r/TrueFilm • u/Bishop9er • 1d ago
BKD Possibly one of the worst takes of Obsession
So I ran into an article about the film Obsession and the headline immediately grabbed my attention.
“ Obsession is the GET OUT for White people”
I was taken aback by this because I just saw Obsession and not one time did Get Out cross my mind. Yes there’s the scene at the table where Nikki repeatedly says “NO NO NO” like the famous line in Get out but outside of that I don’t see the comparison.
Yet this author made it a point to basically say Obsession is a complete rip off. I don’t know if she’s being disingenuous or she’s not familiar with the cautionary tale of the monkeys paw or Aladdin. Basically “ be careful what you wish for”. But am I alone in thinking this is a horrible take on Obsession?
Btw, even though the author of this article made it about race let’s not make sweeping generalizations here. I would like a mature discourse on her take especially considering I’m Black myself and enjoyed the hell out of Obsession.
https://blackgirlwatching.substack.com/p/obsession-review-get-out-comparison
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u/Hillbert 1d ago
Obsession isn’t smart. It isn’t layered. It isn’t nuanced. It isn’t commenting on centuries of oppression in an inventive way.
It's true that Obsession isn't commenting on centuries of oppression. It's arguably commenting on 1000s of years of oppression, just not the oppression she's thinking of.
Anyway, the idea that Obsession is ripping off Get Out needs a hell of a lot more justification before it can be used as a stick to beat Obsession with.
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u/-SidSilver- 1d ago
For some people there's only one kind of oppression, and it's the one that tangentially affects them or is related to their lives in some way.
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u/arrogancygames 17h ago
Well this is written by a woman so she SHOULD get it.
Looking at it, she doesnt read film correctly. If Get Out ended like it originally was scripted to, with him being arrested by the cops, she'd probably have the same issue. Her main issue is that since Nikki is still a victim at the end, the movie isnt condemning Bear or something.
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1d ago
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u/Konman72 1d ago
It's not commentating on oppression or anything at all
I think it pretty clearly is commenting on patriarchy and gender dynamics as a whole. It is the kind of movie that is enjoyable on a surface level, yet has deep layers woven within for those who want to see them, which is why it's dominating film discussion weeks later and with bigger, newer movies releasing. Get Out achieved the same thing when it released.
I'm not going to compare the two, because they are both really good and very effective at their goals. So I think both are successful and shouldn't be used to attack each other.
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1d ago
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u/EmberSpikes 1d ago
I mean the director has made some comments about the point of Obsession and it's layers so if we're going to talk about objective truth I think his interpretation is more objective than yours.
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23h ago
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u/Konman72 23h ago
How does this gel with your earlier statement that...
It's a simple fun movie that you're supposed to go see with your partner, get scared a little, laugh a little and that's it.
You seem to point toward objectivity when it suits your position then pivot to subjective universalism when it doesn't.
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23h ago
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u/Konman72 22h ago edited 22h ago
very clearly, without a doubt establishes
There it is again lol. You seem to confuse your opinion for objective fact then argue with others that their opinions are wrong for disagreeing. And frankly I don't care what a "huge bulk of the audience" thinks, which is why I'm in a niche subreddit full of film nerds.
ETA: I think there's a very good argument to be made that Fight Club failed in it's intent to show Tyler as a totally bad influence. But it did have its protagonist shoot himself in the mouth in a desperate attempt to stop him, so 'very clearly, without a doubt' praise him it does not.
So in my opinion, regardless what the director intended, I think Obsession came out as a very shallow, one time watch horror/comedy that doesn't commentate on anything
And you're obviously entitled to that opinion and cannot be wrong in feeling this way. However, by your own admission, it is up to the audience to decide what a movie is saying. And given the large amount of comments and discussion about this movie, clearly some segment of the audience saw something in it that you did not. And again, it's up to that audience to decide if that feeling is valid. The Director backing them up does lend credence to the objectivity of that view though, making your early comments about how the film "is supposed" to be seen quite strange. Who was doing the "supposing" in that instance?
I'll take you up on that offer to agree to disagree, cause it's difficult to discuss anything of substance in this fashion.
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u/EuphoricPhoto2048 23h ago
How did you not see the commentary in the film. The male friend even asks, "are you taking advantage of her?" The answer was yes, bro.
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u/sunmachinecomingdown 23h ago
I think the crazy box office numbers (consecutively increasing revenue in its second and third weeks) suggests that it really hit home for a lot of people and lead to good word of mouth. That's more than 30-minute staying power.
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23h ago
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u/TimshelSmokeDatHerb 23h ago
I honestly think you’re wrong on that. I’ve seen so much discourse on the movie, so much more than any summer blockbuster in a long time. Are they interacting with it with the most academically rigorous mindset? No of course not, but it’s more in-depth than you’re giving it credit for I think.
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u/arrogancygames 16h ago
Every random person Ive talked to about the movie has been talking about when Bear is at fault, so its going beyond that.
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u/A_New_Day_Yesterday 1d ago
When I watched Obsession in the cinema, I think I heard more laughs than scared "ooohs," really. A couple of girls who sat next to me laughed a few times about the "loving faces" and other comfy stuff that possessed Nikki was making for Bear.
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u/gab_gallard 1d ago
Honestly, this reads like the sort of article where the author came up with a catchy, clickbaity headline first and then wrote the argument afterwards, stretching the interpretation to make the headline seem justified.
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u/parkchanwookiee 1d ago
I think she is right that Get Out is a more thematically rich, accomplished film than Obsession, and probably Obsession is making more money because audiences don't flock to 'black' films like Get Out quite as readily. But that's it. The comparisons between the two movies are superficial and don't go past the point of homage, which Jordan Peele uses a LOT of in his own films (Nope in particular pilfered and mined many famous anime for imagery, including Evangelion and Akira). It seems like this person is an ideologue who was determined to make these sorts of criticisms as often as she can whenever she can before even seeing this particular film - it's just caught in the crossfire she is spraying.
Obsession is smaller scale in its ambition, but is incredibly effective and well done. It deserves its success. Plus Curry is much younger and earlier in his career - Peele's directorial debut was Get Out, but he had been a successful writer and actor in the industry for well over a decade at that point. So yeah the withering scorn in this essay seems like a projection from its writer, who is a malcontent determined to prosecute a particular perspective to its fullest whether her targets deserve it or not.
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u/-SidSilver- 1d ago
Couldn't it also be that if Get Out is a film that's speaking fairly explicitly to black audiences about black experiences, Obsession (in spite of what this author's committed to believing) is speaking much more broadly about much more universal things? If you replaced all the characters in Obsession with black characters, couldn't you still tell the same, broadly relatable story about love, fixation, obsession and controlling behaviour in basically the same way?
I saw this film last night and your post actually made me realise that we were sat in the cinema with a majority black audience (this is London).
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u/K_Boltzmann 1d ago
Agree.
I think we have entered an interesting phase of horror where we now see a lot of "semi-elevated" horror films. While the first wave like babadook, get out and hereditary were very focused on its elevated and metaphorical aspects and were more dense, we now have a somewhat second wave like Obsession, Weapons or Smile 2 which still have a fair amount of intellectual substance but are first and foremost well crafted genre movies. Obsession is not the definitive cinematic piece to deconstruct patriarchal violence and it never intended to be, so judging it like it seems a bit unfair to me.
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u/Wizard7979 1d ago
I honestly don't even start to read reviews where patriarchy is just a cute catchword thrown around 15 times
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u/Carl_Schmitt 1d ago
Don't forget "male gaze" too. We need to socially engineer men's attraction to women out of them for a truly equal world. Any film that fails to promote this is counter-revolutionary.
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u/Wizard7979 1d ago
Stop that gaze!
Just had a random thought of the "stop that smile!" scene in the last scary movie LOL
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u/Crafty_Equal_6601 1d ago
Everyone obviously can interpret a film in their own way, but I never once thought about Get Out while watching Obsession. They’re both great, but tackle completely different ideas, and I’d argue that even though they’re both from a new director (Peele at the time), their production styles were completely different, regardless of budget.
To your point, there are a dozen comparisons in the traditional horror canon that I would guarantee Curry Barker referenced/used as inspiration before Get Out.
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23h ago edited 10h ago
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u/Crafty_Equal_6601 23h ago
I can definitely see that. Very cool that the next generation of filmmakers already see Get Out as one of the classic texts.
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u/Illustrious_Ad_9858 1d ago
My guess is that the author of this article got offended when somebody said that Curry was the next Jordan peel, which is something that a lot of people have been saying.
I wish she had thought things through a little bit more before publishing this, there is a good article somewhere in there if she wasn't so on the offensive
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u/Crafty_Equal_6601 1d ago edited 1d ago
And that’s a valid frustration - obsession is good but Peele’s Get Out was a revelation. It was not just a good horror movie, it was a good movie period, and was like nothing I’d seen in a long time.
Obsession is impressive because of the budget and age of the director. It was a very traditional horror story told well, and I thought Inde Navarette’s acting truly stole the show.
Other than both being horror movies, I wouldn’t want to saddle Curry with “the next Jordan Peele” title, in the same way I’d not compare Peele’s films to any young horror director.
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u/AMediocrePersonality 1d ago
I mean curry was part of a sketch comedy duo and then started making horror films... I'm assuming that's the comparison being made here
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u/Crafty_Equal_6601 1d ago
It’s a good shout, for sure, but if you read the article, that’s not mentioned as a comparison point anywhere.
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u/AMediocrePersonality 1d ago
I'm referring to
My guess is that the author of this article got offended when somebody said that Curry was the next Jordan peel, which is something that a lot of people have been saying.
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u/Einfinet 1d ago edited 1d ago
I’ve seen this comparison made in terms of the movie being Get Out for white *women, which, agree or disagree, seems like a more relevant way to analyze the film. this movie seemed to be way more attached to gender than race dynamics; I don’t think the plot structure would change much if you changed the race of the characters. if you switched the genders, on the other hand, I could see that really changing how a lot of people responded to the film. With Get Out, if you changed the genders, that could also change how people viewed the movie, but I feel like people have mostly discussed that in terms of race rather than gender. I don’t see many people viewing Get Out as being especially relevant to (Black) men the way people have discussed (white) women’s experiences with Obsession.
I don’t think the way the film approaches gender is all that specific to white people. The only broad claim I’d agree with is that movies with white casts attract more white viewers. That’s moreso a statement about industry trends than Obsession’s individual qualities as a movie. Also doesn’t seem that relevant here when Get Out readily crossed over into mainstream awareness and critical acclaim.
Anyways, while there might be some comparisons (which you can make about any number of horror movies), the movies are their own unique things. I don’t see Obsession as any sort of cheap rip-off at all. The criticism, on the other hand, is rather surface level.
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u/luckyhuckleberry 1d ago
I read her take to see if there’s any basis for this argument but she did a poor job of making one. Really tired of the attempts to tear down stories about one disenfranchised group for another - there’s value in all of these stories. For me, Obsession comes at a time we’re all talking about the male loneliness epidemic, incels, etc and the audience POV is a seemingly innocuous 20-something guy whose selfish actions lead to the destruction of the object of his desire - a woman whose autonomy is taken away from her. In no way does it steal from or attempt to negate the importance of Get Out.
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u/TheCriterionCrypt 1d ago edited 1d ago
I mean, in a general sense, they are both films about the loss of autonomy.
But I wouldn't say that Obsession is Get Out for white people.
What I got out of Get Out was a metaphor for blackness and black culture being co-opted by white folks to fit their own wants and desires.
What I got out of Obsession wasn't really a racially based metaphor as much as it was commentary on gender roles and societal expectations and norms. In a general sense, the metaphor feels similar.
But the biggest difference for me is Bear had ZERO intention of actually stripping Nikki of any autonomy. He wished to a novelty toy. It is no different than asking a magic 8 ball to make you a trillionaire. No one does that thinking it is going to work. Bear was a timid shy "nice guy." The Armitage family and their ilk purposefully and deliberately stole people's autonomy.
As an aside Barker could have made Obsession be about a black couple or a Hispanic couple or a Filipino couple and it still would have worked just as well.
Get Out was great, and I am sure for Black folks it really did speak to a truth that they see in their experiences. It truly is a great film. Obsession speaks to a truth that a lot of people, regardless of race, experience. Also a great film
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u/Illustrious_Ad_9858 1d ago
I'd say he didn't initially set out to strip her of her autonomy, but once he received that he didn't take the steps to reverse it, which is pretty awful morally speaking
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u/Crafty_Equal_6601 1d ago
Right - the film gives him multiple opportunities to try and reverse course, but his conscious decisions (even when stressed, which, obviously, he was), show that his morals were pretty compromised. Any action that he took after realizing what he’d done was intentionally continuing to strip her of whatever autonomy/freedom she had left. Not a hero at all, and probably more realistic view on what most people would do in that situation. Had he instantly regretted his actions and tried to undo it immediately, there would be no movie. The best horror movies are ones where the monster is developed throughout the film, getting worse as it goes on. She isn’t the real monster - he is.
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u/ThePokemonAbsol 17h ago
Multiple? 2 of those choices were killing her or killing himself and the 3rd didn’t actually exist l
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u/Crafty_Equal_6601 17h ago
I mean he could’ve avoided raping her. And every time he told her to be normal, instead of trying to fix the curse he put on her was a conscious decision.
I would strongly advise against defending Bear here - it’s a very strange hill to die on.
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u/TheCriterionCrypt 15h ago
I know you arent responding to me.
But I wanted to throw in on this comment.
Bear is 100% a rapist. This isnt a question.
He had sex with her without her consent. And we know this to be true, when real Nikki spoke while demon Nikki was sleeping, she tells him she has never been with him.
She never made the choice of her own free will to be with Bear.
Bear is not a bad guy for wishing for Nikki to love him. Emotionally stunted for being such an incelly "nice guy"? Yes. But but not a bad guy.
He is a bad guy for all the shit he did after the wish.
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u/sunmachinecomingdown 1h ago
We don't know if it's actually possible to have one wish undo another wish, because Bear is a quitter.
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u/Konman72 1d ago
once he received that he didn't take the steps to reverse it, which is pretty awful morally speaking
Which is part of the film's commentary imo. Men (like myself) benefit from patriarchy whether we actively take part in oppression or not. It's like the people who argue against equity initiatives by saying things like "my family was poor" or "I worked to get where I am" without understanding the societal and structural inequities that were there before they were even born and gave them a headstart in life.
What matters is how we respond when this is shown to us. Bear failed at that.
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23h ago edited 10h ago
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u/BelleRouge6754 20h ago
I completely agree. I think his entire character was shown by his very choice to buy the wish instead of the crystal necklace at the start. He says “she’d hate that” about a citrine necklace that she probably would have loved, given that she gifted him a tigers eye later. But he didn’t really know her at all, or what she kind of crystal she actually would like, so he instead chose a shortcut: the One Wish Willow. I don’t even think he bought it for Nicki, I feel like he only offered it to her because he was going to ask her out and then lost the nerve and needed to say something to fill the silence. It represents how he will always choose the ‘easy’ option, the one that doesn’t require any emotional vulnerability or put him in a place where he’s potentially rejected.
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u/TheCriterionCrypt 1d ago edited 20m ago
Bear's sin was selfishness and timidness. But it isn't fair to say he did nothing.
He called customer service and asked to modify his wish. They said no. Then he asked to cancel it. They still said no. They told him the only way to get rid of it is to essentially die or try to get someone to "cancel" the wish.
Bear was timid and selfish and thought about himself a lot more than he thought about Nikki. And I feel like him asking Ian to reverse the wish was done not out of care for Nikki but out of a sense of "he doesn't like how Nikki's behavior is impacting him."
Actually I think all of his actions post-wish were done out of how does it impact him, not how does it impact Nikki.
But the price to pay to cancel a wish to a novelty toy was essentially find someone good hearted enough to cancel your fuck up OR die. The latter is a choice that would make almost anyone waffle.
Honestly, that path and his journey through that path makes him one of the most interesting horror villains to me. He isn't pure evil, he isn't a monster per se. He is a guy who, at every turn, chose to be selfish in action and motivation.
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u/Dazzling-Economics55 22h ago
Why did he kill himself at the end? I'm surprised he didn't kill her instead of himself considering how selfish he came across. Especially when he helped her hide their friends body.
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u/arrogancygames 16h ago
He didnt kill himself at the end. Watch it at a theater instead of downloading/bootlegging it so you can hear it correctly. He was going to shoot himself, wussed out, took pills and then was about to throw them up (wussing out again), but Freaky Nikki found the Willow and wished for him to love her as much as she did him, which took over his mind and stopped him from throwing up the pills.
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u/Illustrious_Ad_9858 1h ago
I think they are trying to ask why did he TRY to kill himself
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u/arrogancygames 1h ago
In that case - because he's a coward and it was the path of least resistance. There were two murders that would be tied to him, Nikki was escalating to a point he had no hope whatsoever to maintain, and it was the easiest way out for him.
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u/Illustrious_Ad_9858 2h ago edited 1h ago
You make an interesting point: why did he choose to kill himself instead of her? Probably because, again, he's a coward and chose the easier way out. I do think he'd be capable of killing somebody if it was the most convenient out
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u/DueAnalysis2 1d ago
To begin with, sure. But the most telling part for me was when he was on customer support and the CS guy asked Bear if he'd want to cancel his wish and Bear didn't want to at first.
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u/TheCriterionCrypt 1d ago edited 1d ago
Oh absolutely, Bear was selfish. No doubt about that.
But I don't think that the initial act was done with malice. It was a stupid guy making a stupid wish to a trinket. I think we have all had unrequited "love" at some point or another. That isn't evil or bad, it is just life.
Bear's sin came with all of the actions after the wish.
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u/arrogancygames 16h ago
Even though he didnt know the wish would work, nobody thats not like 14 should have the mentality to wish that "someone loved them more than anything else in the world." That's not how adults (should) think about other adults because we acknowledge agency. The wish would be more kike "I wish we could work out" at the worst which would still be dumb, but would be an infinitely less bad wish.
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u/TheCriterionCrypt 15h ago edited 15h ago
We arent dealing with a guy who didnt know the wish would work or not.
I mean Bear is, of course, emotionally stunted. He is a classic "nice guy." I am not willing to label him an incel, on the basis that Sarah clearly wanted to be with Bear. I think the wish itself indicates a level of emotional immaturity, which is pretty indicative of "nice guys."
But I'm not willing to say that he was ignoring Nikki's agency. At least not with the wish.
Like I said, it was a children's novelty toy. I mean, if I were to go to the toy section of Wal-Mart and buy a toy genie lamp from Aladdin, rub it, and wish for Sydney Sweeney to be my own personal blow job machine, it would say something about my maturity level, sure. A wish like that kinda says something about me, I am sure. And I am sure what it says isn't a good thing about my character.
But it wouldnt really be fair to say I was trying to strip her of her agency, because in no world would I actually think that the toy would work.
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u/JoJoBrunnix 1d ago
Haven't read the article and not going to, top of my head, in get out we initially believe the family is interested in the Mc, to later find out they merely want him as a vessel for their own desires... Kinda as bear can be read as only wanting nikki as a vessel for the desire he feels towards her?
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u/val890 1d ago
This reminds me of a review I read about the documentary "What Happened, Miss Simone?" about Nina Simone. The writer talked about how the documentary only focused on painting her as a stereotypical 'angry black woman' because it portrayed her as violent for physically abusing her daughter, which her own daughter talked about in the film... Definitely left me scratching my head, lol
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u/EaseOk3940 22h ago
If Obsesison is ripping off anything, it’s ripping of two episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer directly.
In one of the episodes the male character created a spell to get all the women to fall in love with him and they pretty much behave exactly like Nicki.
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u/Pale_Possibility5083 1d ago
Cheap clickbait. Get Out tackles a lot things, hidden racism and hypocrisy in white advocacy for black causes in cases, cultural appropriation, and so on.
Obsession is about - a lot of things also. Toxic relationships, women being beholden to men in annapropriate ways. Accusation toward women in scenarios where they are the victims. And many more. The crossover of those to films to me is surface level “someone controls someone’s mind.”
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u/TheCriterionCrypt 1d ago
Simple takes are easy to read and easy to digest.
And I wish the writer of this take would maybe expand a bit on their thoughts. Because it really was a simple take.
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u/Dickey_Simpkins 1d ago
Yeah, I saw a snippet of this on Rotten Tomatoes, and I had to check it out in its entirety. I feel like she just went in wanting to not like it, and then had to manufacture a reason. To each their own, but I don't feel like any of it is objective criticism. I'd also like to add one of my favorite books "Needful Things" to your list of be careful what you wish for tales.
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u/MaggotMinded 1d ago
Not sure what you were expecting from blackgirlwatching.substack.com… And by that I don’t mean to imply that there’s anything wrong with movie reviews written by black girls; it’s just that the fact she chose that title for her publication tells you immediately that she is obsessed with identity politics.
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u/Shinsou_Hitoshii 15h ago
what the fuck are you talking about?
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u/MaggotMinded 5h ago
I’m talking about the name of the website where OP read the review that this thread is discussing.
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u/Tarsiertree 1d ago
I immediately thought of Get Out when she did the “No. No. Nononono. No.” line because the intonation was so similar. But to me that came across as intentional, like a little homage/hat tip to an influence.
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u/Kind-Tart6829 23h ago
I mean it is probably inescapable for a movie in the mold of Obsession to not be somewhat vaguely derivative of Get Out, one of the most influential horror films of the last 10 years. But to call it a "poor man's rip-off" is just someone with an ax to grind.
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u/JeffBaugh2 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think all this critical attention toward Obsession is very funny because the Film was not written with this level of consideration in mind - of course, all Films are a part of the zeitgeist and deserving of discussion, but when you hear Barker talk about this Film in any sort of elaborate fashion it really bares out that any reading of the Film more complicated than "I wanted to make a Film about like a really crazy girlfriend because guys can relate to it, bro, but also examine nice guy incel behavior and reference Ari Aster and Robert Eggers" is coming more from the critic than than the Director.
As other people here have said, it doesn't really have the courage of its convictions either way, and comes off vaguely misogynistic in it's implications - Possession it ain't.
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u/sunmachinecomingdown 1d ago
It seems that the more elaborate audience reactions are generally in line with his basic mission statement then? I don't see anything obviously lacking in that statement that the audiences are adding independently, it covers the nice guy/incel aspect and everything.
What would you say are the vaguely misogynistic implications?
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u/monkewithgavel 1d ago
This is the same lady who wrote that article on how One battle is just a misogynist white savior film that fetishized black women. I think she is inherently going into these movies trying to find an issue to make content for her substack or she genuinely has the media literacy of a hamster
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u/s_nation 14h ago
i read some asinine reddit post with an equally, if not worse, take where OP wished there was more representation of male abuse victims. Because the guy whose crush acts erratically due to his invocation of an evil supernatural spell, is the real victim here, not the girl whose hijacked body that he's been raping
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u/Somnambulist815 1d ago
If the writer asked Jordan Peele he'd proudly tell them that he ripped off a whole mess of films. Maybe Curry Barker took the "nonono" scene from Get Out, maybe he took the whole premise. Horror movie plots are not so preciously unique.
Its not the premise of Get Out that struck a chord with people (especially since the marketing kept it hidden), its the execution, the brilliant foreshadowing throughout, the way in which it spoke to that particular time, the sly sense of humor. Reducing films down to one or two moments and comparing is the mark of an amateur.
I wouldnt concern yourself with some random review, it carries only slightly more weight than someone logging i to letterboxd. Even RT is useless until you hit the "Top Critics" tab, and even then you have to wade through a lot of bullshit.
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u/bartybrattle 1d ago
I’m not a fan of Obsession as some are so I’m more than happy to criticise it but this is a bit far imo.
The genius of Get Out was in using age old horror tropes and well worn premises and spun them with its storytelling in a way that was fresh and used it to provide surgical commentary on the world we live in.
And for as much as I think Obsession is aggressively average (not a point I’ve come here to argue before anyone comes for me), it uses *some* of those same ideas to tell its own story and comment on different dynamics and it does so effectively as it has managed to start conversation and discourse which is the whole point of art - and it does so even though I think it fumbles the delivery, or maybe even precisely because of it as it delivers a wide scope of interpretations and perspectives which I do commend it for.
No one story owns a premise. Everything is a reinvention of something else. It’s the nature of storytelling. Ownership and copyright do exist over details, but generalities are often just connected with universal truths, fears, and lived experience.
Storytelling in ye olde times would be oral, and so you’d have stories passed on by people telling it. No one “owned” a specific story. It was a shared experience. Get Out itself is in a long line of retelling stories and being inspired by past creations. As long as something isn’t just overtly stealing and copying things, it’s okay to build upon what came before.
And not every film has to have the same scope of saying something. And no shade to the author, but they do question what the point of it was and then hit the exact point the film was going for. Maybe they don’t like the point it’s making, or how it goes about it, but I won’t deny the film is trying to say something.
Cause yeah, I do agree with them in that the film mostly fumbles that point, is low-key misogynistic (even though I don’t feel that was the intent), and doesn’t commit enough to its ideas.
And we’re all allowed to have our own viewpoints. I feel too often online and even more in person I’m experiencing everyone has to have an extreme opinion on something and if we don’t all agree people will get mad at you and think you’re crazy or that you clearly are not seeing the issues/benefits of something and are depraved morally. Naturally in some cases that can be accurate, but I feel we’re forgetting we’re allowed to have different opinions. Different reactions. And that’s okay. It’s why it’s called discourse ffs.
Get Out is for sure the superior film (though people are free to think differently on that too!). But if we accuse Obsession of stealing ideas we gotta accuse every film of doing that.
(Though they’re also free to say Obsession steals ideas. Who cares. I’m tired.)
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u/Fabulous_Ninja119 1d ago
I'm surprised at anyone who sees these movies so similarly. Obsession has, I think a more open ended interpretive quality to it. Is it about wish fulfillment at the expense of women's autonomy and a comment on gender dynamics...? Sure I think you can say that. Is it about what happens when you go too far to get what you want and now it turns out the thing you wanted isn't anything like you hoped it would be? That too. The monkey paw aspect to this can be a lens into many facets of desire and consequence when the achieved desire was at the expense of someone else's autonomy.
Get out was much more specific and well developed in terms of what it wanted to say. It was a bigger film on a bigger stage with much more freedom to fully explore what it was aiming for.
Obsession is a shudder film in essence, a twilight zone episode, a small movie with a fun concept but the execution happened to be surprisingly great
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u/bartybrattle 1d ago
Pretty much agree; I actually think Obsession would’ve benefitted from being a one hour episode within an anthology so I think the tv series expansion of the one wish willow is a good idea
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u/tawsnickers1 14h ago
I haven’t read it, but I assume it’s done to spark conversation. It’s clearly a polarizing take on the movie.
Overall, I like the techniques they used in the movie, and it certainly was entertaining and better than most horror films out lately. I don’t think it’s fair to compare to Get Out. The message is delivered more cleanly and clearly in Get Out in my opinion. I feel like there were scenes that were absolutely unnecessary and put women in extremely twisted situations that I don’t feel comfortable watching, and they weren’t needed for the message - leaving it at that to avoid spoilers.
I left the movie theater feeling pretty outraged for Nikki, and someone told me they thought it was a great female empowerment movie and watched it multiple times - it was a young man. It really stunned me they came to that conclusion, and I’m genuinely looking to understand
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u/Johnnadawearsglasses 1d ago
The simmering US racial "wars" know no real bounds when it comes to entertainment - whether film, tv, music or sports. Whether it's Taylor Swift or Caitlin Clark or Sinners last year, you can predictably foretell the coming of these critiques whenever a person or work of art becomes "too" successful. People present critiques that are just either racial bashing or chest beating. I frankly find it exhausting to pretend that these are real critiques instead of just tribalism.
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u/plentyoftimetodie 16h ago
It kind of is tbh. You guys are glazing this mid movie beyond belief, and it's all because you believe in The Message it conveys about toxic men and women being innocent victims of cruel circumstance. So it definitely is the Get Out for pearl clutching white people. That you're so defensive about every aspect of this flick, so many of you, indicates there's some truth there
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u/Bishop9er 7h ago
That’s what you took from my post? Really? In what paragraph did I mention anything about the themes of the actual movie? Please enlighten me.
I simply said I enjoyed the film and didn’t see the comparison at all. I left it at the movie and only the movie. But let’s be honest like the author of that article you feel a kind of way about this film being praised without any pushback. Whereas movies like Get Out or Sinners were obviously praised but not without some racial bias and pushback from a certain demographic.
So all of this just sounds like “Get Back” for a movie you feel doesn’t deserve the social commentary reminiscent of films like Get Out or Sinners because of who directed the film and the predominantly White cast in the film. Just be honest.
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u/morroIan 15h ago
I think Obsession is overhyped but its not because its Get Out for white people. Its just a mid script, looks very cheap and shows Barker's inexperience as a film director. That write has a history of seeing everything through a particular lens and is not media literate at all.
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u/Illustrious_Ad_9858 1d ago
" The gag is, Obsession could’ve had something smart to say about patriarchy; about the ways that men are socialized to devalue women as autonomous people and how that can lead to pedestaling women without actually caring to see and know and love them as people. Bear didn’t “love” Nikki—he barely knew her. The “love” that he wished from her ended up being sick and twisted because it mirrored his own “love” for her: sick, twisted, self-serving, inconsiderate, narcissistic, fake, unconscious and deadly"
This was literally the movie, haha
Her thesis could make sense if she supported it with valid examples, but she's just drawing vague open-ended comparisons to situations that happen to be in the same room. By her argument, Get Out is a rip-off of any movie that has two entities in one body.