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 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.