Obsession: Masterpiece or Mid? [Podcast]
In this episode of the Kinolime Podcast, Danny and Meara dive into Obsession, the low-budget horror breakout that has everyone talking.
Shot for under a million dollars and already making waves at the box office, Obsession feels like a signal of where horror may be heading next: younger, stranger, more internet-shaped, and unafraid to push an uncomfortable premise to its limits.
But beneath the scares, tension, and breakout performances, the film raises bigger questions about desire, control, agency, and what happens when a simple wish turns into something monstrous. Is Obsession a sharp new horror landmark, or does its most disturbing idea deserve to be pushed even further?
Let’s get into it.
Full Transcript: Kinolime Podcast Episode 50: Obsession: Masterpiece or Mid?
Participants
Danny Murray - Creative Executive, Kinolime
Meara Owen-Griffiths - Creative Executive, Kinolime
Danny: Hey everyone. John is not with us today because he was attacked and bludgeoned in a car by a crazy girlfriend he had wished would love him more than anyone in the entire world. So he will be decommissioned for a while while his brain is restitched with some crazy twenty-first-century medicine.
In the meantime, we are talking about Obsession today, which I am sure, by the time this is released, you have probably seen. If you have not, all your friends did, and they forgot to invite you. I am so sorry.
It is the biggest movie of the year so far in terms of profit margins. This is a movie that was shot for less than a million dollars, and it might end up making $150 to $200 million.
It is filled with life, and it feels like an injection of a new crop of horror filmmakers and Gen Z filmmakers. We are going to be seeing more of that this month with Curry Barker and Kane Parsons, and I am sure this will inspire studios to invest more heavily in a new generation of filmmakers. I think that is something many of us have been waiting to see for the last ten years.
I have Meara with me today, and we are going to be talking all about Obsession. He likes it a lot less than I do. I think it is awesome. We both see flaws in it, and we both see a lot of great stuff, so we are going to get right into it. Meara, what are your thoughts?
Meara: Hello, everybody at home. I just want to start by saying that it is the nicest day of the year here in Ireland. It is in the high twenties, and I am doing what I love, which is sitting inside and thinking about movies. What a job I have. Amazing.
Danny: I also have not been going outside. Incredible.
Meara: We are one and the same. We were made for this.
First Reactions to Obsession
Meara: Let us get into Obsession. I want to preface this by saying that Danny is going to deny this, but he told me this is the best horror film of the 2020s.
Danny: There is no way. You do not really remember your work with my family. There is no way.
Meara: When I brought it back up, he denied it. I think he came out of the cinema with that post-movie glow. He was high on the endorphins and was like, “This is the best thing I have ever seen.”
I did not love this movie, guys. I am not going to lie. I expected it to be good. I never try to get my hopes too high, but I thought it was going to be good. Not as great as people were suggesting, maybe. All respect to Curry Barker. Great name. I respect what he is doing. As a guy in his twenties moving from YouTube into feature films, it is incredible, and congratulations to him.
That being said, people are going to be mad at me for this, but I thought this movie was kind of mid. So, Danny, you may have come down a little bit from your original “best of the 2020s” point, but I think I am lower than that as well. Where are you ranking this now? What is your out-of-ten score?
Danny: I do not know. The more I think about it, there are a couple of fairly glaring holes that stop it, at least for me, from being a contemporary classic.
I know Curry Barker references Ari Aster in every interview I have seen with him, specifically Hereditary. I think there are a couple of glaring qualities that knock it down a peg or two from that level.
But I largely thought it was amazing. I guess it is not technically a debut because he made Milk & Serial, which is a good sixty-minute horror film. It is technically a feature, even though it did not get wide distribution. Still, I think this is an incredible debut. It keeps that long line of sketch guys going into horror with a great sketch premise and finding a way to turn it into a pretty great film that many people love.
I am fascinated by what specifically knocked it down for you. You are one of the only people I know who did not leave glowing from how much fun they had.
The Premise and the Film’s Central Idea
Meara: Everybody I have spoken to about it has loved it, so I recognize that I am absolutely in a tiny minority on this. Maybe it is one of those movies that I will check out again in a few years and change my mind.
But right now, I am extremely frustrated. Just in case anybody has not seen this movie and is still watching this review discussion, go see it. It is absolutely worthwhile to experience in the cinema.
If you are unfamiliar with it and still sticking around for whatever reason, the idea is this: the main guy is Bear. He is in love with a girl who is, you know, friend-zone on ten. She is uninterested. He gets this magic stick from a shop, breaks it, and wishes that this girl would love him more than anybody else in the world. Then she does, and there are disastrous consequences because that is a lot of love.
That is the basic synopsis.
Theme, Message, and Interpretation
Meara: What I found coming out of this is that we are in an era of filmmaking where filmmakers can be very didactic. They bash you over the head with, “This is what I am doing with this movie.” This was not one of those movies.
Look at recent movies like The Substance, which, similar to this, feels like something everybody loves. Or Sorry to Bother You, which I know is one of your favorites, Danny. I really like that movie. Those movies give you the message in the first ten minutes, and then they beat you with it in every frame for the rest of the film. We are also in the era of dead media literacy, but you cannot miss the point of those films because it is in every scene and every frame. Every frame is like an Instagram infographic for the themes.
Obsession is the complete opposite. We have Bear, who is an awful person, and Nikki, who is being taken over by this magic demon. She is not actually in love with this guy. She is possessed as if she loves him. So she is a victim the entire time.
That is about as far as the commentary goes for me. It is basically, “Wouldn’t this be a really awful situation?” I found it so stilted after that. There was no sense of, “This is the lesson he learned,” or, “This is what somebody else has to sacrifice for your wish,” or anything like that.
The characters are set up, twenty minutes in they break the stick, things kick off, and after that the messaging felt bereft of any real commentary.
When I came out, I kept asking, “What is he trying to say with this movie?” I was really racking my brain, which is pretty small, but I was trying my best to discern a thematic statement from it.
Whenever I bring this up with people and ask, “After the setup, what is it saying?” I get a lot of defensiveness. People say, “Yeah, that is the point.” I hate that kind of comment. If the point is that there is no point, that is a moot point for me. We are lacking something there.
I do not need the movie to have a moral conundrum where he gets his comeuppance at the end, but I do need it to be an evolving statement or an evolving thesis on something. I found that very absent.
In every interview I have seen with Curry Barker, when he is asked about his intention, he says he wanted to leave it open to interpretation. But it feels so binary to me. If you come out of this thinking Bear is a good, unfortunate guy and it sucks for him, I do not know how to help you. If you come out thinking Nikki is in a terrible hostage situation, her agency has been stripped away, and this is like kidnapping and sexual assault all in one, then yes, you got the point of the movie.
But what is the other interpretation? Can you help explain what I am missing here?
Inde Navarrette’s Performance and the Film’s Strengths
Danny: Before I get into that, because what you touched on is my glaring critique too, I want to give the film some positives.
Clearly, this film is resonating with me and with large swaths of people. It is turning out people who do not often go to the movies, which a lot of the acting data seems to show.
The Nikki performance is incredible. I am going to butcher the actress’s name because she is pretty much a complete unknown. I believe it is Indi Navarrette.
Meara: I do not know, but I would assume that is right.
Danny: Her performance feels like one of those moments where you think, “Oh, this person is going to be a superstar.” It is such a complex, incredible performance. She balances the tipping scales of this crazy, obsessed demon with this really empathetic, caged woman who is emotionally, physically, and psychologically tormented throughout the film.
It is a performance I do not think I have really seen before. I have heard people compare it to Possession, which is probably the closest thing I can think of.
Where the Film Falls Short
Danny: To your question, my main complaint is that the film is not inherently interested in Nikki. I think it is very interested in the demon that possesses her, but not enough in Nikki herself.
It is not that we have to see the entire film from her perspective. The film is largely rooted in Bear’s perspective, and there is a lot you could play with there: his indecision, the way he plays along with this wish until he cannot, his cowardice, and what makes him the true villain of the film.
But for me, too much of the horror and commentary is about how crazy she is in this body, instead of actually dealing with the horror of Bear’s indecision and behavior. They are intimate throughout large parts of the movie, and we find out she is not consenting to that. Every time she gets a chance, she is trying to kill herself.
There is a great scene that also rubbed me the wrong way because it was such a great opportunity to dig into Bear’s evil or force him to reckon with his decision in a fascinating way. The demon is asleep, and Nikki begs him to kill her. His response is basically, “You did not want me in the first place,” or, “Why don’t you want me?”
That felt completely underbaked to me. It was the moment where the film lost me as a searing commentary about bodily autonomy and male cowardice.
Meara: I agree with what you are saying. That scene is certainly a highlight of the film for me because it made me feel uneasy in ways that horror films maybe do not usually. That should be applauded.
But I think Baker was kind of uninterested in Nikki as a character. She is more of a conduit for opportunities for awkwardness or energy and power. By and large, I do not feel like she was fleshed out in ways that were interesting. Not every character needs to be, but when the situation is this complex, I think you do need that.
If you take a basic concept, and when I say basic, I mean “be careful what you wish for,” which has been a narrative device forever, from Rumpelstiltskin to genie stories to Midas turning everything to gold, those situations are always fun to play with.
But when you take something we have seen a thousand times and shrink it down to a very personal level, basically two characters, because everyone beyond Bear and Nikki is tertiary, you have to dig into the details.
One of those characters has no agency, so we are focusing almost entirely on one character who is static. We do not get enough of the micro-level, detailed play between them. Baker almost gets into it, then shies away.
Danny: I think you can make a film about someone’s internal fears or cowardice. You can have a protagonist who does not make decisions if that affects them in a serious way.
I think about I Saw the TV Glow, which is all about a character who essentially destroys himself by not making the big decisions a hero is supposed to make.
I largely agree with you. There is not enough investigation into Bear not making decisions around Nikki. His best friend says, “You are kind of taking advantage of her,” and he immediately realizes this is not her. But the film largely avoids that until it uses it to ramp up the crazy theatrics around her.
I would have loved to see more of his indecision or lack of decision. Either it should leave him racked with guilt, or his lack of decisions should clearly lead to her getting worse. It does not really feel like his decisions fuel the story in any meaningful way.
The Best Friend Scene and Bear’s Defensiveness
Meara: It is funny you say that about the best friend because initially Bear knows something is weird. He is like, “I do not know how to get out of this situation.” But as soon as somebody else says, “This is weird. Why would she go for a guy like you?” he becomes very defensive. He withdraws and suddenly says, “Actually, it is not a problem. It is fine.”
That is interesting. There is a diversion in the character and the choices he has to make in that scene. I really expected to love it based on that point because I could see the cascading effects from there. I thought, “This is going to be cool.” But there was not enough of that for me.
Horror, Peril, and Tension
Meara: In regard to the actual horror of this, at no stage do I feel like Bear is in any real danger. Nikki shows up and does gross-out stuff. She pees herself, brings his dead cat out of the trash, and does these horror moments that are supposed to make you feel uneasy. They kind of do, to a degree.
But he is never in danger. It is the people around him who get in the way between mama bear and cub bear. Those people are in danger, and I do not really care about them. Sarah maybe, a little bit toward the end, but even then it felt removed from the core story.
I did not feel any peril toward Bear specifically. I know we are not supposed to like him, but as our point-of-view character, I need some level of, “What is going to happen to him?” Did you get any of that?
Danny: The thing I kept thinking about when I left the theater was: why was the midpoint not him breaking up with her? There are not really any moments where he pushes back or actually tries to escape her obsession.
Again, we are both critiquing the film a lot, but it is a lightning bolt of fun. You are tense in pretty much every scene, and it is an absolute ball largely because of Nikki’s performance.
But yes, I agree. There was so much underexplored. He has trapped this woman in a psychological torture chamber where she is not in control of her body.
What I found fascinating about the film is that it might be the first movie about these incel, weird manosphere “nice guys” made by a twenty-five-year-old, hyper-internet, TikTok guy. I found that fascinating. There is a divergence in the tone and feel of this kind of character compared with how we usually see him. Often there is much less subtlety. I thought the character was nuanced, but we did not get to explore the consequences of that behavior in a meaningful way.
Bear as a Character
Meara: In regard to the incel point, something I found is that the movie does not fully commit to that. He is a pretty normal guy before the relationship. It is an unrequited crush, like a high school movie situation. You are not supposed to immediately think, “This guy is a predator.” He is just weird and awkward.
The movie shies away from being clear that he is creepy, predatory, and obsessed with her. It inserts these scenes where Nikki says, “You are the only guy I can talk to about this kind of stuff,” and it makes him seem like a great conversationalist or someone she can confide in. But we do not really see any of that.
It almost felt like the movie retracted the full weirdness of him by giving him this in with her. If they had removed that and she had simply been a little freaked out by him, I think it would have been stronger. Then it would really feel like the shoe is on the other foot. Instead, the movie gives a level of normalcy to the unrequited crush before things take a supernatural turn.
Danny: I would probably disagree a bit. As someone who was five foot three until I was about seventeen and a half, I do understand the sheer loser-dom of a guy who knows there is no shot this will work out.
What would have solved most of the film’s problems is if there were a clearer, shorter distance between who he is and what he wants.
Meara: Did you feel like he looked like Charlie Kirk? The whole time I was like, “This is Charlie Kirk.”
Danny: If I had thought about that, this would have been the most terrifying film I have seen all year.
I think the quick fix for this film is: make Bear ugly and short. He is like Teen Wolf. Are we really supposed to believe that Teen Wolf is this scared of girls in this small town where there are seemingly five twenty-something men, and they all work in the same shop?
Meara: They all work in the same shop.
Danny: Exactly. I love the film, but I agree with you that Nikki’s character is underexplored. I asked my brother what he thought about the film, and he said, “Well, at least now she will have something to write about.” I was like, “Oh yeah, I forgot she is a writer. That is her whole story.”
That is how underexplored she is. I would have loved to actually care about her in some way before everything happens.
A Different Midpoint and a Stronger Structure
Meara: I like what you are saying. If he runs away at the midpoint and she loves him more than anyone else in the world, she would stop at nothing to close that gap. It could almost be like a prequel to It Follows. No matter how far you run, this person is going to come after you.
Again, this was shot for under a million dollars, and for what it is, it works so well. But to explore this dynamic, it would have been interesting to see him trying to get away from her. Instead, it feels like we ping-pong between two locations. If he had been on the run and she had been after him, I think that could have been much more interesting.
Danny: For a first true widely released feature shot for this amount of money, and I believe he started developing the idea in late 2024, it is phenomenal. For a story that was developed, financed, and produced with a bare-bones crew by a really young filmmaker, it is impressive.
I will watch everything Curry Barker does. As far as horror debuts go, I cannot think of many in the last decade that are as exciting as this film.
We also got an incredible new actress on the scene. I cannot think of many performances in the 2020s that anchor a film this heavily. It is that nuanced and awesome, and it catapults the story in incredible ways.
If this movie were to be shot again, I would make Bear shorter and uglier, create a more pronounced midpoint where maybe he breaks up with her, and give Nikki more nuance, specifically through the choices Bear makes in forcing her to stay in that cage. Is there anything else you would add?
Makeup, Visual Choices, and Scares
Meara: When we have these discussions, I like to focus on story and narrative more than logistics and execution, but I am not going to lie: the scene where she is watching him sleep is spooky as hell.
But I was also thinking, “Why is she wearing this makeup in that scene?” It felt like she put on makeup to sit in the corner because she did not look like herself.
Danny: I think that is part of it. She is supposed to be morphing into this demon in the shadows.
Meara: It was just obviously makeup. There was contouring on her nose to the point that it took me out of the movie. I could see the practicality that went into the scene. She is shrouded in darkness, and there is only so much you can see, but for what should have been the creepiest uncanny valley moment, it really took me out.
It felt like it was playing into the analog horror vibe, which is becoming fairly mainstream with Kane Parsons and The Backrooms coming out next weekend. But seeing the makeup so clearly pulled me out of what should have been the spookiest moment.
Danny: Is there anything you liked about the film?
Meara: The cat.
Danny: You think we are one hundred percent right about the performance?
Meara: Yes. Indi Navarrette, if that is how you say it, I hope it is. I can see her, this time next year, being Wonder Woman or something. I think she immediately goes to the top of everybody’s wish list for their next casting.
Danny: She is instantly in that Mikey Madison, Anora, “just get her for everything” role.
Meara: Exactly. And God willing, she follows Mikey Madison in turning down most things offered to her immediately. I think Mikey Madison turned down two Star Wars roles within a few months, which is crazy, but good for her.
There are definitely strong performances. Nikki has a lot to do. Bear is more limited, but they managed to pull a really great performance out of him as well in how stilted he is and how much we are not supposed to like him.
I did enjoy some of the scares, especially in the third quarter. That was the best stretch for me. Usually, you want to front-load your second act with the fun and games, the scares, and the trailer moments, but it felt like they all came quite late in this.
The Car Scene and Tension
Danny: I was so stressed out during the car scene with Sarah that I left to go to the bathroom. I thought, “I am not doing this. I am not going to sit here and watch her come out of nowhere and bash her head in.”
So I left for two minutes, went to the bathroom, and thought, “Okay, it should be done by now.” I was so tense. I saw the movie alone, came back, and they were still talking. I wish I had an Apple Watch or something because my heart rate would have been so high.
Meara: Same. That was a great scene. I felt very similarly with the scene in Weapons where the woman gets in the car to snip her hair from behind. We are doing great with tense car scenes in horror movies these last twelve months.
Danny: We really are.
Curry Barker, Blumhouse, and the New Generation of Horror Filmmakers
Danny: I think Curry Barker is doing Texas Chainsaw. He also has another film set up with Blumhouse, and I think Aaron Paul is leading it. I believe it already shot.
I am excited to see his next few movies. He is clearly a really strong horror director.
I am also happy that we are getting more young directors like Kane Parsons. I watched a video about his influences for The Backrooms, and they are largely video games. It is fascinating seeing a new crop of young horror filmmakers influenced by different mediums.
Curry Barker’s big influence is Hereditary, which came out when he was about fifteen. He is also a TikTok guy. If you look at almost every shot in Obsession, I do not know if it was purposeful or not, but it is shot almost perfectly to be cropped. Everything is centered in every single shot.
I do not know if that is intentional, but those sensibilities clearly come from making your way on a vertical screen.
Meara: I cannot wait to watch this in twenty-five-second segments over and over again as I scroll.
Danny: Me too. I cannot wait to rip a hundred Obsession YouTube Shorts while watching an actual movie on the screen.
Meara: Then you go into the comments, and the comment is always, “Movie name?” even though it says it in the description. That is always the exact exchange.
I wanted to touch on something real quick. If anybody at Blumhouse happens to see this, can we talk about how lame the new Blumhouse intro is? It is like a comic book movie, with all their big hitters. Did you see that?
Danny: No, I did not see that. Was that in the opening roll?
Meara: Yes. It is like we are pulling back through a haunted house, and all the characters are there, like it is a DC project or something. That blows. We have to get rid of that.
Danny: The good news is Jason Blum seems like a guy who is constantly open to assessing what works. He is the only studio head I have seen who, when a film of his bombs, immediately does open biopsies of what happened and says, “Maybe we could do this next time.” He seems like he rocks.
So we will start a big petition. Change.org. Get the Blumhouse opening crawl back to what it should be.
Meara: While we are at it, let us start another petition for no more breaking sticks for magic this year. We have done it twice now.
Danny: What was the other stick break?
Meara: Weapons.
Danny: That was last year. It is okay. We can get a sketch comedy guy to break a stick once a year.
Meara: It is within twelve months. It is within a year.
Danny: Fair enough.
Final Thoughts
Danny: I am excited for The Backrooms, and I am excited that Obsession is going to be the biggest breakout hit of the year, especially for the budget it was shot on. These films are bringing new people into theaters.
Let us keep giving twenty-five- and twenty-six-year-old filmmakers a million bucks to go make $150 million.
Meara: Not Danny, though.
Danny: Not me. Do not give Danny any. My influences will not be TikTok. It will be 1960s Senegalese movies with seven lines of dialogue. No one wants to see that.
Okay, thanks so much, Meara. If you have not seen Obsession yet, go see it. It is awesome. It is a good time. The theater will be full, and you will have a blast.
Meara: I am really looking forward to seeing The Backrooms and chatting about that next week. As I said, I am a big fan of the series and all that analog horror stuff in general, so hopefully that is more my cup of tea.
But good job to everyone involved in Obsession. I am glad you liked it, Danny.
Danny: Heck yeah, man. Thanks so much for joining, and see you all later.
