How Obsession's Director Feels About Cut Scenes To Avoid NC-17 Rating [Exclusive]

This article contains mild spoilers for "Obsession."

Ever since the death of the Hays Production Code and the birth of the Motion Picture Association of America (now just the MPA, after dropping the "America"), filmmakers have been struggling with the rules and regulations governing explicit content in films. On the one hand, the freedom of filmmakers under the MPA is fairly broad, as there are virtually no set-in-stone topics, images, or other elements that must be avoided. On the other hand, there are significant downsides to either releasing a film unrated or with the MPA-approved "Adults Only" NC-17 designation. Even in this day and age, when explicit material is generally more culturally accepted than not, the pressures on marketing and distributing an unrated/NC-17 movie are still enough to make most filmmakers, especially first-time directors, look for a compromise instead.

That's exactly what happened to Curry Barker, whose theatrical debut as a writer/director, "Obsession," was threatened with an NC-17 rating after it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2025. As has been reported elsewhere, the issue regarded one particular scene in which a character gets their head violently smashed in, and the resolution was relatively simple. Barker, who also edited the movie himself, only had to remove a handful of head smashes from the kill to satisfy the MPA, and the resulting scene is still remarkably violent. Yet it's also not what Barker's original vision was. I had the opportunity to speak to the filmmaker on the eve of the release of "Obsession," and he confessed that his initial thoughts on the minor controversy were heated but have softened over time.

That said, he also revealed that an unrated director's cut may be in the cards for the movie down the line, too.

There's no doubt that Curry Barker has a lot of himself invested in "Obsession." He not only directed the film but also wrote and edited it. So it stands to reason that he would feel at least a little protective of his vision, which includes his final cut. When the MPA feedback on that cut indicated that "Obsession" would get an NC-17 if Barker didn't tone down the head-smashing kill, the filmmaker understandably felt a certain type of way about it, as he explained to me:

"I'll tell you this, when it was happening, I was so upset. I was like, 'No!' There was an entire audience of people at TIFF that got to see this and loved it. And I'm like, 'You're telling me I got to cut that out?'"

However, time does heal all wounds, as the saying goes. Barker made the necessary cuts, and he's seemingly made his peace with it: 

"But now I watch the movie the way it is, and I'm like, 'Ehh, it's pretty much ...' It's just as effective and it's just as gruesome, really. You're not missing much. It even helps the pacing a lot of it."

Horror fans of a certain age will remember a compromised kill from 1988's "Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood" in which Jason Voorhees slams a sleeping bag (with camper inside) against a tree. In the theatrical cut, Jason only gets one whack in, which is a less gruesome kill than the original idea of him slamming the bag against the tree repeatedly. Although Barker had to make cuts to the head smash in "Obsession," the impact of the edited scene is still very much intact.

Although Curry Barker now pretty much endorses the release version of "Obsession," that doesn't mean he isn't interested in putting together an extended cut of the movie, one which he may even dub a director's cut. In addition to the full, unedited version of the head-smash kill, it seems Barker shot a good chunk of more material that didn't end up in the final cut of the movie. As he told me, there's apparently enough good stuff on the cutting room floor which would make such an effort attractive to him:

"There's an alternate ending that we shot. There's an entire monologue in the car where that kind of got cut for timing. So I'd love to explore a director's cut one day that just goes as long as we want it to."

One of the joys of "Obsession" lies in the way it explores its "be careful what you wish for" premise from a variety of eerie, unsettling, and flat-out uniquely disturbing angles. In other words, it's a film that feels very creatively fertile and certainly doesn't feel tapped out by the end. So the promise of more "Obsession" sounds incredibly exciting. However, I'm trying not to wish too hard for it, because we all know what can happen if a wish goes awry.

"Obsession" is in theaters now.