THIS FEATURE CONTAINS SPOILERS ABOUT OBSESSION. PROCEED WITH CAUTION
As soon as Curry Barker’s Obsession opened over the weekend, it seemed to become an instant all-timer with horror fans and critics alike. The film, carrying a 94 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a near identical Popcornmeter score of 94 percent on the aggregator site, also generated a great for horror “A-” CinemaScore from opening day audiences, and it overperformed at the box office. On a reported budget of $750,000-$1 million, the $15 million pickup from Focus Features opened to $17.2 million (up from the previously announced $16 million estimates from Sunday). In the midst of all the success are genuine and thought-provoking conversations about some of the film’s themes and its characters, with one of the discussions being about Bear (Michael Johnston) and whether or not his One Willow Wish to make Nikki (Inde Navarrette) fall in love with him, and decisions in the aftermath as he realizes how that wish has stripped her of her free will, makes him the true villain of the film. Some believe Bear’s choices lie somewhere in a gray area, while others flat out believe his selfishness turns him from the film’s protagonist and into its central antagonist. It’s a topic worthy of discussion and one of the many reasons why Obsession is more than just an entertaining horror film.
In the film, Bear is a music store employee who has had a long-standing crush on his friend Nikki. The pair are childhood friends and have worked alongside each other at the music store with their friends Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) and Sarah (Megan Lawless). At the start of the movie, Bear is practicing how he’ll reveal his feelings to Nikki to a diner employee as Ian watches, and it’s clear that his infatuation runs deep. He hasn’t had enough confidence to reveal his true feelings, but he’s finally close to making the move on the night all three go to trivia night at a bar. When allowed to take Nikki home, he fumbles through expressing his feelings and even resorts to calling her name, which she detested as a kid (“Freaky Nikki”), as a way to flirt with her that doesn’t go as planned. Nikki asks Bear point-blank if he likes her (some have debated if this is meant romantically based on a reveal later in the movie), but he still doesn’t take the opportunity to tell her how he really feels.
Before this meet-up, Bear goes to a mystic shop to buy Nikki a new necklace after he hears hers fell down the drain. While on the hunt for the right necklacke, he comes across the “One Wish Willow,” a novelty toy that asserts a wish will be granted when it’s broken. Following missing his shot with Nikki, he pulls out the toy and wishes for Nikki to love him more than anyone in the world. Nikki quickly reappears at the car, her mood swiftly changing from needing to get inside her house to asking to sleep at Bear’s house. From there, Nikki only desires to be around Bear, and it’s apparent that Bear’s wish has worked, but it’s also obvious, even to Bear, that it has stripped Nikki of the very essence that he claims to like about her. As the film progresses and the situation grows more serious, Bear makes a series of choices from purely selfish places as he seems more in love with the idea of Nikki and not in love with her enough to break a spell that has made her a shell of her former self.
Thanks to Johnston’s performance, the audience does have some sympathy for Bear early on in the film. Everyone has either been too afraid or insecure to reveal their true feelings to someone they’re into, or at least has known someone who has found themselves in that situation. Despite the relationship he has with his friends, there seems to be an innate loneliness within Bear, and the one thing that seems to keep him from truly falling into despair is his feelings for Nikki. He has built her up to a near-mythical level in his mind, and given the fact that we see early on how great a girl she is before the wish is made, it’s easy to see why Bear is smitten.
Bear takes a turn once the wish is made, and it’s easy to tell that something has gone wrong with Nikki. There are early signs that she’s no longer herself anymore beginning on the first night he makes his fateful wish. After they get to his house, she insists on sleeping in bed with Bear and eventually moves in for a kiss that is abruptly stopped after she screams in fear before suddenly snapping out of it. This happens a few more times in the movie as a sign that the real Nikki is trapped deep within this new version and is fighting to get out. Bear is established as an intuitive and smart guy, so he knows that Nikki’s sudden turn is completely out of left field, but his selfishness ignores it because he is finally getting the attention he has desired from her.
Bear’s actions can be described as selfish at best before one pivotal moment at a restaurant while the two are dining together. After the wish is made, Nikki reveals that her dad has cancer, and that’s why her mood is all over the place and why she doesn’t want to be alone at home. To further explain her erratic behavior, she said that she took MDMA on the night that they went to trivia, and Bear accepts this, although deep down he probably knows this isn’t the reason her personality and interest in him have shifted. He brushes it off even more as the reason when she admits her feelings for him, and they begin spending more and more time together.
However, during this restaurant outing, one in which Nikki is still very much off, Ian calls Bear and informs him that she expressed disinterest in him romantically and viewed him more as a brother before they got together, and that she lied about her father having cancer. It’s in this moment that Bear KNOWS that his wish probably worked and that Nikki’s feelings for him aren’t real and only a manifestation from the “One Wish Willow.” He returns to the table and asks if Nikki really likes him, and she returns the sentiment with an almost robotic declaration of love. When he asks her if she lied about her father having cancer, she grows upset and makes a big scene at the restaurant, and doesn’t stop until he promises never to mention it again. When she asks him if any of that even matters, Bear says no, and it immediately cuts to them having sex.
As a shift in Bear’s character direction, this does matter. He’s more than aware at this point that this isn’t the Nikki he once knew and only one created by the wish he made for her love and attention. The sex scene becomes even more jarring and downright problematic because it explicitly shows that Nikki no longer has autonomy, and he’s using her for his own selfish needs. This isn’t Nikki giving consent for Bear to have sex with her. This is a version created by Bear that may have her body, but it lacks her mind, soul, or heart, all the things that Bear purported to care about the most. It only proves that Bear doesn’t ultimately care about how he has Nikki as long as he can simply just have her.
Bear is driven by his own desires and doesn’t make any real moves to help Nikki as her behavior becomes more bizarre, and she begins to become a threat to herself and anyone who would dare take Bear’s attention away from her. In one scene, Nikki barricades the door with electrical tape at Bear’s home so it’s more difficult for him to leave for work. After he manages to leave, the camera focuses in on Nikki as she stands in place with a smile on her face, as she begins to urinate on herself, fully showcasing that she is no longer in control of her faculties and her one obligation, because of this wish, is to be present for Bear. When he returns home, the audience discovers that she has stood in the spot for hours and has vomited and defecated on herself while waiting for Bear to return home.
Before arriving home to find Nikki in that state, Bear calls the customer support number on the back of the “One Wish Willow” box and instead of first asking if he can completely reverse the wish, he hopes to alter it, driving it home that he’s still coming from a selish place because instead of freeing Nikki from this intense feeling of love for him, he rather tweak it to make her not so crazy so he can still have her. The voice on the line makes it clear that the wish can only be broken when Bear or Nikki dies, and, in one of the film’s most chilling moments, the real Nikki is put on the line and can be heard screaming in agony. Bear now knows that the real Nikki is trapped somewhere in the ether and is fighting to get out. However, even after becoming aware of this and then finding Nikki covered in vomit and bodily waste, he STILL chooses to move ahead with this version of her, because a broken Nikki, for Bear, is better than no Nikki at all.
Nikki is the true victim of the story because, as a character, she loses all sense of herself the moment Bear becomes the catalyst to set the horror in motion once the wish is made. To his friends, he makes excuses for her sudden, intense feelings for him and still doesn’t do anything to free her, even after she inflicts violence on herself during a drunk game of Jenga that sees another attempt for the real Nikki to emerge before she begins stabbing herself in the face with a broken bottle. The interesting thing about the aftermath of this scene is that Bear seems more annoyed by her behavior rather than being genuinely concerned about her well-being, even though he knows exactly why all of this is happening. Later that night, even after Nikki threatens suicide unless Bear comes to bed with her, he still doesn’t do anything to really help her.
An interesting exchange happens after this scene that has divided some moviegoers. When Bear attempts to leave bed to meet up with Sarah because she has something important to tell him, a lucid Nikki says that the supernatural force that has taken over her body is asleep, and she begs Bear to kill her before she wakes up. Bear’s response to this is “What’s so bad about being with me?” It’s a line that has angered many because, as he sees what this has done to her and she begs for him to free her, his “love” for her isn’t strong enough to do that, and his concern is once again shifted to himself and how this makes him feel. On the other hand, if the viewers are open to it, the moment shows just how tragic and broken Bear is himself.
There is no justification for what Bear has done, but the scene does fully indicate that Bear is deeply flawed and too afraid (or too much of a coward) to face his own issues. He’s impulsively and selfishly driven by his own desires, but he’s also in pain himself and is dealing with crippling feelings of loneliness. A part of him didn’t feel alive until this version of Nikki began to want him more than anything in the world, and he would rather hold onto that, even if it’s at her expense. In Bear’s mind, he cared and cares about Nikki and never intended to hurt anyone, but the movie does show, through some of his actions, that choices and mistakes can be made, even if they aren’t coming from a place of malice, that can deeply hurt others. It then becomes a matter of whether or not your needs and wants supersede the needs and wants of the people you could be hurting.
In the end, though, Bear’s selfishness does continue to win out as Nikki resorts to murdering their mutual friends, and the situation has escalated to the point of no return. Even when he returns to the mystic shop to buy another “One Wish Willow” to reverse the wish, he still blames the cashier at the store for selling an item that could make things so horribly wrong. He doesn’t blame himself; it’s now the cursed toys’ fault that he has allowed things to spiral out of control.
There is something to be said about the film’s ending. After getting another “One Wish Willow,” Bear returns home to ask Nikki to reverse the wish because he can’t do it himself. He finds Nikki wearing the clothes of their murdered friend while her nude corpse is propped up on a chair. Nikki doesn’t want to reverse the wish and only grows more unhinged, proving that the one way out for Bear could be what was told him during his call to the customer service number. Bear locks himself in the bathroom as a violent Nikki thrashes at the door and then suddenly shifts to saying over and over again that she’ll give him space to please him. Bear has a gun in his possession and contemplates shooting himself, but ultimately decides to swallow oxycodone. However, it appears that Bear seemingly changes his mind and attempts to make himself vomit, but before he can, Nikki uses the “One Wish Willow” to wish that Bear falls deeply in love with her as she is with him.
Now possessed, Bear and Nikki have a brief reconciliation where he now expresses his “feelings” for her, but he ultimately overdoses and dies. Shattered by the turn of events, Nikkie prepares to kill herself but snaps out of it in the nick of time since Bear’s death has brought the real Nikki back, but she has returned to only find immense carnage surrounding her, and she begins wailing as the credits roll.
The ending is interesting because, even though he attempts to, Bear still can’t do what is necessary to free Nikki because his cowardice won’t allow him to do it. He decides against shooting himself because that would be too painful and messy, and even though he swallows the oxycodone, he attempts to back out of that and is only stopped by Nikki’s wish. He then traumatizes and victimizes her further by having the real Nikkie emerge to find a legit murder scene surrounding her. She’s alone and surrounded by the dead bodies of the friends she once cared about. Even in death, Bear has found another way to harm a girl he claimed to love.
This is why Obsession is easily one of the best horror films released in years. It’s highly entertaining, darkly funny, chilling, and expertly crafted in front of and behind the camera, but it has also sparked genuine conversations that should be had about desires, free will, and consent. The horror genre has always showcased some of the best social commentary, and Obsession is no different. At the end of the day, the audience will ultimately draw their own conclusions about Bear’s intentions and if he’s the true villain of the piece but hopefully it will also make them see that if there is a little Bear in them or if they know someone like him, there are consequences to certain actions, and we’re all given a moment to try and course correct them.
Obsession is now playing in theaters nationwide courtesy of Focus Features.
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