The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - August 05, 2026


PREVIEW： Film Review ｜ Obsession


Episode Stats


Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

194.11

Word count

3,963

Sentence count

137


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hello everybody, and welcome to this special review on The Lotus Eaters. I'm Harry, joined
00:00:16.460 today by Connor, and we're going to be talking about the recent smash hit success of the film
00:00:22.100 Obsession, and our own thoughts on it, what it means for Hollywood going forward, and some
00:00:28.320 general perceptions on the kind of like you would say the uh the cultural momentum that it's
00:00:34.440 generated it's a kind of pop culture flashpoint with how people have responded to it i think it's
00:00:39.240 the perfect horror film for zoomers given the nightmarish conditions of relations between the
00:00:45.260 sexes and the total abolition of guardrails in modern dating oh yeah well the films that we'll
00:00:51.820 get into that as we go on so just for some context uh it is a relatively new horror film directed by
00:00:59.700 a youtuber i think called curry barker is it barker or baker oh i don't know how to pronounce
00:01:05.420 curry i'll go with curry barker and um it was very very low budget $750,000 budget uh featuring a lot
00:01:16.400 of actors that you've probably never heard of i think the biggest named actor in it played a bit
00:01:21.040 role as Nicky's father and it has been an absolute smash success kind of runaway and part of a new
00:01:28.880 era of YouTuber movies that you could say because I watched a you know Markiplier's movie Iron Lung
00:01:35.260 earlier on this year I went to the cinema to watch that you've got Obsession I've heard that that
00:01:41.560 other film Backrooms was done by a YouTuber as well it was originally a YouTube mini-series
00:01:47.440 then decided to extrapolate into a full-length feature film that was based on essentially one
00:01:52.700 of the creepypastas. I think it was originally on a 4chan post where someone took a photo of a
00:01:57.480 partly illuminated, abandoned department store and said, these are the sort of liminal spaces,
00:02:03.280 the back rooms of the internet, as you were, that you could stumble on and glitch out of reality and
00:02:06.840 see all of mankind's discarded ideas lurking around there. And God forbid, you actually go
00:02:11.720 there because you'll get trapped there. Obsession is less internet focused, but I still think that
00:02:16.960 but it's much less high concept as well.
00:02:19.600 Yeah, but I think internet dating discourse
00:02:21.700 has sort of shaped the themes of the film
00:02:25.040 because I think there's a superficial reading
00:02:26.700 and then there's, I think, a deeper reading
00:02:28.880 which explains why it has resonated with both sexes,
00:02:32.400 even though it's fairly clear who the villain of the film is.
00:02:35.460 Yeah, the film makes no bones that you're not supposed to,
00:02:38.280 by the end of the film, like the main character of Bear,
00:02:42.260 which confused me because I saw at one point
00:02:45.120 his name tag said Baron,
00:02:46.960 This is going to be a spoiler review, by the way.
00:02:49.620 So you know what these conversations are like.
00:02:51.700 They're a little bit freeform.
00:02:52.780 So if we get straight into the spoilers, sorry.
00:02:54.920 You should go watch it, though.
00:02:55.840 You absolutely should watch the film.
00:02:57.200 And it's actually genuinely creepy and scary in ways
00:03:01.100 that I wasn't expecting it to be.
00:03:02.460 Some of the scares were very effective,
00:03:04.200 with some very good lighting to pull some of it off.
00:03:07.980 There was no CGI throughout the entire film, by the way.
00:03:10.520 So the entire film, all of the...
00:03:12.940 Well, I suppose they couldn't afford it.
00:03:14.060 Well, quite, yeah.
00:03:14.940 It was done on such a low budget
00:03:16.220 that some people just did some of the things without payment.
00:03:19.120 So there are various moments where Nikki's eyes,
00:03:21.880 after she is possessed by the entity or whatever you're going to call it,
00:03:25.140 are illuminated with orange,
00:03:27.860 so she almost looks like the cat that's passed away in the opening scene.
00:03:33.100 Oh, yes, yes, Sandy.
00:03:33.640 Yeah, and the way that they've done that isn't off the editing.
00:03:36.880 It's just lit that way in the shot.
00:03:38.800 So it looks really well done on shoestrings,
00:03:42.640 but it just shows that when love, care, and attention
00:03:45.760 and genuinely excellent film craft is put into these projects,
00:03:51.780 they still make money because it's made like $400 million
00:03:53.820 whereas something like Supergirl has just utterly flopped
00:03:56.640 because there's no audience for it and it looks terrible.
00:03:59.180 Yeah, that is the important point.
00:04:01.440 It's flopped and looks terrible
00:04:03.220 because there's, just a little bugbear of mine,
00:04:06.280 there's this horrible trend at the moment
00:04:08.000 where all films look very desaturated
00:04:11.680 and they look as though they are purposefully trying to over-exaggerate and highlight the
00:04:17.660 orange and teal colour scheme, but in a way that is so ugly. Personally, I've never understood the
00:04:23.220 appeal of that colour scheme in the first place, but now that every film is trying to over-emphasise
00:04:28.360 it all the time, one, it homogenises, and two, I think it just makes all of these films look ugly
00:04:33.260 and you go back and look at a film like, say, 20 years ago, like Pirates of the Caribbean,
00:04:37.280 in Dead Man's Chest, that's a film, some of the scenes are darker, some of the scenes
00:04:41.400 are more desaturated, but then you get these beautiful full colour scenes where you're
00:04:46.300 out on the open seas and it just magnifies the splendour of what you're supposed to be
00:04:51.320 looking at, and I prefer that sort of more older colour palette, but that's neither here
00:04:56.900 nor there.
00:04:57.600 Returning to Bear, by the end of the film, Bear's a piece of shit, unironically, but
00:05:03.060 But also, I think, the thing I was going to mention, on his name tag it says Barron.
00:05:09.880 So I just thought everybody was pronouncing Barron in a really American way for most of the film.
00:05:16.280 Because I just thought they were going Barron or something like that.
00:05:20.080 Well, I think his nickname is a play on the discourse last year that was very performative of women choosing between the man or the bear in the woods.
00:05:30.880 because they were going to bear that actually they were safer with the bear
00:05:34.160 because the man could, I'm going to use the word, could rape them.
00:05:39.680 And this is the reading-
00:05:41.640 Because a bear could never do anything as bad as that.
00:05:43.820 Oh yeah, you've never seen The Revenant.
00:05:45.380 So the reading of the film that is sort of surface level
00:05:47.520 is the reason this is really horrific
00:05:49.880 is because the horror is a kind of body horror
00:05:53.760 in that you're possessed by an entity that robs you of your agency
00:05:56.320 and it forces Nikki to be in a relationship with Bear against her will
00:06:01.440 while she's conscious but kind of trapped inside her own mind,
00:06:04.440 almost like hammering on the glass of her eyes.
00:06:06.260 She can feel everything that's going on with her body the whole time.
00:06:09.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:06:09.940 But I think the subtext of the film,
00:06:12.940 which is where it's resonated with both men and women,
00:06:15.040 and it still keeps Bear as the villain,
00:06:16.640 but it also doesn't cast any of his friends in a good light,
00:06:20.720 is that Obsession is a horror film for women
00:06:24.320 because they dread waking up one day
00:06:26.120 and finding themselves trapped in a relationship
00:06:27.720 with a man that they're repulsed by
00:06:29.900 and they feel that they've wasted their life
00:06:31.900 and that in some way their agency has been confiscated.
00:06:34.340 An Obsession is also a horror film for men.
00:06:37.060 It's a cautionary tale to say
00:06:38.200 if you lack the sufficient courage
00:06:40.160 to engage in dating honestly,
00:06:42.860 especially in an environment
00:06:44.040 where all the courtship rituals
00:06:45.220 and all of the elder supervision
00:06:47.040 in your best interest is broken down,
00:06:48.720 then you will end up getting love-bombed
00:06:50.080 by a crazy woman
00:06:50.920 who bypasses your threat detection
00:06:53.920 in your need to want to be in a relationship with her,
00:06:57.560 to be loved and adored.
00:06:58.460 And eventually, because you haven't properly vetted her,
00:07:00.280 she'll start screaming at you in public
00:07:01.660 and causing a scene,
00:07:02.660 breaking down hysterically
00:07:03.640 about things that you don't understand,
00:07:04.920 and your life will be a living hell.
00:07:06.760 And so obsession is basically the hell
00:07:08.180 that both men and women have found themselves in
00:07:09.640 when they're incapable of being honest
00:07:11.120 and when dating itself is not done
00:07:13.500 for their long-term interest.
00:07:15.460 There's no courtship rituals.
00:07:16.660 You're not seeking a husband or a wife
00:07:19.180 and a father or mother of your children,
00:07:20.800 but instead you're doing it
00:07:21.640 for your own hedonistic gratification.
00:07:23.920 as all the characters do all sorts of other things throughout the film.
00:07:27.680 Yes.
00:07:29.140 It is kind of the warning of don't date a BPD girl.
00:07:33.040 Yeah, she's a characteristic BPD girl.
00:07:34.440 Like, she might be fun for that one night,
00:07:37.020 but beyond that, you are going to be in a living hell.
00:07:40.020 Yeah, well, she has all the markers.
00:07:41.060 So she, this is Possessed Nikki.
00:07:43.580 She fabricates a backstory to engender sympathy with Bear.
00:07:47.280 So, oh, my dad has cancer, so I need to stay at your place tonight.
00:07:50.080 She initially mirrors his behaviour by saying,
00:07:52.740 oh my cat died and then correcting herself uh she has she's incredibly emotionally volatile she has
00:07:59.080 an anxious avoidant attachment style so there's a scene where she's crying hysterically in the
00:08:03.260 corner of the room over whether or not bear loves her as much as she has been compelled by the one
00:08:08.380 wish willow to love him that's a really well done scene as well that that was like before then in
00:08:15.080 the film, I'd been cringing because of how relatable and realistic the social relationships
00:08:23.580 had been. And some of the social interactions they'd been having, I was like, oh, I've been
00:08:28.180 there. Oh, I've seen that happen. And I was cringing, but I was like, there's an ominous
00:08:32.820 tension building up, but I'm not scared yet. And then that scene hits, and it's that question of,
00:08:39.160 Is she about to try and claw his eyes out? And anything where you've got a silhouetted dark
00:08:45.760 figure standing off-center in the corner of the screen, in the corner of the room,
00:08:50.800 making noises and you can't properly detect her, can be really effective. It's not as effectively
00:08:56.820 done in something like, for instance, it's kind of an improvement on what was done in Hereditary,
00:09:02.140 if you ever saw that. There's a scene near the end of that film where one of the characters who
00:09:07.200 becomes possessed is away just out of view in the dark in the corner of a room and the initial
00:09:14.800 visual is creepy but then when you see her move it's so obviously fake that it comes across as
00:09:23.000 comical. Now Nikki moves in a lot of very unnerving and unnatural and obviously fake ways through the
00:09:30.000 film but the filmmaking manages to pull it off in such a way that it is actually unnerving
00:09:34.880 because it comes across so unnatural,
00:09:37.040 it feels like she's going to jump at you through the screen.
00:09:39.700 In particular, I'm thinking of the reverse walking scenes,
00:09:43.880 which came so out of left field that it got a jump out of me,
00:09:48.440 even though it's not a traditional jump scare.
00:09:50.800 One of the most terrifying bits is after she goes from the corner
00:09:56.400 and then she comes to his bedside, she's got the flowers over her face,
00:09:59.240 she snaps back to normality, which is, again, the classic BPT trait.
00:10:02.880 Emotional whiplash.
00:10:03.840 and also threats of violence if they feel abandoned
00:10:08.500 or if they feel that this partner they've put on a pedestal
00:10:12.160 to reassure their unstable sense of identity
00:10:14.700 is slipping away from them
00:10:15.940 or isn't fulfilling all of their expectations
00:10:17.960 because before that reverse walking scene,
00:10:20.220 she threatens to cut her wrists if he doesn't stay with her.
00:10:24.060 The most unsettling thing for me was when she gets into bed with him
00:10:28.800 and she falls asleep
00:10:30.820 and he thinks of lifting her arm and creeping out
00:10:32.980 And when she goes, stay...
00:10:35.380 And part of the reason is, I think,
00:10:38.440 it's really unnerving to see a woman behave essentially like a toddler.
00:10:43.120 And all of her behaviour was nyotness, unsettling.
00:10:46.920 She has this babyish voice.
00:10:47.960 She essentially throws temper tantrums.
00:10:49.960 She throws really cutesy facial expressions about
00:10:52.720 and sort of manipulates her face in a way that I see with my toddler
00:10:57.080 when she wants to get what she wants.
00:10:58.840 And I think this is the situation that men will find themselves in
00:11:02.560 when they want a woman to be dependent on them
00:11:05.160 to ensure that their fear of rejection never comes to pass.
00:11:10.940 But actually what ends up happening is you get someone
00:11:13.160 that is very dependent on you
00:11:14.960 and is incapable of regulating their own emotions
00:11:17.320 and even their own bodily functions
00:11:18.620 when she stands in one spot and sort of defecates and vomits.
00:11:21.460 And she ends up responding saying, like, I swallowed a fly,
00:11:23.600 which is something either a kid or a pet would say.
00:11:25.860 So he essentially wants either...
00:11:27.220 So you're going with the Sandy theory a little bit.
00:11:30.300 Well, I'm not saying that she is...
00:11:32.040 There is a theory that the spirit that Nicky is possessed by is the cat.
00:11:36.620 But I certainly think there are parallels drawn to a pet's behavior.
00:11:39.440 I don't think it's literally that it's been possessed.
00:11:41.420 But what ends up happening is if you are too cowardly to risk rejection
00:11:46.460 and you are dishonest by going into a relationship,
00:11:48.800 you'll get someone who is so dependent on you that they're not acting like an adult
00:11:53.380 and you will have to make up for the deficit of their own lack of independence
00:11:57.080 or lack of functioning.
00:11:59.480 And essentially, your own life will unravel.
00:12:01.200 and that's why her behaviour is so unsettling
00:12:03.800 because it's like watching a grown woman
00:12:05.920 behave like a dependent child
00:12:07.460 and then when you're meant to be
00:12:10.180 in a romantic relationship
00:12:11.180 with essentially someone who's behaving like a child
00:12:12.820 it's really, really unnerving
00:12:14.100 Yeah, I would say as well as everything
00:12:17.040 that we're talking about with the relationship stuff
00:12:19.060 it's not just the personal romantic relationship
00:12:22.140 that felt very real to me in this film
00:12:25.200 and that I think the film is trying to address
00:12:27.600 and talk about
00:12:28.340 because the broader friendship group
00:12:30.740 that Nicky and Bear exist within is also,
00:12:34.900 and I hate to use modern online language for this,
00:12:38.340 but it is the appropriate word to use, incredibly toxic.
00:12:41.700 I was about to use the exact same phrase.
00:12:43.300 It's an incredibly toxic friendship group
00:12:45.120 of the kind that I have been familiar with when I was younger
00:12:48.440 and associated with these types of people.
00:12:50.580 It's a very, very small-scale film, by the way, folks.
00:12:53.580 There's only like four or five sets,
00:12:56.540 only really four main characters in the entire plot,
00:13:00.080 and everybody else in the film is just kind of an extra.
00:13:03.920 And these four main characters are the focal point
00:13:07.020 of every major story beat and every interaction
00:13:10.280 that we see through the film.
00:13:11.980 It's Bear, Sarah, Ian and Nicky.
00:13:14.540 And frankly, even before the supernatural shit starts to happen,
00:13:19.140 they are all awful.
00:13:21.520 Yeah.
00:13:22.920 But it tricks you a little bit with Bear
00:13:25.280 because he is shown as being more sympathetic at the beginning.
00:13:29.560 And I can see myself in his, I've never been in his position, but I could see myself sympathizing if I had been in his position. But at the same time, as you say, he's also a coward. He's presented multiple opportunities at the beginning of the film to simply be honest about how he feels.
00:13:50.500 But also, again, there are interpersonal friend dynamics going on, which kind of are trying to stop him.
00:13:58.580 You have Nicky, who you find out by the end of the film, is having sex on again, off again, with his best friend Ian,
00:14:07.580 and basically knows that she can tell that Bear likes her, and she doesn't want to break it to him because she leans on him for emotional support.
00:14:16.420 She deliberately keeps him in the friend zone. She is, as Patrice O'Neill once described, using him as a time hoe. Essentially, you can build my shelf hoe, you can drive me home hoe, you can kill this spider hoe, but it will never be reciprocated in the way that Bear has fantasized about.
00:14:30.780 The darkest thing with that, I've seen that happen to somebody recently.
00:14:35.520 One of my fiancée's friends was doing that to somebody,
00:14:41.320 and when my fiancée called her out on it and said,
00:14:45.460 why are you leading this guy along?
00:14:47.300 She went, oh, I'm not leading him along.
00:14:49.920 Women always know.
00:14:51.220 Nikki knows, so that's why she sussed out that Bear had been tricked into essentially negging her by Ian in the car,
00:14:56.900 And that's why when she asked, do you like me? And Bear failed that test of courage.
00:15:01.180 She knew that he wasn't being honest. And she had always known that he wasn't being honest,
00:15:06.140 because otherwise she wouldn't have been hanging around him and felt so uncomfortable when he
00:15:10.760 bought her a gift or when Ian said, take your girl home. Like she knew that Bear had these
00:15:16.900 unrequited feelings for her and she was using it to extract emotional validation, to emotionally
00:15:21.340 dump any time that her writing gig didn't work out or she was going through a life change.
00:15:25.000 and at the same time she was crowdsourcing self-esteem using social media because the only
00:15:30.760 time social media is actually featured in this film and I think it's might be a strange thing
00:15:34.500 today but I think it's fairly odd that social media isn't more prominent and porn is non-existent
00:15:40.340 given Bear is basically celibate and idealizing Nikki but he uses her social media to self-soothe
00:15:46.680 and she's got thousands of likes and comments on random selfies that she's been putting up
00:15:50.380 and she is an unremarkable girl working in a music store in some unremarkable area of America
00:15:54.860 And so the idea is that she is, even though as much as she says, oh, I need to know love in order to write this novel, which ends up being an incestuous retelling of Hansel and Gretel, even though she's saying that.
00:16:05.060 Well, that's freaky Nikki's version of it.
00:16:07.100 Well, no, she's just reading out the passages from Nikki's book earlier.
00:16:10.700 Because do you remember when Bear says, oh, it's a romance, is it a romance?
00:16:16.000 When she says it's a love story, she goes, they're not the same thing.
00:16:18.740 So that was, exactly, that was the plan beforehand.
00:16:20.860 Oh, no, she's writing slash fiction for women's shelves.
00:16:24.540 Oh, he's going to turn out to be an eight-foot-tall bull, man.
00:16:28.480 But as much as she says,
00:16:29.820 oh, I need to know love to write this story,
00:16:31.760 nothing she's doing in her life actually will allow her to receive love.
00:16:35.820 None of her relationships are reciprocal.
00:16:37.260 It's shown by the fact that when she gives the money to the homeless black guy,
00:16:40.300 it's not her money.
00:16:41.560 She asks her friend's money to give away.
00:16:43.720 Which is funny because it shows that those character traits of hers
00:16:48.360 that Bear idealizes at the beginning of the film
00:16:50.720 when he's explaining to Ian why he likes her so much
00:16:53.440 are also false because he idealizes a time she's so generous remember how she gives money to hobos
00:16:59.560 and it's like no she gives other people's money to homeless people so she can feel good about it
00:17:04.760 when she's just stealing money really and as well ian you mentioned earlier yeah she might be in a
00:17:09.580 long-term situationship with ian which is just another sort of horrible quirk of zoomer dating
00:17:14.280 but ian purposefully sabotages him from the first scene of the movie where you think that bear is
00:17:19.600 you know being honest and trying to put himself out there which is why i think a lot of people
00:17:23.420 have sympathized with bear online discourse around the film has been quite factional as to whether
00:17:27.440 or not you side with bear or you side with nikki when actually both of them are flawed in their
00:17:31.340 own way it's like the worst girl that you know sympathizes with nikki and like a guy that you're
00:17:37.640 kind of suspicious of sympathizes way too much with bear by the end like some people i've seen
00:17:42.340 where it's like when you think about it bear's the victim it's like no no he's generated this
00:17:48.140 entire situation for himself because he is a coward. He hears Nikki's soul screaming in hell
00:17:53.860 and chooses to do nothing about it. Yeah. He has sex with her after he knows that she lied about
00:18:00.060 her father. So he willfully participates in the lie because he wants to delude himself. But the
00:18:04.380 thing I was going to mention is the one time that Bear has the opportunity to be honest is when he's
00:18:09.060 practicing that speech with the diner waitress. And then Ian mocks him for it, says, don't be
00:18:14.300 open about your feelings. You've got all the time in the world knowing Nikki was going to leave the
00:18:18.220 job because he's been hooking up with her and knows much more about her than Bear does. And
00:18:22.600 he's also been having sex with her behind his friend's back. And then when he knows that his
00:18:26.160 friend fancies her more than anybody else in the world. Yeah. And then to complete the sort of
00:18:29.940 bingo card of being a piece of shit, when Bear goes to him and says, look, man, you know, Nikki's
00:18:34.340 been acting crazy. You've not wanted her at the party. You've been wanting me off her. It's because
00:18:37.860 of this magical toy called the One Wish Willow from the 80s. I didn't think it worked. When I
00:18:41.620 snapped it it broke this explains everything and Ian's like okay well I don't really believe you
00:18:46.680 but in case I did I want a billion dollars and it just starts raining money from the sky that was a
00:18:50.400 hilarious scene yeah it was it was yeah it's it's a really well done but because the film is really
00:18:56.980 creepy and suspenseful and there's loads of tension and creed and like creepy imagery and
00:19:01.340 scenes there are some really funny parts as well the frowning Nikki face that has been memed to
00:19:06.300 death is hilarious yeah that's that's great but the but the look on Ian's face when the money
00:19:10.320 starts raining and it's real and he's like oh shit because you can tell he's like oh shit i
00:19:15.260 just fucked over my best friend but also i'm a billionaire and the money starts raining and the
00:19:21.500 music changes and you get this almost glorious triumphant sting in the background because i
00:19:27.120 think at that point the film is kind of one enjoying the absurdity of the situation two
00:19:32.960 kind of reveling that bear has fucked himself over so thoroughly by that point i will say my
00:19:39.460 only gripe with the film is immediately in the next scene after knowing that it's real ian for
00:19:46.840 some reason follows bear back to his apartment so he can knock on the door and be like bear it's real
00:19:54.640 it's real i'm a billionaire now bro and step into the flat just so he can be shot by nicky not saying
00:20:00.500 he didn't deserve it by that point but it's a little bit of a contrivance but it was it was a
00:20:04.160 major contrivance it felt like either they were going just for the shock or it might have just
00:20:08.900 been a holdover from a different version of the script where perhaps Bear hadn't been there for
00:20:15.420 Ian's revelation. If you would like to see the full version of this premium video please head
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