For die-hards, no horror movie can be too scary. But for you, a wimp, the wrong one can leave you miserable. Never fear, scaredies, because Slate’s Scaredy Scale is here to help. We’ve put together a highly scientific and mostly spoiler-free system for rating new horror movies, comparing them with classics along a 10-point scale.
And because not everyone is scared by the same things—some viewers can’t stand jumpscares, while others are haunted by more psychological terrors or can’t stomach arterial spurts—it breaks down each movie’s scares across three criteria: suspense, spookiness, and gore. On its head, the breakout box-office sensation Obsession is a movie that could be best summarized by the classic idiom “Be careful what you wish for.” But, if you look deeper, the film—which follows a young, timid man named Bear (Michael Johnston), who uses a mystic novelty toy, “One Wish Willow,” to win the affections of his crush, Nikki (Inde Navarrette), and gets far more than he hoped for—tries to comment on so much more. The most talked-about horror picture of the year so far has captivated the minds of audiences who are, well, obsessed with decoding what the film is trying to say about modern dating and incel culture. In what’s proving to be a moviemaking trend, this exploration of the subject was helmed by yet another young, prodigal filmmaker who belongs in the growing YouTuber-to-horror-auteur pipeline: 26-year-old Curry Barker.
Barker got his start making unsettling sketch comedy and horror shorts that he uploaded to the video platform, but ever since Obsession became the highest-selling genre movie in Toronto International Film Festival history when Focus Features bought it last year for about $14 million, he’s been on the same path charted by the likes of the former YouTube directing duo the Philippou Brothers and former sketch comedian Zach Cregger. Barker spoke to the New Yorker about his desire to prioritize making audiences feel “uneasy” over nonstop jumpscares. And, if you ask almost anyone who’s seen his latest work, he seems to deliver on this promise with Obsession, which has since become one of the most profitable films of the year due to its incredibly strong word-of-mouth power.
But the scaredies among us are probably wondering one big thing before they buy a ticket to see today’s buzziest feature: Just how unsettling is it? Let’s break it all down. Barker claims to be more interested in disturbing audiences than using cheap thrills to get a rise out of them, and that much is definitely true.
Still, for the adrenaline-sensitive among us, Obsession is far from a cakewalk. I tend to be a little more vulnerable to quick frights than most, but don’t just take it from me: The packed theater of my screening collectively yelped many times throughout the course of this movie. One thing that Barker really uses to his advantage here is sound design, the foundation of all horror jolts. There are many quiet moments that have your hair standing on end before they get interrupted by a loud sound or voice cutting through the silence.
There are also a number of scenes that feature erratic movements on Nikki’s part that are both unforgettable and unexpected. All told, Obsession is far from the most suspenseful movie we’ve ever rated on this scale, but it doesn’t let its audience get off that easily. Obsession uses gore like a wind-up toy: little to nothing at first, and full steam ahead by the end. The squeamish will find the earlier moments of the movie easier to tolerate, but they will feel sucker-punched by the end, as the movie features a gradual increase of all things that could be described as “upsetting,” including sanguinary displays of physical violence.
Although this means that there are fewer disgusting scenes than other, slashier movies, the ones that are present are very explicit. Not only are they detailed, but they also feature all kinds of harm, from scenes of gruesome self-harm to excessive violence imparted unto other people, like a moment where someone’s head gets bashed in repeatedly, and what’s left of their head (which looks like what you’d get if you put a head in a blender) is fully shown on camera. There is also a memorable scene involving bodily fluids that aren’t of the tried-and-true gruesome horror ilk, but are more disturbing because of the pressures they happen under. And, if that weren’t enough, though I won’t spoil why, I can tell you that I refused to eat a sandwich for a week after seeing this movie. (And I love sandwiches.) Of course, One Wish Willows—which, when broken, grant a single wish—aren’t real, so there’s not much to fret about on that front.
On another, scarier front, though, some of the film’s themes echo the many real ways that male loneliness and misogyny keep women trapped, or even ruin their lives. Obsession isn’t the tightest movie ever made, narratively speaking; it’s got a looseness to the central ideas of the film that make it both prime bait for internet discourse but also a little questionable when you drill down into it. Is it really a movie about incel culture? Well, it depends on what you take away from it.
It’s certainly a movie about a pathetic young man who is more interested in taking a shortcut to romance than in getting over his fear of rejection—but what the film is saying about that, by the end, remains interestingly unclear on screen. Having said that, though, I found myself effectively saddened by this movie that is, at many points, pretty great at depicting a woman trapped in an nonconsensual series of circumstances that become increasingly more invasive as the film progresses. Obsession is a movie where the victim’s screams for help are not subtext, but text—and, as a woman, that felt pretty damn chilling to me. There are far scarier movies than Obsession.
However, the movie definitely succeeds at being unnerving, even if it isn’t the type of story that will strike a deep fear within you. Navarrette, officially cemented as a new Hollywood scream queen with this performance, is incredible as Nikki, whose capricious behavior requires an intense vocal agility and mastery of movement to portray. I can’t say that I was as deeply taken with the film as a whole or convinced that it will be enshrined in the horror canon, compared to its more passionate fans, but I was certainly impressed.
Still, for right now, Obsession is certainly a movie that people will be buzzing about for some time. If that isn’t enough proof of its fear factor, what is?