Obsession (2025)

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Wikidata Q136163067, film, IMDb tt37287335, TMDB 1339713: matched by corpus:resolve, told apart by episode credits Curry Barker as writer-director, 26 years old, $750,000 budget (The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman!); 2 more episodes agree.

What a model would be handed about it, for corpus:ask.

Who talked about it

The Big Picture

The Rewatchables

Came from

What the speakers say it drew on. Each is a speaker's account: “the maker said so” when they report the maker's own words, “the host's read” when the read is theirs.

Smile: 1 line the host's read ×1

  1. lineage (lineage): Smile ⇒ Obsession (the host's read). Even more so it borrows from the original Smile: what if a person stared at the camera.
    “Well, very much from the original smile.”
    The Big Picture · The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun! · 0:44:33 · Adam Nayman (0.55 sure it was them)

Smile 2: 1 line the host's read ×1

  1. craft (craft): Smile 2 ⇒ Obsession (the host's read). Obsession takes its sound design and camera movement from Smile 2.
    “obsession is certainly grabbing quite a bit in terms of its mechanical decision making from smile to.”
    The Big Picture · The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun! · 0:44:22 · Sean Fennessey (0.60 sure it was them)

The Blair Witch Project: 1 line the host's read ×1

  1. unmapped (forerunner): The Blair Witch Project ⇒ Obsession (the host's read). Blair Witch is named a forbear of a word-of-mouth phenomenon among young people.
    “obviously the Blair Witch Project is a forbear here in a lot of ways.”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:08:44 · unknown (Griffin or Sean) (0.40 sure it was them)

Led to

What the speakers say drew on it, marked the same way.

No line says another film or person drew on it.

Connected to

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma: 3 lines verdict ×2 theme ×1

  1. verdict (verdict): Obsession → Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. The speaker likes Miasma exponentially more than Obsession.
    “I like camping miasma exponentially more, you know, like much, much more.”
    The Big Picture · The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun! · 0:39:49 · Sean Fennessey (0.60 sure it was them)

Backrooms: 2 lines verdict ×1 contrast ×1

  1. verdict (verdict): Obsession → Backrooms. Naming Backrooms or Obsession as what is right or wrong with horror loses the game.
    “I think saying back rooms or obsession or any movie is just like what's right or wrong with horror is losing...”
    The Big Picture · The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun! · 0:36:32 · Adam Nayman (0.50 sure it was them)

The Blair Witch Project: 2 lines industry ×1 unmapped ×1

  1. industry (industry): Obsession → The Blair Witch Project. Like Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity, the question for Obsession is whether it is repeatable rather than just sequelizable.
    “in the case of those movies, it's sequelizable without being repeatable.”
    The Big Picture · The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun! · 0:42:23 · Adam Nayman (0.50 sure it was them)

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: 2 lines people ×1 lineage ×1

  1. lineage (handmade lineage): Obsession → The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Foundational horror films like Night of the Living Dead and Chain Saw were handmade and unpolished, an essential quality Obsession shares in kind though not in quality.
    “But so if you look back at Night of the Living Dead or, um, Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Last House on the Left or even Halloween to some extent.”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:17:36 · Sean Fennessey (0.50 sure it was them)

Fatal Attraction: 1 line what-if ×1

  1. what-if (what-if): Obsession → Fatal Attraction. Imagine Fatal Attraction arriving in the Twitter era; that is the scale of Obsession's discourse.
    “If Fatal Attraction had come out when Twitter existed, or if Twitter had existed for Fatal Attraction,”
    The Big Picture · The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun! · 0:41:02 · Sean Fennessey (0.50 sure it was them)

Get Out: 1 line industry ×1

  1. industry (box-office comp): Obsession → Get Out. Get Out's single-digit second-weekend drop is the closest legs comparison, though that was a drop, not a gain.
    “something like get out having a single digit drop in the 2nd weekend is kind of the closest comp to this.”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:04:48 · unknown (Griffin or Sean) (0.40 sure it was them)

Haley Joel Osment: 1 line people ×1

  1. people (performance comp): Obsession → Haley Joel Osment. The lead performance has the same where-did-this-person-come-from magic trick quality Osment had in The Sixth Sense.
    “this has a little bit of that magic trick feeling that Hilley Joel Osman had where you go, where did this person come from?”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:16:33 · unknown (0.30 sure it was them)

M. Night Shyamalan: 1 line unmapped ×1

  1. unmapped (authorship comp): Obsession → M. Night Shyamalan. The star of the movie is the mystery of who made it, as with early Shyamalan films.
    “And that's why I think Shyamalan's the real comparison point is the star of the movie becomes what's going on here?”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:15:52 · unknown (0.30 sure it was them)

Paranormal Activity: 1 line industry ×1

  1. industry (box-office comp): Obsession → Paranormal Activity. The speaker checked Paranormal Activity's numbers against Obsession's and found nothing like a five-million Wednesday.
    “The movie that I was looking at, data wise, this morning, just to see if it matched up at all was paranormal activity”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:05:51 · unknown (Griffin or Sean) (0.40 sure it was them)

Resident Evil: 1 line industry ×1

  1. industry (box-office comp): Resident Evil → Obsession. Obsession was also disgusting and a huge sensation, showing gross horror can have a high ceiling.
    “obsession is also disgusting at times, and it is a huge sensation.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Resident Evil’ Absolutely Rips! · 1:10:41 · Chris Ryan (0.50 sure it was them)

Smile: 1 line lineage ×1

  1. lineage (lineage): Obsession → Smile. Even more so it borrows from the original Smile: what if a person stared at the camera.
    “Well, very much from the original smile.”
    The Big Picture · The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun! · 0:44:33 · Adam Nayman (0.55 sure it was them)

Smile 2: 1 line craft ×1

  1. craft (craft): Obsession → Smile 2. Obsession takes its sound design and camera movement from Smile 2.
    “obsession is certainly grabbing quite a bit in terms of its mechanical decision making from smile to.”
    The Big Picture · The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun! · 0:44:22 · Sean Fennessey (0.60 sure it was them)

The Sixth Sense: 1 line career ×1

  1. career (career-launch comp): Obsession → The Sixth Sense. Obsession might be like The Sixth Sense, a breakout that puts a new filmmaker on the map and starts a brand.
    “is it more like maybe a 6th sense kind of thing where that kind of puts Shamalan on the map and then there's like a Curry Barker brand?”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:06:13 · Sean Fennessey (0.50 sure it was them)

Weapons: 1 line unmapped ×1

  1. unmapped (quality comp): Obsession → Weapons. Both drew discourse but ended up with a quality force field around them.
    “It is very similar to weapons where like, weapons did have a lot of discourse, but for the most part, people were like, well, that movie is good.”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:11:53 · unknown (0.30 sure it was them)

Wes Craven: 1 line unmapped ×1

  1. unmapped (timelessness): Obsession → Wes Craven. Obsession is a hook movie Wes Craven could have made 30 years ago, not tied to this moment.
    “Wes Craven could have made this movie 30 years ago.”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:12:15 · unknown (0.30 sure it was them)

Where it came up

What was said about it, by kind

career (1)

  1. career (career-launch comp): Obsession → The Sixth Sense. Obsession might be like The Sixth Sense, a breakout that puts a new filmmaker on the map and starts a brand.
    “is it more like maybe a 6th sense kind of thing where that kind of puts Shamalan on the map and then there's like a Curry Barker brand?”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:06:13 · Sean Fennessey (0.50 sure it was them)

contrast (1)

  1. contrast (contrast): Obsession → Backrooms. Unlike Backrooms, Obsession could have come out of any era instead of the YouTube-and-internet moment.
    “it's not a movie like back rooms where you go, well, this could only come out of this current moment”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:12:46 · unknown (0.30 sure it was them)

craft (1)

  1. craft (craft): Obsession → Smile 2. Obsession takes its sound design and camera movement from Smile 2.
    “obsession is certainly grabbing quite a bit in terms of its mechanical decision making from smile to.”
    The Big Picture · The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun! · 0:44:22 · Sean Fennessey (0.60 sure it was them)

industry (4)

  1. industry (box-office comp): Resident Evil → Obsession. Obsession was also disgusting and a huge sensation, showing gross horror can have a high ceiling.
    “obsession is also disgusting at times, and it is a huge sensation.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Resident Evil’ Absolutely Rips! · 1:10:41 · Chris Ryan (0.50 sure it was them)
  2. industry (industry): Obsession → The Blair Witch Project. Like Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity, the question for Obsession is whether it is repeatable rather than just sequelizable.
    “in the case of those movies, it's sequelizable without being repeatable.”
    The Big Picture · The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun! · 0:42:23 · Adam Nayman (0.50 sure it was them)
  3. industry (box-office comp): Obsession → Get Out. Get Out's single-digit second-weekend drop is the closest legs comparison, though that was a drop, not a gain.
    “something like get out having a single digit drop in the 2nd weekend is kind of the closest comp to this.”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:04:48 · unknown (Griffin or Sean) (0.40 sure it was them)
  4. industry (box-office comp): Obsession → Paranormal Activity. The speaker checked Paranormal Activity's numbers against Obsession's and found nothing like a five-million Wednesday.
    “The movie that I was looking at, data wise, this morning, just to see if it matched up at all was paranormal activity”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:05:51 · unknown (Griffin or Sean) (0.40 sure it was them)

lineage (2)

  1. lineage (lineage): Obsession → Smile. Even more so it borrows from the original Smile: what if a person stared at the camera.
    “Well, very much from the original smile.”
    The Big Picture · The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun! · 0:44:33 · Adam Nayman (0.55 sure it was them)
  2. lineage (handmade lineage): Obsession → The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Foundational horror films like Night of the Living Dead and Chain Saw were handmade and unpolished, an essential quality Obsession shares in kind though not in quality.
    “But so if you look back at Night of the Living Dead or, um, Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Last House on the Left or even Halloween to some extent.”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:17:36 · Sean Fennessey (0.50 sure it was them)

people (2)

  1. people (cast profit parallel): The Texas Chain Saw Massacre → Obsession. The cast not sharing in the profits recalls the Obsession set designer's complaint as that film took off.
    “Kind of reminds me of what happened with obsession.”
    The Rewatchables · ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ With Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan · 1:05:33 · Chris Ryan (0.50 sure it was them)
  2. people (performance comp): Obsession → Haley Joel Osment. The lead performance has the same where-did-this-person-come-from magic trick quality Osment had in The Sixth Sense.
    “this has a little bit of that magic trick feeling that Hilley Joel Osman had where you go, where did this person come from?”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:16:33 · unknown (0.30 sure it was them)

theme (1)

  1. theme (theme): Obsession → Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. One film literalizes the gender and fraud dynamics and the other supernaturalizes them; neither is right.
    “one movie can kind of literalize the idea and another movie can kind of supernaturalize the idea”
    The Big Picture · The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun! · 0:41:38 · Adam Nayman (0.50 sure it was them)

unmapped (4)

  1. unmapped (forerunner): Obsession → The Blair Witch Project. Blair Witch is named a forbear of a word-of-mouth phenomenon among young people.
    “obviously the Blair Witch Project is a forbear here in a lot of ways.”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:08:44 · unknown (Griffin or Sean) (0.40 sure it was them)
  2. unmapped (quality comp): Obsession → Weapons. Both drew discourse but ended up with a quality force field around them.
    “It is very similar to weapons where like, weapons did have a lot of discourse, but for the most part, people were like, well, that movie is good.”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:11:53 · unknown (0.30 sure it was them)
  3. unmapped (timelessness): Obsession → Wes Craven. Obsession is a hook movie Wes Craven could have made 30 years ago, not tied to this moment.
    “Wes Craven could have made this movie 30 years ago.”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:12:15 · unknown (0.30 sure it was them)
  4. unmapped (authorship comp): Obsession → M. Night Shyamalan. The star of the movie is the mystery of who made it, as with early Shyamalan films.
    “And that's why I think Shyamalan's the real comparison point is the star of the movie becomes what's going on here?”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:15:52 · unknown (0.30 sure it was them)

verdict (3)

  1. verdict (verdict): Obsession → Backrooms. Naming Backrooms or Obsession as what is right or wrong with horror loses the game.
    “I think saying back rooms or obsession or any movie is just like what's right or wrong with horror is losing...”
    The Big Picture · The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun! · 0:36:32 · Adam Nayman (0.50 sure it was them)
  2. verdict (verdict): Obsession → Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. The speaker likes Miasma exponentially more than Obsession.
    “I like camping miasma exponentially more, you know, like much, much more.”
    The Big Picture · The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun! · 0:39:49 · Sean Fennessey (0.60 sure it was them)
  3. verdict (verdict): Obsession → Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. Miasma gets an A plus; Obsession is incomplete but has dirty hands and opens a can of worms.
    “I'd say obsession is kind of incomplete.”
    The Big Picture · The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun! · 0:40:14 · Sean Fennessey (0.60 sure it was them)

what-if (1)

  1. what-if (what-if): Obsession → Fatal Attraction. Imagine Fatal Attraction arriving in the Twitter era; that is the scale of Obsession's discourse.
    “If Fatal Attraction had come out when Twitter existed, or if Twitter had existed for Fatal Attraction,”
    The Big Picture · The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun! · 0:41:02 · Sean Fennessey (0.50 sure it was them)

Fun items about it

  1. fun, about Obsession: The discourse around Obsession is the most deranged for any American movie since the speaker started; 80 percent the moment, 20 percent the movie.
    “about 80% of that is the moment that we're in, and only 20% of it is the movie.”
    The Big Picture · The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun! · 0:39:19 · Sean Fennessey (0.60 sure it was them)
  2. fun, about Obsession: A tiny indie horror movie made a stunning five million dollars on a Wednesday in its third week, which Griffin says breaks his brain.
    “Obsession made $5000000 on a Wednesday in its 3rd week of release”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:02:58 · Sean Fennessey (0.60 sure it was them)
  3. fun, about Obsession: They cast an imaginary Wes Craven version with Beverly Hills 90210 actors, naming each part.
    “Shannon Doherty and Brian Austin Green?”
    The Big Picture · The Top 10 Fantasy Films, The Toy Movie Hall of Fame, and ‘Masters of the Universe,’ with Griffin Newman! · 0:12:25 · unknown (0.30 sure it was them)

Who the speakers said made it

As said on the shows, not checked against the real credits.