How Obsession was filmed

The opening drive, Nikki and Bear heading home, was the first scene shot on our stage, its driving plates filmed in Atlanta and played back across the wall.

What makes it read as real is the reflections. The car sits inside the wall, side panels and all, so the world does not just show through the windows, it bounces off the glass and the paint. Headlights and signage streak over the windshield the way they would on a real road, because that light is actually in the room. The crew’s hardest job, gaffer Christopher Oh said, was keeping their own fixtures off the screen, so the only thing in the reflection was the world on the wall.

Then production designer Vivian Gray layered grease, grime, and haze onto the glass. The dirty windows catch those reflections and break them up, so your eye reads a filthy 2am windshield instead of a screen. The wall throws the light, the grime sells it, and the seam between the car and the wall disappears.

The film’s most talked-about moment happens in a truck at 2am. Bear and Sarah (Megan Lawless) share a quiet, warmly lit beat, and then Nikki arrives at the window. Inde Navarrette plays her, and what she does with a brick is the death people leave the theater talking about.

The crew had two takes and a limited supply of shatterable glass, with no room to miss. “Sarah’s death was one of my favorite days on set to date,” the gaffer said. “It was such a flex for every department.”