Obsession
Here we are, friends. It's been 31 days and 31 horror movies. I had my doubts that I'd be able to complete it this year; my work hours are, well, not conducive to this type of venture, or much of anything. But I did it, and for those of you who joined me along the way, I sincerely thank you for reading my ramblings and leaving feedback. This was a tough year, and I thank you for being here. But this is Halloween, and since we're all entitled to one good scare, I decided to check out...
Obsession (2025)
Since I've been doing Mr. Pat's 31 Days of Halloween, I've never had this many people ask me my thoughts on Obsession. Not only that, I've had multiple people, including non-horror friends, ask me if I had seen this movie, and they all said it was great. Normally, when a movie gets pumped up like this, it never lives up to the hype. As for this one, well... I'd say it surpasses the hype.
We meet Baron, or Bear as he's known to his friends, and he's practicing how he's going to ask out a girl he's been pining over, a coworker named Nikki. He's there with his bff Ian, who is coaching him through it. Fast forward a bit and he goes to a hippie shop to buy her a crystal, and instead buys her an item called a One Wish Willow. Basically, it just gives you one wish. Later, while driving her home, he passes up about 1,000 opportunities to tell her how he feels, blowing every single one. Even when she flat-out asks him, "Do you like me? Because you need to tell me now."
He says he likes her as a friend, and she walks away. Justifiably upset with himself because he's a stupid idiot, he makes a wish on the One Wish Willow that she would love him more than anyone in the F'ing world. He gets his wish, and after a promising start, things get out of hand, then worse, then worse and finally, when you think things can't get any worse, they get a LOT worse.
That's the plot in a nutshell. I'm not going to go over scenes I like or ones that made my eyes turn into saucers because you really need to experience everything this movie throws at you going in blank because it's crazy. The insane stuff reminds me of the movie Green Room (RIP Sir Patrick Stewart), in that there are a few scenes with such sudden and unexpected violence that you don't really get to process what's happening until it's already finished. Outside of... that one scene... violence happens, then it ends just as suddenly as it started, and we, and the witnesses, can only stare in disbelief and wait for someone to make sense of it.
After watching this movie, my initial thought: holy shit, does Inde Navarrette absolutely kill it in this role. She is terrifying. The way she moves, how she was shot to blend into the darkness, the way she talks and how she is able to go through so many extremes at the drop of a hat are phenomenal. I'm not going to compare roles because each of them was asked to do different things, but I'd put Navarratte's work in this movie up there with Rebecca Hall in The Night House and Toni Collette's incredible work in Hereditary.
I mostly stayed away from reviews and completely avoided any discussions of this movie on Reddit because I didn't want to know anything about it. When I first heard about this movie, and people were raving about it, I wondered how they planned to make it scary. It's just a psycho girlfriend; that's not scary. Wrong! She is terrifying. You watch her, and everything she does either seems slightly off or completely unhinged. When things really get crazy, post-wish Nikki is one of the most effective horror movie characters I've seen in a long time. I don't want to call her a horror movie villain, or even an antagonist, because, while she's the one doing these things, she's the victim; she didn't ask for this. Bear, unknowingly at first, forced it on her. She's a prisoner in her own body because Bear was too much of a wuss to talk to her.
I want to give a spoiler warning here because the ending is sticking with me. Multiple times Bear is told that if he kills himself, Nikki will go back to normal. He has a gun, but he chickens out; instead, he turns to pills. After swallowing a bunch, he then tries to make himself throw up. That was actually the actor Michael Johnston's idea; he wanted to show that despite everything that's happened, Bear is still too much of a coward and only thinks about himself. Unfortunately for him, just as he's giving himself the Mandible Claw, Nikki broke her One Wish Willow, presumably wishing that he return her love. He leaves the bathroom; they embrace, but then the drugs kick in, and he dies. Nikki, now free of the curse, sobs hysterically over everything that's happened.
I am glad they didn't try to whitewash Bear either. The director was offered an extra 2 million money to make Bear more of a hero character, and he refused. Like, I don't blame Bear for making the wish. He had no idea it was real; it was a stupid thing he bought at a hippie store, and it was a spur-of-the-moment thing he did out of frustration with himself. But you realize what kind of person he is later in the movie. He had plenty of moments to piece it together and act, but at one point you realize he really is a selfish asshole. There's a moment, post-wish, where he's talking to the real Nikki, who is begging him to kill her. He looks offended and asks her, "Would being with me really be that bad?" He can't see past his own selfish desires when the girl he's obsessed with is being tortured. It's not like he objected to the idea of killing her; he objected to the idea that she didn't want to live as a passenger in her own body, with an entity that is unquestionably evil and is forcing her to do things.
The movie does have a fitting end for Bear, but I wonder if I would have liked it more if he ended up surviving, but trapped inside his own body like Nikki is. The real Nikki is deep inside and is aware of everything that's happening. The ending we got... it's nice that Nikki is free, but her life is over. She's going to jail for a very long time. I think it would have been fitting for Bear to experience some of the nightmare he subjected Nikki to. The ending we got was good, but I think Bear got off a bit easy with a painless death. What I'm wondering is, why the hell did he wait so long to get another of those One Wish Willows?
Many times, when a movie gets glazed by everyone, it lets me down. It's hard to live up to when a movie gets seemingly unlimited praise, because it gets built up in your head so much that nothing can match how you're picturing it. There are rare occasions, very rare occasions, where it's even better than what you've been hearing. Obsession falls into that category.
The Rating
Where to watch
Watch on Peacock: https://www.peacocktv.com/stream-movies/obsession
Agree with basically everything you said. While it’s not a groundbreaking idea, it is so well done. Barker has style in his directing that you can see carry over from his other work he’s done in his YouTube shorts as well as Milk. He’s able to mix in enough of his comedy background to keep you off balance throughout. Very excited to see what he has in store in his upcoming movies. Inde Navarrette was absolutely fantastic and is well deserving off all the hype she’s received from the role. No doubt that they are the “winners” of the movie. I’m glad that I saw it in theaters the first time, but watching at home on second viewing …