{"id":889819,"date":"2026-09-12T22:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T22:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/889819\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T22:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T22:28:10","slug":"obsessions-test-audiences-had-a-major-gripe-and-im-so-glad-the-director-stuck-to-his-guns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/889819\/","title":{"rendered":"Obsession\u2019s Test Audiences Had A Major Gripe, And I\u2019m So Glad The Director Stuck To His Guns"},"content":{"rendered":"

The more I think about it, the more I realize Obsession is my favorite project on the 2026 movie schedule<\/a> so far. It\u2019s pretty much perfect. But every movie is the result of a long list of production choices that have to go right along the way. Writer\/director Curry Barker just revealed how test screenings led to its final form, and what a great story!<\/p>\n

On Friday night, Curry Barker and our Freaky Nikki, Inde Navarrette<\/a>, returned to the place where Obsession first premiered about a year ago to reflect on the film with fans. Here\u2019s what he revealed at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival screening:<\/p>\n

They were frustrated with Bear, and they didn\u2019t understand why he doesn\u2019t just try to do more to fix it. And they were like, \u2018Why isn\u2019t he going back to the crystal shop? Why isn\u2019t he doing more research to try and fix it?\u2019 And so we got an overwhelming amount of people wanting us to do that. I was like, \u2018No, that\u2019s not what I want to do. I don\u2019t want him to try and fix it.\u2019<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Audiences at Obsession test screenings were frustrated with Bear,<\/a> which is how it\u2019s supposed to be. But Barker did decide to do reshoots after getting this feedback. As he added, per Deadline<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Latest Videos FromCinemablend<\/p>\n

So it became clear to me that the way to fix the movie was not to make Bear try to fix it sooner but to actually make it more clear to the audience that Bear wants to make it work. That\u2019s the thing that he becomes active on is trying to make this work.<\/p>\n

Wow, I love this behind-the-scenes insight from Curry Barker. Rather than cater to their requests to have Bear be perhaps a more sympathetic character, he took a hard right. As the screening\u2019s moderator added, Bear is a \u201cpassive antagonist\u201d who\u2019s in the wrong greatly because of his inaction.<\/p>\n

Curry Barker has spoken before about Bear\u2019s arc as a character. In the Obsession DVD commentary, the writer\/director said that he thinks Bear is \u201cin denial\u201d for most of the movie.<\/a> He also said that in the beginning it\u2019s easier for Bear to believe that Nikki \u201creally does like him\u201d than to accept the horrors he\u2019s inflicted on his friend.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

While Obsession could have been about a more active character who is trying and failing to help Nikki get better, it wouldn\u2019t be the same. Much of what makes it so good and scary is Bear allowing his wish with Nikki to work in his favor for a while.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, Curry Barker made the right decisions with Obsession. It\u2019s not only one of my favorites of the year, but one of the big success stories among 2026’s movies<\/a>. The film has racked up $515 million worldwide against a production budget of $750k. And now it’s even getting some award buzz.<\/p>\n

Your Daily Blend of Entertainment News<\/p>\n

You can watch Obsession right now for yourself with a Peacock subscription<\/a> or on VOD and physical platforms. You can also look for Nikki at Universal Hollywood\u2019s Halloween Horror Nights<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The more I think about it, the more I realize Obsession is my favorite project on the 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":889820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":["post-889819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}