Obsession Is A Secret Sequel To A Terrifying Horror From 3 Years Ago According To This Fan Theory

Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Obsession (2026) and Talk to Me (2023)

As surprising as it may sound, director Curry Barker’s viral hit Obsession might secretly take place in the same fictional universe as another breakout horror hit from three years earlier. The shared box office success of Backrooms and Obsession proves that YouTube creators can, if given the reins of an indie horror movie, produce bigger hits than some of Hollywood’s most famous franchises in the genre.

Backrooms saw 20-year-old director Kane Parsons parlay his series of YouTube short films into a successful movie adaptation of the same name starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, earning over $275 million on a budget of only $10 million. Director Curry Barker’s Blumhouse hit Obsession fared even better, turning a budget of only $750,000 into a staggering $333 million box office success.

Since Weapons director Zach Cregger cut his teeth with the sketch comedy group The Whitest Kids U Know and Get Out director Jordan Peele first became famous via the sketch comedy show Key and Peele, perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Barker’s background in short-form online comedy translated to a huge horror hit. However, Obsession isn’t the first sleeper horror hit from young YouTube creators. Australian YouTubers turned filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou released the supernatural horror Talk to Me back in 2023, and, according to one fan theory, Obsession may take place in that movie’s universe.

In Obsession, Michael Johnston’s hapless antihero Bear uses a seemingly harmless toy to wish that the object of his affection, Inde Navarrette’s Nikki, loved him more than anyone. As is always the case in horror movies, this wish predictably goes awry, and Nikki soon becomes dangerously obsessed with Bear, as well as losing her humanity. Progressing quickly from lying about her father having cancer to serving Bear his dead pet cat in a sandwich, Nikki is transformed from a sweet friend to an outright murderous monster by this wish.

Of course, whether this is really Nikki or not eventually needs to be addressed, and this question receives a surprisingly satisfying answer before Obsession’s ending. When Bear calls the complaint line on the back of the toy’s packaging, the movie reveals that possessed people like Nikki aren’t just absent from their bodies, but rather trapped in some horrifying, torturous hell dimension while their bodies are being taken over by this new version of themselves.

With minimal actual onscreen explanation, Obsession effectively implies that the version of Nikki who obsessively, psychotically, and self-destructively loves Bear is a new incarnation of her existing consciousness. This means her normal, original self, the sweet Nikki seen early on in Obsession, whose true feelings toward Bear remain unknown, is trapped in some unseen offscreen agony for the duration of the curse.

This is remarkably similar to a scene in Talk to Me wherein the protagonist plays with a supposedly magical embalmed hand. In the 2024 Australian indie horror, users of this hand can invite spirits to possess their bodies for no more than 90 seconds. When Riley, a particularly young user, has a trip that lasts too long, he starts brutally injuring himself in the movie’s most infamous scene, and his body remains trapped under the influence of the spirits for days afterward.

Obsession Makes Talk To Me’s Darkest Twist Funny

The heroine of Talk to Me finds out, via the embalmed hand, that the child is trapped in a hellish nightmare realm between worlds, where every moment appears to be torture. Although viewers only get a brief glimpse of this horrific fate, it remains the darkest and most memorably horrifying scene in the entire movie. Thus, it is pretty incredible that Obsession’s similar take on the same premise plays out as a very dark but strangely funny gag.

The deadpan One Wish Willow phone operator casually tells Bear that his wish can’t be undone and that the entire situation is his own fault. As Bear becomes increasingly worried, the listless operator asks, “You wanna talk to her?” before passing the phone to a hysterically screaming, catatonic Nikki, seemingly trapped in offscreen hell, in a startling moment of pitch-black comedy. Like David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, Obsession shifts between bleak psychological horror and dark, offbeat comedy with ease, turning Talk to Me’s scariest concept into a bizarre customer service call.

Obsession’s Ending Change Makes Talk To Me’s Twist Even Scarier

While Obsession’s phone call might be a funnier way to reveal this unseen hell than Talk to Me’s brief flashes of the nightmarish dimension, which call to mind Event Horizon’s most horrific moments, this doesn’t mean that Barker’s movie pulls any punches when it comes to exploring the horror story’s implications. If viewers subscribe to the fan theory that Talk to Me and Obsession take place in the same fictional universe, then the earlier movie actually has a less depressing and horrifying ending than Obsession.

In Talk to Me’s twist ending, the protagonist is almost tricked into sacrificing Riley to the spirits so they can “Have him forever.” At the last second, she pushes him away from traffic but is hit by a truck herself and, after dying, becomes one of the spirits that possesses the next player of the embalmed hand game. While the protagonist’s fate is bleak, Riley does at least escape from his offscreen hell and, crucially, viewers see him reunited with family, slowly recovering from his injuries, and returning to normal life.

In contrast, Obsession ends with Bear finally doing the “right,” or at the very least, the most morally defensible thing, and taking his own life to free Nikki from the curse. When he overdoses in Nikki’s arms, his possessed love interest almost takes her own life in response, only for the curse to break in the nick of time. Of course, the ending’s revelation that Nikki has returned from this hellish dimension to a house full of her dead best friends is even nastier than Talk To Me’s dark conclusion.

While Niki does technically live, she is sitting in an apartment that houses a friend she unknowingly brutally murdered the day before, a friend she shot and killed minutes earlier, and Bear’s recently deceased body. Nikki’s hysterical crying over Obsession’s ending credits proves that her fate makes Riley’s horrific journey through Talk to Me seem like a walk in the park.