Obsessed with Obsession

How a low-budget horror changed the game in Hollywood. This week, the independently produced horror movie Obsession, which cost either $750,000 or $15m depending on whether you count its actual budget or acquisition cost for its studio, officially passed the latest Star Wars movie at the box office (the film has so far made over $165m in the US alone).

It’s not a coincidence that this happened on a weekday. Obsession’s box office power lies not just in its astonishing weekend-to-weekend strength (including the virtually unheard-of trajectory of increasing grosses on its second and third weekends) but in its powerhouse weekday grosses. This past week, as it approached the one-month mark in theaters, it was averaging over $4m on its weekdays. At the same point in the run of Avengers: Endgame, that movie – the biggest summer blockbuster of modern times – was pulling in half as much.

When all is said and done, Obsession will (probably) not make as much as Avengers: Endgame, though its return on investment is far more astronomical. But this intimate and occasionally gruesome horror movie about a meek twentysomething named Bear (Michael Johnston) who wishes for the devotion of his cool-girl crush Nikki (breakout performer Inde Navarrette) only to accidentally curse her with a form of unnerving possession, has the kind of cultural cachet needed to break through in a post-pandemic, post-superhero moviegoing landscape.

I saw this first-hand venturing out to see the movie a second time with a paying crowd on Thursday. Normally at a Times Square multiplex in Manhattan, the big Thursday-night draw would be a previewing blockbuster officially opening on Friday, like Steven Spielberg’s new film Disclosure Day; for a movie that’s already been out for a week or more, Thursday is typically its lowest-grossing day of the week. But the 300-seat auditorium used for a 7.30pm showing of Obsession was nearly full, just as similar shows across the city had been all week.

As a critic, I first saw Obsession in a small screening room, and though its creepiness, shocks, and mordant laughs played fine to an audience of a dozen or so journalists – I gave it a positive pre-release notice – the full audience experience felt different. Waves of laughter and murmurs of discomfort crested through the crowd, and though the movie’s particularly shadowy lighting made it difficult to see, I did catch plenty of viewers with their hands on their faces, aghast as Bear’s wish (and his passivity) causes Nikki (or, more accurately, her puppeted body) to become increasingly unhinged. Multiple pairs, seemingly couples, covered each other’s eyes in affectionate mutual quasi-agony. When the movie reached its grim-but-fair conclusion and rolled its credits, chatter quickly rose, overtaking the usual quiet shuffling toward the exit.

- Author: Jesse Hassenger, The Guardian

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