Obsession 2025 - Honest Public Reviews

Honestly I don't understand the hype. I felt the movie was repitive and predictable, with very little risk taken. The color was desaturated to the point it felt like a mistake. The writing was uninspired. It leaned way too hard on the in and out of reality displayed by Nikki, which was uninteresting and overdone. You could literally time a jump scare. The acting was okay, but the characters were all unrealistic. For a director's first film it was as expected, a bit messy and low budget. In regard to the hype and high ratings it makes no sense and starts to feel like a TikTok meme caught fire.

Mediocre story telling

A mixture of 2017 acting and 2026 slang

Complete story was predictable

The entire horror element was only due to jump scares and gore.

The story had nothing.

Just hyped up movie

Kanchana re release would have been better.

I know there is some talk about this movie had a "meaning".

But i never found any.

I've noticed a trend over the last few years where every decent movie gets hyped to an extreme level online, especially on TikTok and YouTube. Part of that may be because Hollywood has spent so long relying on safe formulas that audiences are hungry for something different. As a result, when a lower-budget or independent film tries something new, people often rush to label it a masterpiece. We've seen it happen with films like Weapons, Bring Her Back, and several others. They're good movies, but in my opinion, the praise often goes far beyond what they actually achieve.

Obsession falls into the same category for me. It's a solid film with strong performances and competent direction, but I don't see it as the masterpiece many people are calling it. The story follows familiar themes of obsession, manipulation, psychological unraveling, and blurred boundaries between desire and reality-ideas that have been explored countless times before in thrillers and dramas. While the film executes these elements well, it rarely takes them in a direction that feels truly fresh or groundbreaking.

What disappoints me more is the way online discussion around movies has become increasingly driven by hype rather than critical thinking. Too many people seem to adopt opinions from a viral TikTok clip or YouTube video without really examining why a film works-or doesn't work-for themselves. Genuine discussion gets replaced by echo chambers, and anyone with a different opinion is often dismissed or attacked rather than engaged with.

That doesn't mean Obsession is bad. It's an enjoyable, well-acted movie that deserves recognition for what it does well. I just think there's a big difference between a good film and a masterpiece, and for me, Obsession never crosses that line.

The high reviews ,Christopher Nolan saying it's good made me think that I'm going to watch the best movie of all time

I'm gonna get stunned.

And then I proceeded to watch with my friends who were telling me to watch Michael but i said that obsession will be so good and we all were hiped.

15 minutes in the movie they kept telling me that it's bad and and I replied saying that there's more to go and it were like this the whole movie till it ended in absolute disappointment.

And it was my first time to watch a movie in cinemas which makes it worse.

Expected events,Bad plot.

Only good things were the acting ,cinematography ,music and that's all th good things.

I wanted to like this movie, I really did. In stead, I left the cinema needing a xanex because I felt so rattled. The actors were great and pretty believable but the story or something similar has been done many times. Be careful what you wish for because you might just get it... Dire consequences included. For me, there were just too many plot holes to enjoy it much. The ending was just bleak to put it mildly. Without adding spoilers, the whole situation could have been resolved so easily. "Hey, for shits and grins to a rando on the streets I'll give you $50 to break this stick and make one wish!!" But that would have made too much sense to put into a movie that was this clumsy. Wait for streaming and maybe your senses won't be assaulted buy the MUCH too loud background noises in the cinema plex. Don't say I didn't warn you.

It has a few fairly interesting ideas to start but like 99% of modern horrors, the setup is better than the resolution and this movie collapsed into predictable nonsense by the end.

These days just being weird is enough....use a few jarring visuals that you've seen a hundred times since The Ring / The Grudge etc with barely any attempt at internal logic. For instance, any particular reason why certain characters start moving weirdly for a bit and then stop again? No, it just looks weird and that's enough.

I predicted both of the major "jump scares" about a minute before they happened so they had no effect.

It's a kinda lazy combination of Fatal Attraction (yeah there's a dead pet) and Weapons (breaking wish sticks). It's pretty clear to me that this film wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Weapons.

The biggest problem for me was none of the characters were remotely likeable (the main guy is a totally feeble dumbass who of course does the most stupid things possible at all times, inviting every piece of misfortune to make plot happen) so none of the climaxes that were meant to have an emotional affect landed at all.

There is some social commentary here regarding destructive / obsessive relationships, that I guess people who have never seen the afore-mentioned and far superior Fatal Attraction may find diverting, but the best thing I can say about them is that they were kindergarden level writing compared to that older film, and lead to some comedy that I don't think was usually intended. By the end I was just hoping they would all die so the film could end.

Add it to the list of overrated horror films that people who haven't seen the things it's ripping-off keep saying is the best thing ever for about two weeks then never mention again.

Not Horror

I went into Obsession with extremely high expectations. The reviews, audience reaction, and "best horror of the 21st century" discourse set the bar very high. Unfortunately, I came away more frustrated than impressed.

To give the film credit, there is atmosphere here, and a handful of genuinely unsettling moments. It captures emotional discomfort reasonably well, particularly the suffocating feeling of being trapped inside a manipulative or emotionally unhealthy relationship. The performances are generally solid, and there are flashes of something more compelling.

The biggest issue for me was pacing. For a film positioned as horror, it takes far too long to properly build tension, with close to forty five or fifty minutes passing before the film becomes genuinely unsettling. Rather than building dread, many sequences simply felt overextended.

What struck me most, however, was the audience reaction. In my screening there was frequent laughter, often during moments that appeared intended to be disturbing. I found myself laughing at points too, sometimes with the room, sometimes independently of it. The emotional response felt oddly fragmented, as though the film never quite settled on the tone it wanted to create. That inconsistency weakened the tension considerably.

The reveals also felt awkwardly timed, with key information arriving late in ways that reduced rather than heightened emotional stakes.

I also found the world of the film surprisingly narrow. The social environment felt oddly insular, with very little meaningful diversity in who occupies the story world, which made parts of it feel less lived in and more limited than intended.

Ultimately, I am not convinced this works particularly well as horror. It plays more like an intimate psychological drama with unsettling elements, occasionally drifting toward dark comedy, rather than something genuinely frightening or suspenseful.

I can understand why some viewers connected with it more than I did, but for me the film never came close to living up to the extraordinary level of praise surrounding it.

The film itself would deserve a fair 6, but I am lowering my rating to 4 to counter an obvious marketing maneuver driven by the fanbase for a movie that absolutely does not deserve this level of hype. The current inflated average on IMDb is an artificial bubble fueled by the millions of followers that director Curry Barker and co-star Cooper Tomlinson mobilized from their YouTube channel *"that's a bad idea"*; blind support that clashes violently with the reality of a structurally weak indie horror.

After an effective first twenty minutes, the plot stalls and does nothing but reiterate the exact same pattern without any evolution. The characters are poorly written, and their choices completely demolish any suspension of disbelief: watching the protagonist endure massive absurdities without reacting, even defending the indefensible to his friends, is simply irritating and devoid of logic.

The final blow is the total lack of substance. There are no real twists or plot turns; the initial premise drags itself wearily to the end credits, piling up old genre clichés instead of developing real tension. A derivative, flat, and severely overrated operation, turned into a masterpiece only by social media camaraderie.

I really would like to understand the high rates. I came into this movie with high expectations I gotta admit, and I had just watched Backrooms on the same week. This movie was absolutely the opposite of what I expected. I got a lot of jump scares but did not feel fear at any minute.

The acting was REALLY good. This is what my 4 stars is for hahaha the story was very amateur to me and my friends.

Maybe not my type of "horror".

The only great thing about Obsession is its marketing. I don't think I have seen such a masterful display of marketing for a movie in my life, people just couldn't shut up about this move. I finally decided to go see the movie with a friend last week and we were not impressed at all. My watching experience was horrendous due to the fact that my theater would not keep quiet, but even if I did have a better viewing experience I don't think it would have changed much for me. First off this movie is REALLY slow. The story moved at a snail's pace for about 85% of the film before finally picking up a little bit toward the end. This move could have been cut to a one hour runtime if it had good pacing. The slow pacing really wouldn't have been much of an issue if it weren't for how terrible these characters are. Everyone in this movie has rocks in their skull. The main character could have easily gotten himself out of/fixed the situation he was in if he wasn't such an insolent chud. His friend is even dumber with him making a ridiculously dumb decision at the end of the movie for the sake of the plot. The acting isn't as lousy as the writing but it is still just plain bad. I visibly cringed in my seat when bear started crying, I don't think I have ever seen an actor so bad at crying. When a horror movie that tries to take itself seriously has bad acting it really takes away from the effect that the director is going for and this is on full display in Obsession. I feel like this movie actually could have been scary if there was more than one good actor (Inde Navarrette) in the movie. Almost all of the scares in this movies are obnoxiously loud noises. I jumped in my seat a couple times not because the movie was scary but because every time there was a loud noise it sounded like a 21 gun salute. The premise of the movie was basic but had potential to be a decent film however a decent film we did not get. I'm not sure that this film would have been any better with a higher budget just because of how bad the writing was. Overall this movie is a waste of a movie ticket wait for this to start streaming online if you want to waste 1 hour and 45 minutes.