Megan Lawless says the day she filmed Sarah’s death in Obsession was her favorite on set. The actor, who plays Sarah in Curry Barker’s horror movie, said the sequence was brutal to shoot but ended up becoming the scene fans would not stop talking about.
Lawless said the production had two takes to get the death scene right. Inde Navarrette wore a helmeted wig to smash through the glass, while Lawless had to bash her own head against the brick as Navarrette acted out the repeated slamming. The crew then replaced Lawless with a doll for the rest of the sequence, including the close-up of Sarah’s ruined face. “The whole sequence is just funny,” she said, adding, “I just feel honored to have such an iconic death scene in this film that no one will forget.”
The reaction at Obsession’s TIFF screening caught her off guard. Lawless said she was surprised when Sarah’s death drew cheering from the audience, but not necessarily shocked by the response from horror fans, whom she described as “total sickos.” That reaction fits a movie that has already stirred intense online chatter, much of it focused on Sarah’s fate and her tangled dynamic with Bear and Nikki.
Lawless also pushed back on the idea that Sarah or Nikki is the villain. She said Sarah could have had something with Bear under different circumstances, but not while Sarah and Nikki were still together. She also said the kiss Nikki interrupted at the party “goes against everything Sarah believes,” a view that adds another layer to a scene already being dissected by fans.
Obsession, a horror film by Curry Barker, has become a talking point partly because of the way it turns that relationship tension into shock value. For Lawless, though, the death scene was not just a grim plot point. It was the sequence that gave Sarah her most memorable moment, and one that the audience at TIFF made clear they were not going to forget.
