Curry Barker Officially Reveals the ‘Obsession’ Detail He Couldn’t Afford to Fix [Exclusive]

There’s a good chance that anyone revisiting Obsession is paying considerably more attention to Nikki than to little details in the background, like the scenery outside a car window. That’s understandable. But the next time you watch Curry Barker‘s horror movie, the buildings might deserve a little attention, too.

In a new interview with Collider’s Maggie Lovitt, Barker revisited the experience of making Obsession, from working through production challenges to watching the finished movie with some distance from the edit. Asked how many times he has seen it, he offered an estimate that should make even the most committed repeat viewers feel better about their ticket purchases. “So I’ve probably seen it over 200 times,” he said, before adding, “I couldn’t actually count, but like a lot, you know.”

When Lovitt asked about a particularly difficult scene, Barker pointed to the movie’s car sequences. The director explained that the scenery outside the windows came from an LED wall, and that setup left a detail in the finished movie that viewers can still spot:

“Sometimes we would see the same building passing over and over. Like if you watch the movie as of as of now, you’ll see them like passing the same building over and over again, because that was just like the loop of video that we had. And I think I was pretty frustrated with that when I was in the edit, but we just didn’t have the budget to fix that later in post or anything, so it’s it’s just still there in the movie.”

“Sometimes we would see the same building passing over and over. Like if you watch the movie as of as of now, you’ll see them like passing the same building over and over again, because that was just like the loop of video that we had. And I think I was pretty frustrated with that when I was in the edit, but we just didn’t have the budget to fix that later in post or anything, so it’s it’s just still there in the movie.”

Four franchises, four completely different ways of getting underneath
your skin. This is the one built out of your particular fear, why it works so well on you, and what
it would leave behind.

Your nightmare does not wait outside the door. It waits for you
to close your eyes, which you are going to have to do eventually, because nobody has ever
won that particular argument.

• Freddy is horror’s cruellest idea: a threat that lives in the one place you cannot
  guard, cannot lock, and cannot avoid forever.
• You are the one who is fine during the film and wide awake at two in the morning. Your
  own head is where this does its damage.
• These films understood exhaustion as a horror engine. The kids on Elm Street do not lose
  because they are weak. They lose because they are tired.
• You can lock every door in the house. You still have to sleep.

Your nightmare is not really the doll. It is the face of the
person you tell, and the way they decide, very kindly, that you have imagined all of it.

• Chucky works precisely because he is absurd. That is the trap: the more accurately you
  describe him, the less anybody is going to believe you.
• You are the one shouting at the screen because the characters are not listening. You
  know that feeling from real life too.
• The franchise is at its best when the adults in the room are the real obstacle, and you
  have met those adults.
• By the time somebody finally believes you, you will have handled most of it on your own.

Your nightmare has your number, knows your name, and has almost
certainly been inside your house before. The worst part is that you already know them.

• Scream is the only one of these where the killer takes the mask off and turns out to be
  somebody who was at the party.
• You are the person who calls the twist out loud before it lands. You watch people the
  same way you watch films.
• The franchise made the rules of horror part of the plot, which means the survivors are
  the ones paying attention. You would be paying attention.
• Everybody is a suspect, including the person who just offered to walk you home.

Your nightmare is not really about you. It is about the people
asleep down the hall, and the feeling that whatever is here is not interested in leaving.

• The Conjuring films are domestic horror. The house, the family, the perfectly ordinary
  room that quietly stops feeling ordinary.
• Your instinct is to get everybody into one room. Your fear is protective rather than
  personal, which is rarer than it sounds.
• This is the one franchise where belief is the weapon. The people who come through it are
  the ones who are not alone and refuse to be.
• Whatever is here did not come for you. It came for the household, and you are the one
  standing in the hallway.

Curry Barker Had a Different Experience Watching ‘Obsession’ With Fresh Eyes

Image via Shreyas Hirlekar

Focus Features /Courtesy Everett Collection

Image via Focus Features

Image via Focus Features

Image via Focus Features

Image via Focus Features

Image via Focus Features

Image via Shreyas Hirlekar

Focus Features /Courtesy Everett Collection

Image via Focus Features

Image via Focus Features

Image via Focus Features

Image via Focus Features

Image via Focus Features

The conversation also returned to Barker’s experience revisiting the movie after spending some time away from it. Lovitt asked whether subsequent screenings had changed his impression of particular scenes, and Barker recalled returning to the beginning of the movie in a theater after a break of at least a couple of months, telling Collider:

“I didn’t even watch the whole thing, but I rewatched the beginning of it in the theater, and I kind of was like, whoa, like it was the first time I’d had any experience of seeing it with fresh eyes ever. And I was just like, wow, this has like an interesting, eerie type of nostalgic— like all the feelings that I was trying to achieve. I was obsessed with like trying to achieve this certain feeling. And I always was so disappointed that I wasn’t able to achieve that feeling, but I think I did. I was just too close to it. So, re-watching it, I felt that feeling that I’ve been chasing.”

        </blockquote>

“I didn’t even watch the whole thing, but I rewatched the beginning of it in the theater, and I kind of was like, whoa, like it was the first time I’d had any experience of seeing it with fresh eyes ever. And I was just like, wow, this has like an interesting, eerie type of nostalgic— like all the feelings that I was trying to achieve. I was obsessed with like trying to achieve this certain feeling. And I always was so disappointed that I wasn’t able to achieve that feeling, but I think I did. I was just too close to it. So, re-watching it, I felt that feeling that I’ve been chasing.”

‘Obsession’s Reach Beyond the Movie Was Something Curry Barker Never Expected

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Image via Epic Games

Lovitt also asked about Nikki’s appearances in Fortnite and at Halloween Horror Nights. It’s a different sort of question from how to pull off a car scene, and Barker had plenty to say about it. “That’s gotta be the craziest part,” he said, before discussing the expectations filmmakers encounter when starting out. He explained:

“Everyone kind of tries to tell you what it’s gonna be and how you’re how it’s gonna be. And I think your characters showing up in Fortnite, your characters showing up at theme parks, those types of conversations don’t ever really start until you’ve created some sort of IP, or you’ve created some sort of, you know, series or some giant so really it’s just insane that this has happened to this movie and that it’s kind of I guess I did create an IP, but I never would have thought about it like that.”

        </blockquote>

“Everyone kind of tries to tell you what it’s gonna be and how you’re how it’s gonna be. And I think your characters showing up in Fortnite, your characters showing up at theme parks, those types of conversations don’t ever really start until you’ve created some sort of IP, or you’ve created some sort of, you know, series or some giant so really it’s just insane that this has happened to this movie and that it’s kind of I guess I did create an IP, but I never would have thought about it like that.”

Stay tuned to Collider for more from our Obsession interviews.

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Obsession

• <

  Michael Johnston

  Bear

• <

  Inde Navarrette

  Nikki

• <

  Cooper Tomlinson

  Ian

• <

  Megan Lawless

  Sarah

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