THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS AND DISCUSSION OF MATURE TOPICS
Introduction to “Obsession”
“Obsession” is a 2025 horror film that took the genre’s followers by storm, with the film’s opening weekend bringing in around $17.2 million worldwide. The film follows a man named Bear as he grapples with his crush on his friend, Nikki. Ian, another friend of Bear, helps him practice confessing love and motivates him to tell her his feelings. When Bear returns home, he finds that his cat, Sandy, had gotten into his meds and overdosed. After Bear mourns the loss, he gets a call from Nikki, asking if he would come to the bar for trivia night before her crystal necklace falls down the drain, prompting him to go to the trinket shop and buy a replacement. This is where he would find the ‘One Wish Willow,’ and after asking the clerk some questions regarding it, he would make the purchase. When the group all meet at a bar together, we get introduced to the final friend, Sarah, who is revealed to be romantically interested in Bear.
After the group leaves the bar, Bear drives Nikki home, where the pair has an awkward conversation leading up to Bear calling her “Freaky Nikki,” which is a nickname she isn’t fond of at all. This leads Nikki to pressure Bear into confessing that he has feelings for her, which she has figured out from how he acts around her. Nikki, reasonably, rejects him, as she has always seen Bear as a brother and nothing more. However, shortly after, Bear uses the One Wish Willow and says, “I wish Nikki would love me more than anyone in the entire world.”
After those words leave his mouth, Nikki suddenly appears back outside and pesters Bear to come inside and stay the night, which would lead to her coming with him to his place. She would begin acting very affectionate towards him, being very touchy and forward with him, before leading to a kiss on his bed, and the real Nikki would suddenly snap back and freak out before the fake Nikki comes back and apologizes for her “panic attack.”
Over the course of what seems like days or weeks, Nikki and Bear continue to date and have romantic moments, leading to Ian and Sarah beginning to get concerned about the pair’s sudden relationship. One incident where Nikki had to stay home while Bear went to work led to Nikki standing in one spot the whole time at Bear’s apartment, where she would urinate, eat bugs, and all kinds of other gross stuff without even moving. On Bear’s end, though, Nikki had packed him a lunch that had a few photos of them and a note, “My little food critic.” Bear had previously mentioned he wanted to be a food critic. “What’s the verdict,: Cat?” Bear would have initial confusion before making the realization that Nikki had cut up and cooked his dead cat’s corpse into a sandwich. Even the name Sandy was pretty much a way of foreshadowing her fate to be cooked into a sandwich.
Now I’ll be skipping over a few scenes to save for my later arguments. Still, for a summary of the few future events, Sarah and Bear meet up in her car to open a letter to Sarah regarding college before Nikki runs out to the car and brutalizes Sarah in front of Bear, “disposing” of her body. In contrast, Bear opens the letter himself and sees that Sarah has been accepted to college. Seeing this, he goes to buy another Wish A Willow with the only option either to have someone contradict his wish or kill himself, and goes to Ian to make another wish for him to make Nikk not love him anymore. Ian, not taking him seriously, wishes for a million dollars that would appear right there in front of them. Bear then goes back to his apartment to see if he can trick Nikki into wishing for him; however, he comes home to see a grotesque scene with Sarah’s body propped up on a chair while Nikki wears a dress she had worn at a previous party, even copying her tattoos to become like Sarah. Ian would come bursting in to try to talk to Bear before Nikki would shoot him in the head.
Bear would hide in the bathroom, take some sleeping pills, and try to overdose before the Wish A Willow snaps outside, and he suddenly gets ht eurge to go to Nikki and begin loving her more. This would be short-lived, however, as the effects of the pills would begin to hit Bear, and he would die in Nikki’s arms. With him dead, the wish would end, and the real Nikki would come back, screaming and crying as she had realized what had happened to her and seeing all the horror surrounding her with all three of her friends dead.
This Isn’t a “Couples Movie”
I can’t stress enough that the message behind this film and the context with that message in mind don’t make this some cute movie to threaten your boyfriend like “Oh, I’ll act like this or do this if you ever do this,” because this movie doesn’t try to give you that feeling. This film is about a man who couldn’t take no for an answer and robbed a woman of her autonomy for the sake of his own pleasure and satisfaction. The entirety of their romantic interactions is blatant sexual assault; even the sex scene is rape, with her facial expressions being unfazed because she doesn’t want this truly. Even Bear’s name is speculated to be related to the Man vs. Bear argument, which was popular around 2023, I believe, and women would say they would feel safer in the woods with a bear rather than a man.
But the one line from Bear that brought the most anger out of me towards a character was the question to Nikki when the real Nikki was able to communicate with him as the fake one slept: “What’s so bad about being with me?” He was thinking that her saying “Kill me,” and all of her outbursts, were because she hated being with him, when in reality, it was the real Nikki breaking through and trying to tell him to kill her so she could be free. This destroys the idea of Bear being “the nice guy,” as he clearly was selfish in this saying, as he only cared about himself rather than the girl he blatantly forced to love him just because she rejected him and hurt his fragile ego.
Even during the party with Bear, Nikki, Ian, Sarah, and some other friends. Nikki reads a short horror story about Jack and Jill (the fairy tale) and how the two are in an incestuous relationship, as a way for the real Nikki to communicate that she sees Bear as a brother rather than a romantic interest. It’s even later revealed that Ian and Nikki were hooking up for two years before the events of the film, which makes Ian a bit of a mixed bag on the current events. I personally think that while he might’ve shown concern for Nikki’s behavior, it might’ve also been jealousy, as he didn’t really like being around both Bear and Nikki because of this newly sprung relationship of theirs, and this might’ve been because of his previous relationship with Nikki.
In the end, Nikki’s cries weren’t out of fear of being arrested; they were cries of terror and dread of what Bear had put her through and what this entity that possessed her had done to her friends. Bear was the villain as soon as he made that wish, and Nikki was the victim of an immature, selfish, and egotistical monster.
Why It’s Important
This film is a way to bring awareness to what most women go through daily from men, being viewed as nothing but a tool for pleasure rather than a human being, and this can be seen in Bear and Nikki’s interactions while they were in a relationship. As much as I love Sarah, she says that Nikki is taking advantage of Bear in the car with him, where she herself witnessed during the party, where real Nikki snaps back and stabs a broken glass bottle into her own forehead, panicking about the fake one coming back. None of the characters see Bear as the perpetrator and only see Nikki as one because of her behavior with others and with him, which is what most women go through when they become victims of rape or sexual abuse, being portrayed as a “slut” who tempted the perpetrator to take advantage of her, just because of the way she acted or the way she dressed.
This entire movie’s point is to bring awareness to this issue that plagues the world, as this has been an ongoing issue recently, with sexual abuse not being taken seriously and being boiled down to nothing but insensitive comments about the victim and jokes about the perpetrators. I think this is mostly prevalent with Epstein and Diddy, as these two were perpetrators of sexual abuse involving women, men, and minors, but were reduced to jokes like the baby oil and “Diddy Party” with Diddy and various jokes involving Epstein. This pattern can even be seen with Obsession, as many people have commented on the sex scene by saying Bear should “pass the controller” to the viewer and let them participate in the scene even though the scene is depicting rape, some even laughing at Nikki’s blank expression.
Final Thoughts
This movie has had a heavy impact on many individuals, me included, as I’ve never seen a horror film in theaters that has made me feel so uncomfortable and on edge the entire time. I went into this movie already knowing that the film wanted to bring awareness to rape against women, but the degree of it is what made me feel the way I did. It did such a good job of delivering this message, whether it be the way Nikki acted or some of the hidden messages behind certain scenes or dialogue. From the actors to the director, all of them did a fantastic job on this film, and I really hope to see more films made by the same director, Curry Bakker, and maybe see more issues addressed in his films, similar to the way Obsession did, or in general, see this level of awareness in other horror films.
