Obsession

Is This The Best Movie Ever?

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“I thought we were having a nice date!”

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Obsession, in case you haven’t heard, is a complete sensation. It was made for less than $1 million. It opened with $17.2 million in ticket sales, and it has exceeded that number for four consecutive weekends. That just doesn’t happen.

Its North American box office is now over $180 million; worldwide, it’s over $280 million.

A recent headline: “Not even Steven Spielberg can slow down Obsession’s box-office bonanza.” Another one: “10 Most Surprising Box Office Records Broken By ‘Obsession’.”

From that article: “Obsession has achieved the impossible at the box office. It isn’t just another breakout horror hit, it’s an indie movie anomaly that’s breaking all kinds of records typically set by franchise juggernauts like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars.”

Also, people are obsessed with it. And if you haven’t seen it, what’s wrong with you?

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What explains its spectacular, unanticipated success? Consider three possibilities.

(1) Quality: It’s great.

2) Zeitgeist: It hits a contemporary nerve; it fits spectacularly well with current concerns, especially among young people.

(3) Social influences: It has benefited from an informational cascade, and from becoming the movie that you just have to see.

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Here’s the best scene in the movie, and maybe the best scene in any movie, ever:

Bear asks Nikki an unwelcome question: Was she lying about her father’s cancer? She confirms that she was lying, and then offers a flood of “no no no no no,” followed by “don’t say that!” and (best of all) “I thought we were having a nice date!”

What makes this so brilliant and funny, I think, is that it is an over-the-top version of what happens all the time. You are at dinner or on a date, and the person across the table says something unwelcome or jarring, and inside your head you are thinking, “no no no no no,” and you want to cry out, “I thought we were having a nice date!” Isn’t that familiar?

Inde Navarrette is phenomenal in the scene (and throughout). She’s charismatic and hilarious, partly because she seems to have a lot of joy inside, and because she makes “don’t say that!” a ton of fun.

(She’s also so so so so good at conveying the simultaneous presence of Obsessed Nikki, under a spell, and Real Nikki, observing the craziness with alarm, horror, despair, and hopelessness.)

The scene captures what makes Obsession so great. Have you ever been obsessed wih someone? Has someone ever been obsessed with you? The movie gets both of these. If you are obsessed with someone, it’s as if you are a bit crazy (and how well you know it). You think about them a lot, maybe all the time, and when they reciprocate even a little, it’s the best thing in the world, and when they stand off a bit, it’s horrifying, as if everything is collapsing. That’s a large part of Obsession (and obsession).

Know about System 1 and System 2, from behavioral science? Obsession is fantastic on that. System 1 is obsessed; System 2 sees that obsession is cray cray, but is powerless to stop it. (Navarrette completely captures that.)

If someone is obsessed with you, it’s scary, maybe even terrifying. Their focus seems constant. Every contact is like a punch in the gut. You might feel at risk. You might feel that there is no escape. The person who is obsessed with you is unpredictable and will not relent. That’s a large part of Obsession.

Also the movie is funny and full of thrills. Wasn’t it bound to succeed?

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Young people haven’t been going to the movies much. If you are in your twenties, do you really need to see the latest installment of a superhero movie? Wasn’t that the entertainment of your parents’ generation? And there are so many options. Is it really important, or a great idea, to fight the traffic and go to a crowded movie theater?

For Obsession, the answer is emphatically yes. The reason (it might be thought) is that it speaks directly to contemporary life. You like someone a lot; they may or may not like you back (probably not, but maybe so!); do you indicate interest? Who among us hasn’t thought something like, “I wish I could just make a wish, and get Nikki Freeman to fall for me?”

Or: You don’t like someone a lot; they seem to like you too much; how do you handle that? Or: You find yourself all focused on someone; that focus came unbidden; it’s kind of great, and it’s kind of ruining everything. What do you do now?

Then there are the gender dynamics. A lot of young men can apparently see themselves in Bear (maybe before Nikki gets obsessed, but maybe after she does, too). A lot of young women can apparently see themselves, in one or another respect, in Nikki (same parenthetical).

There is a lot to say about how Obsession maps onto contemporary fears, hopes, and anxieties. On one view, that is its secret sauce. That’s why it is a spectacular success.

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Why did Star Wars become a huge hit? What accounts for Beatlemania? Why is Taylor Swift iconic? What about Jane Austen? Robert Johnson? John Keats?

Here is one account: It might be a necessary condition, for spectacular success, that the product or the person is amazing. It might even be a necessary condition, for spectacular success, that a person or product connects with the zeitgeist. But neither of these is sufficient.

Social influences need to help. There needs to be an informational cascade, in which people learn from one another that X is great, to the point where the signal given by the shared view that X is great is impossible to ignore. The signal has to be loud enough that a ton of people see it, which means that their attention is triggered. (Luke! Obi-Wan! Paul! John!)

The signal has to be loud enough that people really want to be part of a network of people who know about the product or the person. The signal has to be loud enough that people really do not want to be among those (losers) who do not know about the product or the person. In short, a growing cultural event can create “non-user externalities,” in which those who do not buy the product, or know about it, suffer social losses. (See https://www.nber.org/papers/w35279)

How does all this happen? Sometimes savvy marketeers can increase the probability that it will occur. Sometimes random factors, or serendipity, play a role. In any case, its occurrence is exceedingly difficult, and may be impossible, to predict in advance.

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Why is Obsession a spectacular success? My head says: Social influences have been essential. But I really loved the movie, and so my heart cries out, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! I thought we were having a nice Substack!”