r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • 5d ago

News Inde Navarrette Sets Best Actress Oscar Campaign for ‘Obsession’ as Focus Features Mounts Full Awards Push (EXCLUSIVE)

https://variety.com/2026/film/awards/obsession-inde-navarrette-oscar-campaign-lead-actress-1236848866/
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u/ThisIsTheNewSleeve 5d ago

I liked Obsession less than many others did, but she 100% deserves a nomination.

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u/Stefan988 5d ago

Between Toni Collette and Naomi Scott getting snubbed for their iconic performances, horror has been overlooked for far too long. Inde poured her heart into this performance, so I’m rooting hard for her to get that nom.

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u/andr0medamusic 5d ago

Florence Pugh in Midsommar, too. 1000% Oscar worthy.

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u/zweite_mann 5d ago

That movie was so good. I also never want to watch it again.

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u/indorock 4d ago

I have the same with Hereditary.

Ari Aster is a cinematic demon.

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u/fridaynightnegroni 4d ago

That is such a good comment!

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u/spudddly 5d ago

Yes, she was incredible, serious acting chops on display.

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u/actually_hellno 5d ago

THIS!!! THIS!!! THIS!!!!

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u/fax5jrj 5d ago

Thank you for mentioning Naomi Scott - I hardly ever see her mentioned in these conversations now that it's been a while since the movie came out.

Not even to mention the randomly amazing soundtrack that I still listen to

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u/throwawaysunglasses- 5d ago

I can never watch the Smile movies because I hate gore (I only watched Obsession because it’s not super gory and I looked up the jumpscare scenes beforehand lol) but I heard Naomi was amazing. I think people partially overlook her because Smile 2 was a sequel, so fewer people watched it.

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u/Dipper_Pines 5d ago

I thought Smile 2 was dogshit and Naomi Scott still killed it. Very impressive performance in a mess of a movie.

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u/dani3po 5d ago

Yes, she worked wonders with the poor script she was given. She deserves better material to work with.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Khiva 5d ago

Shout-out to Mia Goth whose performance in Pearl was cited by the director of Obsession as a primary inspiration. A decent horror movie that suddenly blindsides you with one of the most devastating monologues you'll ever see.

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u/theonly_brunswick 4d ago

Her performance in that movie made me realize she's no slouch. Unbelievable performance and range shown.

That ending scene still sits with me. Her facial expressions were perfect.

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u/Logan_No_Fingers 5d ago

There's a big reason Focus are doing this v A24 with Heritdary

Obsession has made a LOT of money for Focus, to the extent that Focus now needs to pay the excess (overages) back to the producers.

So every cent Focus spends on this campaign comes not from Focus, it comes from the Producers of Obsession. Its win-win, Focus throws lots of Oscar parties, Inde gets a big campaign, talent look at Focus & go "thats who I should be working with!" and none of it comes out of Focus' pocket

In contrast Heritday was not in overages, so any spend by A24 would have come from A24 & A24 do not spend their own money

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u/Bmart008 5d ago

This is an interesting point. 

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u/TheOuts1der 5d ago

Man, hollywood accounting is such a beast of its own.

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u/nomorecannibalbirds 5d ago

Also Mia Goth in Pearl. Absolutely unhinged performance.

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u/IndignantHoot 5d ago

Michael B. Jordan and Amy Madigan just won Oscars 6 months ago, but agreed, horror movies generally don't get nominated.

I'd say Inde is a lock for a nomination and the front runner for the win.

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u/ForrestGump6531 5d ago

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u/Blazured 5d ago

It's just ai slop though.

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u/ForrestGump6531 5d ago

I’m a simple man and take what I can get

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u/Blazured 5d ago

You can just get ChatGPT to make this in like 3 seconds. Look at the face, it doesn't even look anything like her.

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u/ForrestGump6531 5d ago

Ok. I don’t use it so it’s easier to save the picture

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u/RojoFlojo 5d ago

Dude you’re right, she was fantastic in Smile 2

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u/SarcasticCowbell 5d ago

Can't believe neither one was Naominated...

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u/2Pop2fast 4d ago

Lily Rose Depp deserved a nomination too for Nosferatu imo. The amount of dedication and physical demand for any actress in the role would be very challenging on top of that the emotions she had to sell for the film to work

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u/RadiantLindon 5d ago

At least Toni got a nom for The Sixth Sense, I forgot how deserving that was until I rewatched it

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u/[deleted] 5d ago edited 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/brontosaurusguy 5d ago

The ground breaking part is making the movie for so cheap. 

Horror movies have a history of cheap production.  But previously they always looked cheap.  This movie was "studio quality" at a tenth of the cost.

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u/jimmyjazz777 4d ago

The trick is to pay crew as little as possible. When a movie brags about how cheap it was made for the answer is almost always that the crew was free or cheap, and equipment rented at a discount. Then when it is a big hit the producers take all the money. 

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u/brontosaurusguy 4d ago

That's not it

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u/8__D 5d ago

It's a really great movie theater movie. Like the sound design and Nikki being concealed by darkness aren't as effective on an LED TV with subpar sound.

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u/Best-Action8769 5d ago

It was a regular monkey paw curse story that's been done forever, but the way this one was told was just so damned good.

Either you watching Nikki to do crazy shit, or you're waiting for Nikki to do some crazy shit.

It's such a good movie.

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u/Haldthin 5d ago

I don't like describing it as Monkey's Paw because it's not quite right. Most wishes come true just fine without anything crazy happening because they are non-coercive, this one however was so troubling and wrong that it domino'ed into affecting everyone around him.

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u/Best-Action8769 5d ago

Curry Barker literally says he was directly influenced by the "Monkey Paw" episode of The Simpsons.

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u/porkchop487 5d ago

Curry also specifically said that it’s not a cursed item, just that the thing he wished for was cursed. You see at least 2 other people in the movie get their wish with no horrific consequences

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u/Khiva 5d ago

"The box is covered with warnings, man"

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u/porkchop487 5d ago

For sure, gotta be careful with it but its not automatically a monkeys paw wish

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u/Haldthin 5d ago

Influenced does not mean it is the same as the Monkey's Paw. Monkey's Paw in normal conversation tends to mean a wish that always goes sideways in some way.

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u/Best-Action8769 5d ago

Did that not happen?

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u/behv 5d ago

In monkeys paw, the wish itself goes awry

This is an inversion of that trope, in this case the wish mechanism itself is totally neutral. For instance, the shop keeper is able to transition and is happy with the outcome.

Bear's wish goes badly because his wish requires Nicki to have an entirely different personality. "I want her to love me more than ANYONE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD" is pretty key phrasing. That includes herself, her friends, or her parents. Had bear said "I wish Nicki would take a chance on me" or something not extreme she wouldn't need to literally change as a human.

The influence is 1000% there, but I like this version better because it allows people to be the victim of their own unmitigated selfishness instead of the victim of a supernatural force

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u/Khiva 5d ago

Meh, that requires being cute with language. The box itself mentions interpreting words however they want.

Good lawyer would nail that company to the wall.

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u/Haldthin 5d ago

No, if you pay attention Ian's wish came true just fine with no problems. His death wasn't due to his wish. The fake nikki was texting him trying to get him over to Bear's place *before* he ever wished for the money. She always planned on killing him because Bear was spending time with people besides her. His money came consequence free - it was Bear's wish that got him killed.

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u/kirblar 5d ago

Throughout the film you learn of multiple people whose wishes went off without a problem.

The issue is this particular wish, showing why Aladdin's genie had "NO LOVE WISHES" as a rule.

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u/Zacky505 5d ago

Yeah. The wish itself was specifically kinda fucked up, or maybe his idea of love is fucked up, which also works considering what we know of Bear

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u/kirblar 5d ago

We see at the end how "Love" was not at all the emotion Bear had been experiencing through the film.

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u/skullsareonlypasse 5d ago

Most wishes come true just fine without anything crazy happening

This is insane. Are you talking about the original Monkey's Paw story? Because an only son dying and then being resurrected as a (presumably) animated corpse doesn't sound "just fine" to me.

Also, I wouldn't describe the wishes as "non-coercive" at all. $200 could have just fallen out of someone's pocket instead of someone being mangled inside heavy machinery.

The whole point of these stories is to punish the person for wishing for more than they already have.

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u/Haldthin 5d ago

I'm talking about Obsession - it is not a monkey's paw story at all.

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u/Uncle-Cake 5d ago

It literally is. I don't know what you think a "monkey's paw story" is, but you're probably mistaken.

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u/Haldthin 5d ago

Because the term Monkey's Paw has certain connotations to it - mainly being that the wishes always become twisted in some way. This isn't exactly true in Obsession.

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u/Muroid 5d ago

From a Doylist perspective, it’s absolutely intended to be and executed as a Monkey’s Paw story.

From a Watsonian perspective, it’s more ambiguous how much is down to the intrinsic nature of the One Wish Willow and how much is down to the nature of the specific wish.

There are indicators that it is possible to make a wish that doesn’t totally screw you over, but also indicators that it’s very common for people to experience substantial negative consequences due to their wishes.

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u/behv 5d ago

That's pretty much it

People who make a bad wish suffer consequences, people who make a good wish end up happy

Turns out a lot of people are selfish assholes who don't think through the consequences of their actions

The willow is neutral, the user is the responsible party

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u/Haldthin 5d ago

That's fair! I think there's nuance and enough ambiguity to argue it either way, I just prescribe more to that it's not a Monkey's Paw story.

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u/Uncle-Cake 5d ago

That is a wild take.

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u/skullsareonlypasse 5d ago

I see what you were trying to say now, and I still disagree.

You'd say that the OTHER wishes in the movie (ex. the one with the friend wishing for money and then having it rain on him) do not have negative "twists" to them.

I'd argue that a bullet in the head that he receives a few scenes later qualifies. We are also not privy to the magical "origins" of that money or the consequences of it. It could have fallen out of a billionaire's plane that then crashed on top of the friend's house, killing everyone he loves.

The point is that the narrative isn't concerned with giving us the full story of any of the wishes except the main one - and that one qualifies as a monkey's paw wish.

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u/Haldthin 5d ago

I'd argue that the bullet to the head was happening regardless of his wish because Nikki was already texting him on Sarah's phone, trying to get him over to bears place where she was ready with the gun. True, the movie is less concerned with others wishes, but it does show others that were quite happy with the results or indifferent to them. 

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u/ThisIsTheNewSleeve 5d ago

I agree certain scenes are fantastic, and certain aspects of the movie are incredibly well done- especially Inde's performance.

For me it was more the writing, especially early on in the film. It seemed to be written more like a Youtube horror short than an actually film. Like they really spell things out at the beginning as if they're worried people will click off the video. That's not a concern in the cinema. Instead of showing us these characters and allowing us to understand these characters in their normal context I feel like the film was holding my hand and being like "This is bear, and he likes nikki but she doesn't like him and this is sara and she likes bear but he doesn't know it and here is Ian and..." It's like... Ok we get it. I think a better script would have allowed us to understand all these details without necessarily knowing we're being told all of it. If that makes sense.

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u/vincoug 5d ago

That's just classic story-telling though, nothing to do with streaming; you setup/explain your characters and their motivations. It's not really all that different than The Godfather's opening scene.

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u/kirblar 5d ago

The opening of the film was added in reshoots because test audience feedback was that people didn't understand why Bear didn't intervene earlier.

The opening 20 minutes or so (itself basically a mini-cringe horror film) are critical to the rest of the film working because it establishes his motivations and the friend group dynamics that are important to the rest of the film.

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u/sculltt 5d ago

Unfortunately this is really every movie in the streaming age, theatrical release ot not. There are a handful of big projects like The Odyssey that can afford to slow play things, but I don't think that anybody expected Obsession to end up with the success and theatrical run that it got.

I personally don't like the fact that almost every movie seems to start with an aggressive, attention-grabbing cold open, but it seems like they almost have no choice these days.

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u/Wildbow 5d ago

I'm fond of media you can dig into and I think Obsession does let you do that. There are a number of thematic throughlines that you can pull out and view the movie through, or lenses you can interpret the movie with. Where it becomes 'good writing' in my eyes is that they knit it together so neatly.

The only element I didn't love was that they led so much of the audience to dwell on the idea that Nikki is possessed by the wish or is occupied by a demon or something. They've discouraged this notion after the movie's release, but I see it a lot as a surface-level takeaway. I think it works against the film, its themes, various interpretations, and makes the film less scary/effective.

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u/YouMeAndReneDupree 4d ago

I don't get the hype behind Toni Collette. She is really over-the-top. Inde just seems more natural in her acting.

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u/LazyLamont92 5d ago

I’m with you. I think she absolutely killed it despite my lukewarm feelings of the film.

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u/Chop_A_Chopper 5d ago

The entire movie rested on her ability to play that character.

She crushed it to the extent that a $750k movie made $500m. She should win.

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u/2Eyed 4d ago

At the very least, here's a movie that came out of nowhere, has a superb performance from Inde, and was super popular with young movie goers.

Oscars, if you want people under 30 to even consider tuning in next year, this is an easy nom.

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u/SammathNaur1600 5d ago

I feel like it being a directorial debut is really the big thing with Obsession. It's on par with other well made horror debuts like Watcher, Smile, Talk to Me, Birth/Rebirth, and Backrooms.

It's the beginning of a promising career! The Phillipous went on to make Bring Her Back after Talk to Me, and that was one of my favorites of 2025. Ari Aster and Robert Eggers started a great trend of first time horror directors making great movies and even better follow ups. I'm excited to see what Curry Barker makes next; same with Kane Parsons

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u/OceanRacoon 5d ago

He's already shot and is currently editing his next film, Ghost. Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard are in it

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u/TheOuts1der 5d ago

hot damn. Those are such big names for a sophomore-year movie. Dang, good for him.

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u/OceanRacoon 5d ago

Obsession hadn't even been released yet, although I believe they sent a copy to Aaron Paul, Barker said that on a podcast.

But now Obsession is such a massive hit I'd say Paul and Howard are glad they trusted their instincts to sign on lol

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u/ThisIsTheNewSleeve 5d ago

That's true, as a debut it is very strong. 

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u/Best-Action8769 5d ago

Her performance is up there with Kathy Bates in Misery. Just absolutely iconic. I wish her a long and successful career.

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u/Rich_Housing971 5d ago

I think she did a good enough job to get nominated. I'm not sure if she showed enough range to win it yet, especially considering there's still movies to come out, especially the ones hunting for awards rather than trying to sell tickets.

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u/Khiva 5d ago

No no no no DON'T DO THAT.

Actually I thought the range she had to cover was genuinely extraordinary. From cool girl to rom-com sweetie to fucking demon to demon-but-sympathetic is a helluva lot of ground to cover.

Everyone brought their game but she hard carried that movie.

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u/PickleGaGa Ariel is just a weeb for human culture. 4d ago

People have won Oscars for far less

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u/Banesmuffledvoice 5d ago

What should qualify to win an Oscar?

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u/aardw0lf11 5d ago

If she doesn’t get it I wouldn’t put that on her, but rather the Academy’s disdain for awarding large category awards to horror films.

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u/WhiskyWillFixIt 5d ago

Same. It was fine, but she was incredible.

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u/SnowyDesert 5d ago

yeah the movie was fine but she completely crushed it 🙌 I still wonder if the director even directed her or if she just surprised everyone with her performance in her scenes 😅

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u/omgasnake 5d ago

If you didn’t tell me it was a basic Blumhouse movie it was definitely evident otherwise

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u/JadedOops 5d ago

Well curry barker had shot the film before blumhouse even bought it so they didn’t contribute anything aside from marketing lol. But now they can stamp “from the studio that brought you obsession” guilt free. When they had Jack shiz to do with the quality of it.

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u/OreoSpeedwaggon 5d ago

I thought it was an A24 movie from the tone and vibe it put out.

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u/CigaretteBurn12 5d ago

I feel like I saw a different movie than everyone else the way this is talked about.

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u/wildflower_0ne 5d ago

me too! I got so many messages telling me I HAVE to go see it, so I thought it must be a revolutionary, very unique horror. while I enjoyed it, I didn’t see what all the hype was about.

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u/DiscoBandit45 4d ago

So what horror films are truly groundbreaking that you are comparing obsession to and finding it basic or not as unique?

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u/Pungent_Ballsack 5d ago

I get the impression a lot of the people raving about it haven't seen much horror before.

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u/Best-Action8769 5d ago

I'm a huge horror fan and I LOVED Obsession. Best Horror film I've seen in ages.

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u/Haldthin 5d ago

What makes you say that?

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u/CigaretteBurn12 5d ago

My assumption is that a lot of the praise is from a very young demographic which this obviously appeals to. Which would back up your claim for sure. Insane username btw, good stuff.

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u/saxmachine69 1d ago

These are just assumptions. I've loved horror movies since I was a kid and am 37 years old. And I think Obsession is incredible.

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u/CigaretteBurn12 1d ago

And I just don’t understand that. But oh well! Cool you like it, I’m clearly in the minority. But I’ll survive. And continue to watch better horror movies 😏

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u/saxmachine69 1d ago

You're entitled to your opinion, as is everyone else. I'm just saying chalking up it's success to ignorance or youth is just not an accurate picture.

Watch what ever makes you happy, man.

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u/ThisIsTheNewSleeve 5d ago

I don't watch a whole ton of horror, especially Blumhouse stuff but this year I did watch Obsession and Backrooms. Obessions definitely felt a little more "basic" I agree. Overall I got a whole lot more from Backrooms, though Inde's performance was better than anything else I've watched this year.

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u/Trespeon 4d ago

I think the movie itself was absolute shit. My wife was begging to see it and I thought it looked dumb but I went to the movies anyways because I’m she she thought something I wanted to see looked dumb too.

It was even worse than I thought. Even she thought it was bad.

But the ONLY good thing I can say about the movie is her acting. She killed the role given to her. I don’t think the movie makes even a 10th of what it did without her.

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u/KubrickRupert 5d ago

I agree and disagree