The new horror film Obsession has been a wild success since its release this May. The story follows Barron, or Bear, as he’s called by his friends. A young man working at a music supply shop with his co-workers who are also his close friends. We begin to see his obvious crush on one of the girls, Nikki, and his mental deliberation over whether to confess his feelings. After discussing his feelings with one of his co-workers, Ian, he returns home to find his cat dead on the floor, having gotten into his pills that were near his food bowl. The scene is eerie, and the way he handles his grief is noticeably unsettling.
After cleaning up the body, he gets a call from Nikki asking him to come to their weekly trivia night. He feels conflicted, but she then informs him that she has something important to tell him. The scene hints like a confession, but instead she tells him she will be quitting her job at the store to become a writer, that the time they have to hang out is limited. Bear quickly decides to go out anyway, even after grieving his cat. The script hints at his tears being due to his unrequited love versus the supposed loss of his pet.
Nikki drops her crystal necklace down the bathroom sink towards the end of their call, he decides to find the closest crystal shop rushing to get her a new one. He can’t find one that fits her tastes, so he decides to buy her a kitschy gift instead. He spots a small box labeled “One Wish Willow.” The box says that it can grant one wish when you snap the willow branch in half. After a confusing conversation with the cashier about the purchase, he heads to the bar for trivia night.
He doesn’t immediately tell his friends about his cat, much to the discomfort of watchers. Bear, oddly, tells one of his friends, Sarah, who offers her condolences, though he continues to pretend everything is normal. After attempting to talk to Nikki all night, he offers to drop her home, and that he has a gift for her. Nikki has a peculiar reaction to his comment, leaving Bear more hesitant than before. They arrive at her house, and Bear attempts multiple times to confess, but the timing just doesn’t add up. As she walks away, he makes the mistake of teasing her, calling her “freaky Nikki,” a sensitive nickname from high school. Nikki becomes enraged and can feel the unnatural tone of the conversation, so she finally questions whether Bear likes her. To which Bear replies that they are “good friends,” completely dismissing his ambitions.
Nikki goes into her house, and Bear is left to wallow with his thoughts.
Out of hopelessness, he opens the One Wish Willow he bought for Nikki, snapping the branch and reciting his spontaneous wish, “I wish Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone else in the world.”
The entire mood of the film shifts within a second, and Nikki reappears on her porch this time engulfed in darkness. She saunters back to the car window with a different tone of voice, asking Bear if he wants to come inside, because she just “lost her cat.”
Bear, confused by her comment and erratic behavior, says it was his cat, not hers. Nikki furrows her brows and slowly says, “Oh, right.”
Almost as if she couldn’t remember. She pushes multiple times to get him into her house before getting back into his car in tears. She tells Bear that her dad is sick and that she can’t handle being alone. He gives in and takes her back to his house. Her behavior and way of speaking were suddenly meek and less confident. She becomes overwhelmingly clingy and affectionate, which leads to them kissing in his bed, much to Bear’s surprise. She suddenly jolts back and scrambles off the bed, terrifying Bear with her reaction. Her face returns to a slight smile as she crawls back into the bed, saying she didn’t mean it.
The story quickly progresses as Nikki and Bear start dating, much to their co-workers’ shock. Bear explains her odd behavior to Ian, but quickly pretends it didn’t happen once they start dating. Nikki becomes less and less like herself and more aggressive in her attempts to keep Bear by her side. He’s so wrapped up in their “relationship” that he ignores and hides her disturbing behavior. From duck taping the front door, to feeding him cat meat in his packed lunch alongside a photo labeled “You & Not Me.”
These horrific actions are small blips of the real Nikki trying to communicate with Bear. She repeatedly brings his cat back into the plot as a way of reminding him of loss, the way Nikki lost herself. As well as the subtle symbolism of “curiosity killed the cat.” She had no other reference on how to love Bear besides the love he had for his cat, so she tried her best to mimic it.
She becomes more erratic, having outbursts at night and screaming before going back to “normal.” Their friends start to become concerned about the nature of their relationship. Bear attempts to go to a boy’s night at Ian’s without Nikki, but can’t manage to leave the house without her. The group starts to go around the room playing a drinking game. Once it lands on Nikki, she stands up with no explanation and recites a paragraph from her new writing piece, while looking into Bear’s eyes. The story sounds like Hanzel and Gretel, but quickly morphs into a sexually disturbing piece about sibling incest.
Nikki reads it aloud like a love story, ending it with, “A love only a willow branch could conjure.” Bear is now faced with the fact that Nikki isn’t really in love with him; it’s all forced because of his selfish wish. The real Nikki is still there, witnessing it all.
This intricate detail that slips through indicates that Nikki thought of Bear like a brother. That, without the One Wish Willow, she never would have loved him.
Even after her mental breakdowns, Bear continues to pretend like they have a great relationship. The disturbing sex scenes that happen towards the end of the film are clear symbols of sexual assault. He’s aware that Nikki isn’t herself and doesn’t truly want to be with him, but he continues to sleep with her anyway. All we can see during this moment is Nikki’s blank stare as her mouth tries to replicate human moans. It’s a belittling moment for our view of Bear.
Nikki once again has an outburst where her romantic persona fades, and she stabs herself in the forehead with a piece of glass. These breaks are the real side of Nikki, trying to alert Bear and the others around her that this submissive figure isn’t her.
As each scene gets more grotesque and skewed, Nikki becomes more intense and violent. The persona of “Nikki” begins to realize that no matter what she does or how erratic she becomes, Bear will still want to be with her, making it much easier for her to fulfill his wish.
Bear tries to take Nikki to the hospital, but she refuses, and he finally decides to call the number on the box. A man answers the phone and asks, “Do you want to cancel your wish?” This is a way of asking Bear if he’s learned his lesson. Instead of immediately canceling it, he questions if he can alter his wish. This is where we really start to see the selfish side of Bear: even after all the pain he has caused, he still wants to be with her. Even after acknowledging that Nikki doesn’t want to be with him. The man on the other end of the line asks if he wants to talk to Nikki. Bear questions what he means, and the man puts the real Nikki on the phone. All we can hear are blood-curdling screams of captivity.
The story starts to reach the end with Nikki killing their co-worker, Sarah, smashing her face with a brick when she finds Bear in the car with her late at night. Bear tries to find a way to get rid of his wish without killing himself or Nikki, so he turns to Ian. Panicked, he begged Ian to make a wish contradicting his, but can’t get him to believe the wish is real. Ian uses his wish on money, leaving Bear to deal with his own problems. He comes home to find Nikki covered in blood with Sarah’s corpse in the dining room. After closer examination, we can see that Nikki has Sarah’s tattoos drawn on her with a permanent marker and is wearing Sarah’s hair, thinking that it would make Bear love her more. Similar to her way of replicating the behavior of Bear’s cat, she changes her focus to Sarah in order to gain his affection.
He locks himself in the bathroom after all of his attempts prove futile. Once he’s sitting on the floor, he spots the meds that originally killed his cat in the cabinet and swallows them. Nikki, who’s still pounding on the door, is screaming at him to come out, before we hear her step away from the door. The familiar chime of the One Wish Willow plays, and with a snap, Bear is back on his feet, trying to find Nikki in a trance.
“Nikki” used the One Wish Willow to make Bear love her more than anyone in the world. The exact same, controlling and all consuming wish that placed her in that situation. The scene of the couple being blissfully in love lasts about nineteen seconds before Bear is convulsing and dead on the floor. In the last scene, we see Nikki screaming in absolute terror before falling back on the couch and snapping out of her trance. Her eyes widened in horror at the corpses and blood around her, unaware of how it all happened. We hear her screech at Bear, “What did you do!”
After watching the film, I started to question whether naming his character “Bear” was purposeful. Seeing his actions disguised as love, I thought of the famous question “Man or Bear.” Women on social media often debate whether they would rather be stuck in the woods with a man or a bear. Most women choose the bear, because with a bear, the only fear is death. If you were killed by a bear, no one would ask what you were wearing or try to defend the bear. The underlying meaning of Bear’s name, as well as his wish, reveals his true intentions and misogyny from the start.
Bear’s true nature is displayed from the very beginning when he uses the gift he got for Nikki, wishing for fabrication instead of truth. The One Wish Willow wasn’t the thing that was cursed; it was his wish. He wanted her as an accessory with no autonomy, not the real Nikki. The real obsession was his unnatural infatuation with Nikki, not the obsession that he forced upon her.
Éire Literature 