Laura (Malou Khebiz), a young French woman, takes a job as a personal assistant/cleaner/chef for Souria (Soundos Mosbah), the effectively incarcerated mistress of a Saudi prince (Kassem Al Khoja), in the smart, psychologically nuanced French drama Madame (Le Triangle d’Or).

A debut feature for director Hélène Rosselet-Ruiz, written in collaboration between Rosselet-Ruiz and Pauline Guéna, this was reportedly inspired by a very similar experience the director herself had working for a wealthy Gulf state family, although tweaks have been made to facilitate the drama. The often imperious behavior of the titular Souria, who is not allowed to leave her gilded cage of a mansion, and the conspicuous consumption she and her lover enjoy may seem outrageous, but the milieu is largely convincingly depicted — right down to the keeping of a miserable black panther in a closet enclosure, whom the prince’s factotum Emre (Ziad Bakri) has to drug daily lest it cry all day and night out of despair. All in all, the film offers a well-considered analysis of the class, gender and cultural dynamics inherent in the core situation that doesn’t preach or polemicize.  

The opening sequence shows a variety of women, including Laura, being interviewed for the assistant position by a recruiter, all of it filmed by low-resolution security cameras, a device deployed throughout, although thankfully not for the entire film. The security footage, with its date and time stamps and weird angles, acts as a reminder of the vigilance of the Saudi family who eventually hire Laura, shadowy figures who are mostly behind the cameras watching to ensure their employees and subjects like Souria are doing what they’re supposed to do.

In fact, there is a kind of fuzziness around whom Laura is meant to report to. She’s paid to be at Souria’s beck and call every moment of the day and often gets awakened at strange times in the night for errands, like going out to buy every item on a fast-food restaurant’s menu and bring it back for a midnight feast. At the same time, Palestinian employee Emre reminds Laura that its actually the sheikh who is paying her wages, and when Emre and the boss are off on trips (usually to visit the sheikh’s legal wife, whom we never meet), Laura’s job is to spy on Souria, making sure she never leaves, and to report on everything she does.  

Even so, Souria likes to pretend, if only to herself, that she’s in charge and she will often say abusive things to Laura, ridiculing her dress sense, embarrassingly scrutinizing her body, and reminding her in every way that she is a servant. Laura is not supposed to ever look the prince in the eyes when he’s there, and at one point early on she’s advised to never look more attractive than Souria, who has a very jealous streak, which is mostly directed at the prince’s legitimate wife. A little deluded and possibly driven a little crazy by the constant isolation of living in a harem of one, Souria is convinced that someday he will leave his wife and marry her and then everything will be coming up roses. Indeed, he sends a truckful of red roses one day to the house after a fight, but all they do is get in the way and slowly wilt.  

After Laura snaps one day and threatens to quit after Souria goes too far with her insults, the power shifts abruptly. Laura decides to stay when she sees Souria’s desperate reaction, literally beating herself up like a contrite child. Similarly, she grows closer to Emre, who has a heart underneath his veneer of cold professionalism and worries profoundly about his family back in Palestine, whom the sheikh has promised to help emigrate.

In a way, Laura has the least investment in the situation as she can walk away any time she wants and pursue her ambition to join the army, a goal she’s working toward by doing push-ups and pull-ups everyday in her tiny maid’s bedroom. She’s only there for the money, which is needed to help out her sister, who has a young daughter — although the longer Laura spends with these ultra-wealthy foreigners in their tower of gold, the less she can relate to her sister’s working-class Parisian friends, met on a rare night out to celebrate a birthday.

Guena and Rosselet-Ruiz’s deft script tracks the power shifts and realignments of sympathy in this claustrophobic environment with persuasive subtlety, although a near final scene where Laura, Souria and Emre all finally drop their rigid roles and get drunk together may seem a little abrupt to some. The homestretch of the drama, however, takes the story in a chilling direction, packing an aching quantity of feeling into a single glance at a security camera as someone climbs into a car and leaves the compound, never to be heard from again. For all the high tech and haute couture on display throughout, this feels much like a modern fairy tale, one warning young women against seeking love and riches that have hidden costs to the soul, deadly as a depressed panther in a cage.

Watch Obsession in theaters now (and rewatch on digital later)

Curry Barker is the writer and director of Obsession, which he also edited himself. On board as associate producer is Cooper Tomlinson with Jason Blum as executive producer. Curry Barker and Cooper Tomlinson also have the YouTube channel “That’s a Bad Idea”, which is full of amazing shorts.

Also, they made the amazing horror-comedy movie Milk & Serial, which I highly recommend checking out. You can watch it for free on their YouTube channel.

Admittedly, I cannot even read the title of Obsession without hearing the Army of Lovers song with the same title in my mind. In fact, I am writing this review with that song on repeat (anything else would be madness to me). Oh yeah, one might even say that I am obsessed.

And yes, this movie has already had a similar impact on me, so I cannot wait to watch it again.

In any case, I would highly recommend watching it in the theater as well. The impact of a dark theater with gorgeous sound delivers a solid impact with Obsession. And then, of course, you’ll want to rewatch it when the unrated version comes out on VOD.

Oh yes, “unrated”… a terrifying thought. I can’t wait!

OBSESSION is out only in theaters where it premiered on May 15, 2026. Rumor has it that it will be out on VOD in early June 2026.

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Warning: Full spoilers for the film follow.

I went into Slanted with rather limited expectations. The reviews have been middling, but I was willing to take a chance on it, both because I love body horror and because I love a film that grapples with complex social issues. To some extent, Slanted does do that–its story about a young Chinese-American woman who decides to undergo an experimental surgery that will transform her into a White person forever is one that has a great deal of contemporary relevance–but it ultimately isn’t willing to commit to its own bit. It stumbles in a host of ways, not least because it feels pulled in two different directions: on the one hand, its commentary is about as blunt as a sledgehammer, while on the other it never really goes whole-hog on its body horror conceit. The result is a film that’s both muddled and deeply frustrating.

Written and directed by Amy Wang, the film focuses on Joan Huang (Shirley Hunt), the daughter of Chinese immigrants Sofia and Roger Huang (Vivian Wu and Fang Du). Though she loves her father in particular, Joan carries around a deep shame and loathing of her Chinese identity, one that is exacerbated by her desperate desire to be prom queen. Her shame runs so deep, in fact, that when she’s offered the chance to undergo an experimental surgery to turn White, she jumps at the chance, transforming into Jo Hunt (Mckenna Grace). However, the transformation proves to be a double-edged sword, as it not only alienates her from her parents and her best friend but also has unforeseen physical side effects.

In order for a film like this one to really work–or, to put it slightly differently, for it to have real teeth as a piece of social and cultural commentary–it has to be willing to lean into whatever elements it’s playing with. This is particularly true when you decide to play in the genre of the body horror, which is known for its extremes and for its ability to make an audience squirm. For a while, I had hopes Slanted was going to go this route–there’s a quasi-gnarly moment during her hair transplant where we get a few close-ups of the machine pulling out her hair by the roots–but then the film just sort of limply indulges in some subpar body horror imagery, most of which involves Jo/Joan’s face starting to sag. It all leads to the fateful moment when she’s crowned prom queen, only for her once-beautiful visage to appear sagging and wrinkled, leading to her classmates’ revulsion.

In a braver film, this whole sequence could easily have been as horrifying and tragic as in Carrie, where the title character’s final humiliation leads to her self-immolation and that of most of her high school classmates. Slanted, however, chooses to play it safe. To be quite honest, I was very underwhelmed by the physicality of it all, which just felt sad rather than horrifying. I kept thinking…is this it? This is what all of this has been building to? It’s not that I wanted Joan to suffer, obviously, but when you’ve been told you’re watching a body horror film, you expect more…body horror? As it is, it was almost comedic, which just isn’t the vibe I think you were supposed to get from the film as a whole.

It’s especially frustrating that the most horror-inducing moment ends up being the very last frame, in which Jo, filled with remorse, has torn off parts of her White face, revealing glimmers of the girl she was before. One can easily imagine a film where this would’ve been the climax toward which it was all leading, and I’d go so far as to say this approach would have been genuinely horrifying. In my view, the best and most affecting horror films are those with an element of tragedy to them, and it’s hard to think of something more tragic than a young Asian American woman only recognizing the true consequences of what she’s done once it’s too late. As it is, it feels like more of an afterthought, and rather than engendering the emotions associated with horror it just left me frustrated for what the film might have been.

That said, I do think there’s something compelling, and more than a little terrifying about the film’s central premise, which suggests a distressing number of people of color would take the chance to be White if they could. One of the most genuinely disturbing films in the entire film is when we see an entire crowd of BIPOC folks clamoring to get in to see the doctor and get their own surgery. For his part, R. Keith Harris gives a chilling performance as Dr. Willie Singer, who was an Indian-American doctor who perfected the surgery, espousing the philosophy of “if you can’t beat them, be them.” However, as frightening as all this is, it just doesn’t quite gel with the rest of the film, in particular Joan’s desperate desire to be homecoming queen and the just general awfulness of her White peers, which sometimes become more caricatures than real people.

If there’s one thing that saves this film, it’s the performances of Vivian Wu and Fang Du as Joan’s parents. The scenes between Joan and her mother are particularly wrenching, especially since Sofia genuinely loves her daughter and wants to share important pieces of family lore and tradition with her. The fact that Joan can’t see this until too late is far more horrifying than anything that happens to her body after her transformation.

Is Slanted a bad movie? I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. However, it is undeniably a frustrating one, and I kept finding myself wishing it could’ve gone just a bit further, could’ve gone for the throat. Failing that, it could’ve been a bit subtler in its delivery, especially since its central message is an important one. The way that Whiteness–White identity, White skin, White culture–is constantly framed by our society as something toward which everyone should aspire is a problem, and it causes untold damage to BIPOC everywhere. However, while Slanted clearly aspires to Get Out levels of cultural commentary, it ultimately falls flat, leaving us wondering what might have been.