{"id":505143,"date":"2026-05-27T12:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T12:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/505143\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T12:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T12:50:12","slug":"the-incredible-photography-of-obsession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/505143\/","title":{"rendered":"The Incredible Photography of ‘Obsession’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AInde Navarrette as Nikki in \u2018Obsession.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Low-budget horror movies aren\u2019t for everyone. But it\u2019s difficult to ignore Obsession, which just raked in over $30 million in ticket sales over the Memorial Day weekend, taking it to $80 million worldwide. Not bad for a film that was made for just $1 million. <\/p>\n

I was one of the many people who saw the film in a packed theater, albeit in the U.K. on the weekend Brits call Spring Bank Holiday. I won\u2019t reveal any plot spoilers; instead I want to discuss how the film deftly employs photography and audio techniques to create a kind of horror unlike anything else I\u2019ve personally seen before. <\/p>\n

But the basic premise is this: a hopeless romantic named Bear makes a Faustian bargain to win over his crush, Nikki. If you\u2019ve ever read The Monkey\u2019s Paw by W.W. Jacobs, then you will understand the general idea. But it\u2019s important to note that this is not a fantasy movie; the horror that happens in the film reflects horrors that happen in the real world every day. This is part of what makes it so compelling and so chilling. <\/p>\n

Bokeh <\/p>\n

Almost every scene is shot on a locked tripod, meaning the movie\u2019s cinematographer, Taylor Clemons, carefully framed each shot to maximize the impact of the story. It\u2019s so simple, yet it\u2019s used to devastating effect as the viewer is left to fill in the details of the rest of the frame with their mind. <\/p>\n

The film is shot on an Arri Alexa 35 using Panavision Ultra Speed Lenses. And boy, do they put that speed to use. There was the odd zoom here and there, but the consistent wide-open aperture created a creamy and mostly unsettling bokeh. It also makes the movie look utterly beautiful. How much post-production work was done to it is hard to say. It was acquired by Focus Features, and it may have gotten additional color grading, but the fact that every frame was so aesthetically pleasing somehow added to the terror. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Of course Obsession is not the first horror film to use bokeh to disturb the audience \u2014 I distinctly remember It and It Chapter Two using this technique too \u2014 but I don\u2019t remember a film doing it so consistently and so effectively throughout a film. <\/p>\n

By all accounts, the production of Obsession was incredibly small; chunks of it were filmed in director Curry Barker\u2019s apartment. It means that day by day, Clemons was doing outstanding photography work. <\/p>\n

Playing with Light <\/p>\n

Speaking of the dailies, Clemons tells Focus Features<\/a> that there were nights he went to bed believing he had pushed the look too far as he purposely underexposed to make a world that felt as \u201cmurky and dreadful as possible.\u201d But he says he would wake up, check the dailies, and \u201ckeep attacking it even harder the next day.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIn hindsight, what\u2019s more interesting than the vast underexposure of it all is the contrast with the brighter scenes and where they sit in the story,\u201d Clemons says. \u201cThey function as a sort of tension-and-release cycle\u2026 This yin-and-yang wasn\u2019t something I mapped out consciously in advance. It came from responding to the material and the spaces we were shooting in.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Clemons cites David Fincher\u2019s Seven as inspiration while working on Obsession, but he makes it sound like much of his work on-set was organic. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe talked about what it feels like to be trapped in that world with Bear \u2014 the dreadful tone, the pace, and how the edit would cut,\u201d Clemons tells Focus Features. \u201cThe look grew organically out of those conversations.\u201d <\/p>\n

Obsession pulled off the rare feat of improving sales from its opening weekend, the first film to do so in three years \u2014 a remarkable achievement. It\u2019s a triumph of photography, elevated by masterful sound design, sharp editing, and outstanding performances. Obsession is still playing in theaters.<\/p>\n

Image credits:<\/strong> Focus Features<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inde Navarrette as Nikki in \u2018Obsession.\u2019 Low-budget horror movies aren\u2019t for everyone. But it\u2019s difficult to ignore Obsession,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,205474,63143,366,18,117,23842,219393,19,17,99036,327,34433],"class_list":["post-505143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-bokeh","tag-cinematography","tag-design","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-horror","tag-horrormovie","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-motionpicture","tag-movies","tag-obsession"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116646631005372353","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}