Published May 12, 2026, 11:00 AM EDT Curry Barker's debut feature is a more secular menace for a less religious era Obsession pulls off the impossible: an original take on the possession horror movie Image: Focus Features Possession movies may be the most difficult horror subgenre to innovate. The possession of the body by an evil or demonic spirit is obviously a pervasive fear, because movies keep getting made about it. Yet it’s also one of those subgenres that’s so thoroughly defined by a single classic — 1973’s The Exorcist — that its visual and thematic language have been largely codified to match that film. The best you can hope for in a new possession movie is a change of venue (like The Exorcism of Emily Rose adding in courtroom drama) or a format shift (like The Last Exorcism , a found-footage version, or, for that matter, the stealth possession narrative of Paranormal Activity ). Most of the time, what you get is an Exorcist ripoff.…