By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated 1 hour ago

In the world of Obsession, the One Wish Willow is an obscenely powerful artifact that you can buy over the counter. With a single wish, you can achieve fabulous wealth, get your crush to obsess with you … anything you want, really, though your desires are likely to backfire. Despite its fantastic premise, Obsession is relatively grounded, so we never see the One Wish Willow grant anyone kung-fu fighting skills, a la The Matrix. Despite this, however, Obsession just managed to inexplicably defeat the greatest martial arts master who ever lived: Bruce Lee!

Recently, Curry Barker’s horror film, which was made for a measly $750,000, reached an astounding new record by earning over $400 million worldwide. For context, that’s far more than The Mandalorian and Grogu, which has earned $334 million against a budget of $165 million. Now, Obsession is officially the highest-grossing movie that was made for less than a million dollars. To achieve that record, it had to earn more than the most beloved kung-fu film in Hollywood history: Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon.

A Bloody Great Achievement

It’s kind of astounding to think that Obsession came out eight weeks ago. It only took this horror film two months to become the biggest film of the summer (at least, until Spider-Man: Brand New Day comes out), despite some heavy competition. Like, who could have imagined a micro-budget spooky film from a virtually unknown director could trounce everyone from Supergirl to He-Man? Now, eight weeks after its release, Obsession has passed an important landmark, earning $400 million worldwide against a budget of $750,000. Now, it’s officially the highest-grossing movie ever made for under a million dollars.

Previously, that record was held by the Bruce Lee kung-fu classic Enter the Dragon. That martial arts masterpiece was made for $850,000; after it came out in 1973, it earned a total of $400 million at the box office before it left theaters for good. For over half a century, no film managed to beat this ratio of low budget and high box office earnings, though a few movies deserve honorable mention. For example, Rocky earned $225 million against a $1 million budget, and The Blair Witch Project earned $248.6 million against the same budget Obsession had: $750,000.

Bruce All Fighty

At the risk of glazing Curry Barker too much, the comparison to Blair Witch really highlights what a cinematic achievement Obsession is. Back in 1999, $750,000 was enough to create a found footage horror movie with amateur actors and bad cameras. Now, that same budget can be used to create a polished film with amazing cinematography and professional acting. Does that make breakout star Inde Navarette the new Bruce Lee, though? It depends on your perspective. Obsession earned more than what Enter the Dragon earned pre-inflation; if we account for inflation, Lee’s own breakout film earned over $2 billion in today’s dollars.

Regardless of inflation, however, surpassing a beloved ‘70s Bruce Lee movie is another amazing accomplishment for Obsession. The little horror film that could continues to prove that you don’t need a huge budget in order to make a successful movie: you just need a good script, talented actors, and a director with a genuine vision. Those have always been the ingredients for great movies, and as Barker recently reminded The Hollywood Reporter, younger audiences in particular are “tired of slop” and are “hungry for movies that are original.” Now, if only the studios pumping out endless sequels, prequels, remakes, and reboots would get the freaking memo!

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 20 seconds ago

For years, anyone who criticized shows like Star Trek: Discovery or Star Trek: Picard was labeled as a narrow-minded bigot who just couldn’t appreciate all of the progressive signaling from the writers. In reality, that signaling was just jangling keys to hide how unprogressive these new shows often were (seriously, when they weren’t killing their gays, they were tokenizing them). Eventually, though, the culture war stuff stopped really mattering. Starfleet Academy got canceled after only one season, and it wasn’t alone; under the leadership of Alex Kurtzman, all NuTrek shows (minus Picard, which was always planned as three seasons) received early cancellations. The reason? Simple: not enough people were watching!

Whether you loved or hated NuTrek, this led to a grim development. Paramount has ceased all Trek TV development and is pivoting the franchise to the big screen. Now, fans of all stripes are returning to the shows of yesteryear and rediscovering the best series of them all: Deep Space Nine. DS9 achieved greatness largely thanks to showrunner Ira Steven Behr, who always pushed the franchise in new directions. Of course, he learned the hard way what does and does not work for the franchise. Case in point: despite it having a nearly perfect script, Behr later declared the TNG episode “A Matter of Perspective” to be the worst Star Trek episode he ever worked on!

Make It “No”

In Season 3, Star Trek: The Next Generation brought us “A Matter of Perspective,” which was a sci-fi murder mystery. When a lab blows up and kills a sketchy scientist, Riker is the chief suspect. Why? Because he was the last person to talk to the deceased and maybe had an inappropriate relationship with the guy’s wife. I say “maybe” because this episode uses the holodeck to recreate different characters’ events of what really happened. Eventually, Riker is exonerated, and in a shocking twist, we discover that the dead scientist accidentally blew himself up trying to kill Riker.

On paper, “A Matter of Perspective” has only a single writer: Ed Zuckerman. However, staff writer Ronald D. Moore (who would later serve as showrunner for the Battlestar Galactica reboot) claimed in a later AOL chat with fans that all of the staff helped with an uncredited rewrite for this episode. One of those writers was Ira Steven Behr, who had a rather elliptical relationship with Star Trek. He started writing for The Next Generation in Season 3, brokering peace between older writers and Michael Piller, the new showrunner. Piller eventually offered Behr the job of showrunner; instead, Behr left the show entirely. 

When It All Blows Up In Your Face

However, Piller really liked Behr and later brought him in to work on Deep Space Nine. After three seasons, Behr replaced Piller as showrunner for DS9. There, he oversaw some of the greatest sci-fi episodes ever created and wrote quite a few himself. Today, DS9 is rightfully remembered as the best Star Trek show ever made. How did Behr maintain such high quality when it came to storytelling? One way was by learning what not to do. For example, on the TNG Season 3 special features, he dubbed “A Matter of Perspective” a “disaster” and his least-favorite Trek episode that he had ever worked on. 

What made this so surprising is that “A Matter of Perspective’ was not a badly-written episode. As recorded in Captains’ Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, showrunner Piller declared that he was “very, very, happy with the script,” one that was “the best murder mystery I’ve been involved in developing…because every detail falls into place, every line comes together…it really worked from a mystery standpoint.” Furthermore, the story was “very complicated, yet if you take that script apart, nothing falls out of it.” However, he felt “it didn’t translate properly” and ultimately “didn’t think it was great television.” Behr and Moore both agreed, though they were harsher in their criticisms.

“A Matter of Perspective” is a solid hour of Star Trek: The Next Generation, one that uses futuristic technology to tell a very captivating story. Still, Ira Steven Behr was one of many writers who thought they dropped the ball when it came to bringing this tale to life. At the time, this was a minor blip in a career that would eventually be defined by the greatest sci-fi franchise ever made. Once he became showrunner for Deep Space Nine, though, his ability to tell whether a script would work onscreen helped him craft the best Star Trek series ever made. 

As the Department of Temporal Investigations might put it, the rest is history!

By Brian Myers
| Published 29 seconds ago

Harrison Ford might be best known for Indiana Jones and Han Solo, but the veteran actor has turned in plenty of unforgettable performances outside of those iconic roles. The 2000 thriller What Lies Beneath is one of the best examples, proving Ford could deliver a massive box office hit without cracking a whip or saving the galaxy. More than two decades later, it remains one of the most suspenseful thrillers of its era, and you can stream it without a Netflix subscription.

And Empty Nest And New Neighbors

What Lies Beneath begins with Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Norman Spencer (Harrison Ford), a seemingly happy married couple who have just sent Claire’s daughter off to college. Now an empty nester married to a busy scientist/professor, a bored and listless Claire comes off as lonely and maybe a little desperate for attention.

When new neighbors Mary (Miranda Otto) and Warren Feur (James Remar) move in next door in their lakeside Vermont neighborhood, Claire becomes convinced that Warren is abusive and has killed off his young wife.

A Ghostly Presence Lurking

After Claire notices that Mary has disappeared without a trace, she begins to experience odd things that she believes are supernatural in origin in and around her house.

At one point, she sees the face of a woman submerged under the water of the lake. Other occurrences include a framed photo being knocked over from its place on her husband’s desk, the image of a woman in her bathroom mirror, and the message “You know” written on her steamed-up mirror.

In Need Of A Sanity Check

Of course, Norman behaves just like any other science type and tries to convince Claire that she’s either imagining things or perhaps beginning to suffer a nervous breakdown.

The latter is amplified when, after a confrontation with Warren at a university party, Claire sees Mary in the flesh and realizes that her suspicions were way off base. But what happens soon after in What Lies Beneath makes Claire question her sanity even more.

What Lies Beneath takes audiences on several rides throughout its 130-minute run time. While at first you’re sure that you’re seeing a film reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Rear Window, the film pivots and changes direction entirely.

And just when you’re sure of the inner workings of Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford’s characters, the storyline fills in a lot more of the backstory of their relationship, changing the plot in the most chilling of ways.

Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer are both at the top of their game in What Lies Beneath, and it’s fascinating to watch their chemistry evolve as each new piece of the puzzle falls into place. Ford’s gradual transformation as long-buried secrets come to light is handled masterfully, while Pfeiffer convincingly evolves from a meek and lonely housewife into a woman fighting for her survival.

As of this writing, you can stream What Lies Beneath for free with ads on Pluto TV. The title can also be rented or purchased on-demand through YouTube, Apple TV+, and Amazon Prime Video.