Obsession Director Curry Baker Reveals the Darker Ending Audiences Never Saw

If you like your horror films with a side of 'yikes,' Obsession is absolutely that movie. Blumhouse and Focus Features have another hit on their hands with this one—critics are loving it, too, with a wild 95% 'certified fresh' on Rotten Tomatoes. If you haven’t caught it yet and hate spoilers, seriously, stop reading right now—because the whole final act is up for discussion.

The Premise: Wish Fulfillment Gone Wrong

The film follows Bear Bailey (Michael Johnston), an awkward guy who stumbles on a magical 'one wish willow,' and—because horror movies never met a bad life decision they didn’t like—he uses it to make Nikki (Inde Navarrette), the girl he’s been drooling over from a distance, fall hopelessly in love with him. Shocking no one except Bear, the supernatural quick fix comes with a grotesque price tag. What starts as a dream morphs quickly into an obsessive, otherworldly nightmare. And, spoiler: things get real dark real fast.

The Ending: Morbid Musical Chairs

Here’s where it gets truly weird. In the movie’s last minutes, Bear downs a handful of pills in a bid to end his own misery—but he immediately tries to puke them back up, suddenly not so sure about dying after all. Meanwhile, a possessed Nikki, still caught in the throes of that cursed wish, manages to spit out a wish of her own: that Bear would fall for her. Unfortunately, Bear is already on his death spiral, so after stumbling his way to Nikki for one last trippy embrace, he drops dead from the overdose. With the wish’s power broken and Bear out of the picture, Nikki is finally herself again.

But Wait—That Ended Differently Than Planned

Here’s a fun bit of behind-the-scenes chaos: the ending kept changing up until basically the last minute. Writer-director Curry Baker explained to MovieWeb that the final scene—where Bear tries to force himself to vomit up the pills—wasn’t in the script at all. That came directly from Michael Johnston, who pitched the idea of Bear bailing mid-overdose, which gives the ending a much more desperate, less clean-cut feel. To quote Baker himself:

'Michael had this idea where Bear puts the pills in his mouth, but then he just can’t go through with it—he tries to claw them back up. The written version had him just accept his fate, kiss Nikki, and die, but Michael added this extra moment of hesitation. It completely changed the vibe of the ending.'

And if you think that’s the only twist, think again. The plan originally was for both Bear and Nikki to die—Nikki, still possessed, would lose it after Bear’s death and finish herself off in a fit of total hysteria. But on set, Baker gave Navarrette one take where Nikki survives, figuring they probably wouldn’t use it... and then, surprise, it made the final cut. Navarrette’s gut-wrenching version felt right, and they rolled with it.

Baker put it pretty bluntly:

'The Nikki-survives ending felt even more brutal—because now she’s left ruined, probably facing jail, with a billion-dollar mystery floating around in the background. The body count’s just the beginning; now what?'

Cast

• Michael Johnston as Bear Bailey
• Inde Navarrette as Nikki

Final Thoughts: When Collaboration Changes Everything

What’s impressive here isn’t just the film’s all-in approach to the idea of 'be careful what you wish for.' The behind-the-scenes shakeup—actors pitching story tweaks, the director being gutsy enough to run with them—is what really takes the film from standard horror to something a little more interesting. Obsession is the kind of film that keeps tightening the screws right up to the final frame, and if survival feels more grim than redemptive, well, welcome to the darker side of wish fulfillment.