.

So I went to see it knowing absolutely nothing.

I hadn’t even accidentally absorbed plot details online, which honestly feels almost impossible these days. All I had seen was the incredibly vague Google synopsis that technically described the movie while also somehow saying absolutely nothing useful about it.

That ended up being the perfect way to experience this movie.

Now, I don’t necessarily think Obsession is doing something wildly original from a story perspective. At its core, the premise feels familiar enough that you can recognize the framework pretty quickly. But what it does do well is fully commit to its tone and to the psychological instability of its lead character.

And the lead actress absolutely carries this movie.

She gives the kind of performance where you fully understand why people were talking about it afterward because she commits so hard to the obsession and unraveling at the center of the story that it becomes both unsettling and, at times, weirdly funny.

Not intentionally comedic necessarily, but the kind of uncomfortable humor that naturally happens when tension gets pushed so far that audiences don’t quite know how else to react.

There were multiple moments in my theater where people started quietly giggling to themselves, and you could tell it was half nervous laughter and half genuine amusement at how absurdly intense certain scenes became.

There’s one moment in particular where she’s hiding in the corner of a dark room in the middle of the night, and the entire theater was trying so hard not to laugh out loud. It was creepy, yes, but also staged in such an extreme way that it crossed over into this bizarre shared audience experience where everyone collectively lost composure for a second.

And to be clear, this movie is creepy.

There’s definitely gore involved, and there are several scenes that lean heavily into psychological discomfort and tension. So if you’re someone who avoids horror that gets graphic or emotionally intense, this probably won’t be your thing.

That said, my biggest complaint about the movie actually had nothing to do with the story itself.

It was the sound.

And I need everyone involved in modern horror sound mixing to relax.

The volume discrepancies throughout this movie were honestly insane. One second everything would be nearly silent, and the next it felt like the theater speakers were actively trying to rupture my eardrums. I didn’t even see this in Dolby, which somehow makes it worse because I cannot imagine what those screenings sounded like.

There were multiple moments where I physically flinched, not because the movie scared me, but because the sound suddenly became absurdly loud.

And I hate that this is my primary criticism because it makes me sound approximately ninety years old.

But truly, I spent part of this movie wishing I had brought earplugs to the theater, which is not generally the emotional response filmmakers are aiming for.

I think that aspect alone kept me from fully loving the experience. Because outside of the sound mixing, I actually appreciated a lot about what the movie was doing. It’s short, effective, unsettling, and anchored by a performance that’s committed enough to keep even familiar material feeling fresh.

It also understands something important about psychological horror, which is that the scariest thing is often not the actual events themselves, but watching someone completely lose their grip on reality in real time.

And Obsession absolutely leans into that.

So while it may not end up being my favorite horror movie of the year, it’s definitely one I’m glad I saw, especially going in completely blind.