OBSESSION Director Had to Cut the Movie’s Most Brutal Scene to Avoid an NC-17 Rating
Obsession has turned into one of the year’s most surprising horror success stories, and now I’m learning that its most disturbing scene was originally even nastier.
The micro-budget horror film from Curry Barker has become a genuine box office phenomenon. After opening with $16 million, the movie climbed even higher in its second weekend with $22 million, followed by an estimated $28.2 million through the Monday holiday.
The film has now crossed $80 million worldwide and is on track to become one of the rare movies made for under $1 million to break the $100 million mark globally.
That’s an incredible run for a psychological horror movie that has audiences squirming in theaters.
Spoilers ahead if you still haven’t seen Obsession.
While the movie leans heavily into psychological dread, there’s one sequence people can’t stop talking about. It’s the moment when Nikki, played by Inde Navarrette, loses control after becoming possessed by a mysterious entity and violently smashes her friend Sarah’s face into a brick wall until she’s barely recognizable.
The scene already feels over-the-top intense in the theatrical cut, but Barker revealed it was originally pushed even further before the MPAA stepped in.
“There was about six or seven more smashes,” said the filmmaker (via Dread Central). “And we were getting an NC-17 rating. And so they were like, 'you’ve got to take out some of the smashes.' And I was like, 'I’m not taking out a single bash.' But I did.”
Even after trimming the sequence down, Barker feels the scene still hits exactly the way it should.
"It still feels really f**king hardcore,” he added. “I’d watch from the back of the theater and the way everyone reacted – whatever the number is now, it’s the right number."
Considering the audience reactions already happening in theaters, it’s not hard to imagine what the uncut version looked like with a few smashes to an already obliterated face.
There’s still a chance horror fans could eventually see it, though. Barker teased the possibility of a director’s cut while speaking with Popternative, explaining that there’s a lot of material that never made it into the final version of the movie.
“I would love to do a director’s cut of this just because there’s so many things that are not in the movie. That would be really fun. But it would literally be a project for me.
“I would have to set aside some time to really dive into the footage again. It would have to be something that Focus [Features] really wants and I would be like, ‘Yes, let’s do it.’”
A director’s cut packed with even more disturbing material sounds like exactly the kind of thing horror fans would be interested in seeing.
As for whether Obsession could become a franchise, Barker seems interested in expanding the mythology, but fans probably shouldn’t expect Nikki and the surviving cast members to return.
“I don’t think you’ll ever see these characters again, but it would be cool to expand this world with different characters.”
The movie follows a hopeless romantic who breaks the mysterious “One Wish Willow” hoping to finally win over his crush, only to discover that getting what he wants comes with a terrifying supernatural cost.