Megan Lawless knew the car scene would land hard. The actress, who plays Sarah in Curry Barker’s Obsession, says she walked onto set already certain that her character’s brutal, sudden death would stay with audiences — and the film’s runaway box office performance has since proved her right.
Nikki kills Sarah after Bear sneaks out to meet her in her car. The scene shown in wide release was already graphic, but Lawless confirmed the version that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last September was even more violent. What gave the moment extra weight was what never got said. Sarah had feelings for Bear she appeared ready to finally voice — before Nikki arrived and ended the conversation permanently.
Michael Johnston, who plays Bear, weighed in separately, saying, “Sarah would have been the ideal choice. I think they would have just been perfect for each other.”
Lawless described the prosthetic process for the death scene as a highlight of the production: the crew made a cast of her face and built an animatronic doll version of her head to film the attack, something she had never experienced before. She also detailed the challenge of playing a character with a deliberately narrow view of events — Sarah suspects something is wrong with Bear and Nikki’s relationship but cannot fully see it from where she stands, her judgment clouded by her own affection for him.
The online debate over the film’s true villain — obsessive Nikki or the self-deceiving Bear — has dominated audience discussion since release. Writer-director Curry Barker has said the film’s pivotal restaurant scene, where Bear asks Nikki whether she loves him “more than anyone in the world” using the exact wording of his wish, is meant to confirm that Bear fully understands what he has done.
Obsession opened to $17.2 million domestically against its roughly $1 million budget, earning an A- CinemaScore — a grade almost unheard of in horror — and became the cheapest film to reach number one since Paranormal Activity in 2009. The film now holds a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes and has grossed $31 million worldwide.
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Barker, 26, built his following through the YouTube sketch channel “That’s a Bad Idea” before his viral short Milk & Serial drew the attention of the industry. He has since been tapped to direct A24’s reboot of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and is reteaming with Blumhouse for Anything But Ghosts, in which he will also star alongside Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard.
