Obsession director Curry Barker has probably feeling incredibly vindicated over the last month or so. Every decision he and everyone else creatively involved made in making the movie turned out to be the right one, and now it's the most talked-about hit of the year so far. Barker had a fairly long road in getting to this point, though, and had some tempting offers to change his vision of what the film could be.
"When we were shopping this around, there were companies that told me they would give me $2 million if I just rewrote the script to make Bear a hero," Barker explained in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Despite the big bag of cash in front of him, though, the director denied the offer, knowing that story change would ruin his vision.
"I was like, 'I'm not rewriting the script to make Bear a guy that does all the right things. It's so much more interesting that he doesn't do the right thing and instead tries to make [the relationship] work and he just keeps making bad decision after bad decision.' The movie would have been so boring if Bear was going on a journey to figure out the lore of the One Wish Willow. So I turned down more money to tell the story that I was more interested in telling," Barker said.
Bear being the unknowing villain of the film is a very strong choice, and helps play into the horror of Nikki being trapped inside her own body. If Bear spent the film trying to get her out of her wish version, then we doubt it would have been nearly as popular as it has become.