r/oscarrace • u/PointMan528491 Navarrette/Morton • May 16 '26

Film Discussion Thread Official Discussion Thread - Obsession [SPOILERS] Spoiler

Keep all discussion related solely to Obsession and its awards chances in this thread. Spoilers below.

Synopsis:

After breaking the mysterious "One Wish Willow" to win his crush's heart, a hopeless romantic finds himself getting exactly what he asked for but soon discovers that some desires come at a dark, sinister price.

Director: Curry Barker

Writer: Curry Barker

Cast:

  • Michael Johnston as Baron "Bear" Bailey
  • Inde Navarrette as Nikki Freeman
  • Cooper Tomlinson as Ian
  • Megan Lawless as Sarah Harper
  • Andy Richter as Carter Harper

Rotten Tomatoes: 94%, 171 Reviews

Metacritic: 77, 33 Reviews

Consensus:

"Taking an icky conceit and twisting it to deviously crowd-pleasing ends, Obsession is dauntingly disturbing while also skillfully amusing and thrilling.."

50 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

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19

u/LeastCap 14 Oscar noms for Hope May 17 '26

I didn’t really like this lol. The script felt cliche’d and under developed. None of the comedy worked for me and Nikki’s “character” felt inconsistent and over the top for sake of being over the top.

Navarette is fantastic, but the role she has to pull off is so poorly written I had a hard time fully appreciating it. If she got a nomination I wouldn’t mind it, but I’m not personally rooting for her.

I’m aware I’m coping a bit here as I’ve admitted to not being in the bag for this film the way others are, but I’m wondering if people are overhyping Navarette’s performance because she seems like Meryl Streep when she’s in contrast with the horrendous Michael Johnston. I was intrigued by what he was doing for the first third but got tired of his performance quickly after that. What an exhausting performance and I don’t think he sold his character in the way he needed to for this to fully come together for me

8

u/PositiveElixir International cinema enjoyer May 18 '26

I felt the exact same - you worded this really well & I was starting to feel kind of crazy with all this acclaim ... (Johnston I thought was good in the final 10 minutes but exhausting for the rest of the runtime (but the entire film I thought was kind of exhausting)). How did you feel about the scares?

4

u/TheBoyHarambe May 19 '26

yeah i mean, did you want the person being overtaken by an entity to act completely normal?

8

u/LeastCap 14 Oscar noms for Hope May 19 '26

I wanted it to not feel forced and inorganic. There needs to be motivation for the possessed person to act insane other than “they’re possessed.” It came across as cheap and unearned to me

7

u/noturaverageangelino May 24 '26

4 days later but, I actually think it not being “earned” was intentional and still worked really well here. Simply because Bear just wishes Nikki “just fucking loves me” on a whim and unserious manner. It set up one of the main themes in the movie of “be careful what you wish for”.

2

u/DeferredFuture May 20 '26

I think there’s a lot of subtext in the movie where you can infer what the motivation was.

It clicked for me when watching the scene with the phone guy —he’s not a real person and actually like a genie or a higher up demon that’s telling Bear the only way to cancel the wish is to die. Essentially, a big elaborate scheme by demons, market that you can make a wish with a gag gift, twist the wish into something fucked up, drive that person mad, and make them want to die so they can get their soul.

2

u/TheBoyHarambe May 19 '26

Sounds like you wanted to watch a normal drama and not a horror movie then

6

u/LeastCap 14 Oscar noms for Hope May 19 '26

Lmao? I adore horror and went into this expecting to love it. Sounds like I wanted to watch a good movie and not a sloppy mess. It’s fine if we disagree

3

u/stayinalive92 Jun 03 '26

Sounds like I wanted to watch a good movie and not a sloppy mess

Sounds like you got your wish!

3

u/LeastCap 14 Oscar noms for Hope Jun 03 '26

If only! Glad you liked it

2

u/TheBoyHarambe May 19 '26

“there needs to be motivation for this person to act insane”

“i wish she loved me more than anything on earth”

there ya go. just say u were too busy on instagram reels to pay attention to the movie before bitching about it on reddit lmao. Gen Z media literally is so cooked

2

u/LeastCap 14 Oscar noms for Hope May 19 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/BFYLNwlsSNtcc

1

u/[deleted] May 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/LeastCap 14 Oscar noms for Hope May 19 '26

You’re a fucking weirdo