With the release of Obsession this past week on digital streaming, there was some confusion about an alleged unrated cut going around that may have ultimately just been a mistaken label. However, an unrated cut, adding in a bit more gore, is not a director’s cut. And as it happens, the original plan from writer/director Curry Barker was dramatically different than the final product. Spoilers for the ending of Obsession follow.
The original ending of Obsession was even darker than what we saw onscreen. But it wasn’t just an idea; it was in the script as the ending they were actually going to film, and it was changed only on the day of shooting into what we saw in theaters.
The idea was that after Nikki “wakes up” from Bear’s wish, she sees Bear dead of an overdose, Ian dead after she shot him in the head and Sarah very dead after she smashed her face in. Then, that would result in her immediately shooting herself, the camera panning to the TV, and that’s it.
If you’re a bit confused as to why Nikki would shoot herself instantly rather than try to process what was going on for more than a few seconds, you have to remember that she’s experiencing all of this as a passenger, witnessing the events around her only rarely able to “break through” to her real self, as we see in parts of the movie. So here, she had already lived this out, and knew she didn’t want to stick around for the aftermath. Nikki actress Inde Navarrette talked about this in a previous EW interview back when the film was released:
“On the day, he was just like, I wanna try this, and we did a take and it just felt wonderful. There’s just sometimes on film sets where things happen and it’s just like it’s otherworldly and it’s kind of indiscernible….It was one of my favorite scenes to film.”
Of course, that isn’t what happened. Nikki lives, and since then, Curry Barker has gone on to confirm that she is arrested for a triple homicide, which will be noted in a background cameo in his next film, Anything But Ghosts, the horror comedy that shares a world with the very much non-comedy Obsession.
I’m not 100% on whether or not the dead Nikki ending was actually shot or not (no pun intended), which would determine whether it might appear in some future director’s cut. But even if not, that was the original plan. From the sound of it, however, I think the one they used probably works better.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.