again. bodily autonomy, fundamental bodily autonomy HAS to have room for people doing things with their own bodies that you do not and will not approve of. if it doesnt, it is not bodily autonomy

there’s something so gutwrenching about the fact that the female characters in obsession have real dreams and wishes but never get the chance to see them realized, while both male characters waste their wishes on short-term selfish satisfaction. they were complex, free-spirited young women who just wanted to create art, and they were destroyed by a man determined to confine them to his superficial perception of them. nikki wanted to be a writer, sarah wanted to be a tattoo artist and now neither of them will get to be anything at all

Just saw the interview where Curry Barker explained that it's totally possible to get a normal wish from the One Wish Willow, and I love the way they did that so much. The reason Obsession happened isn't because it's trying to twist Bear's desires into something evil. It's not even because he phrased his want wrong. Obsession happened because Bear got his hands on a magic item that could do anything in existence, and chose to force someone to fall in love with him, which is an inherently evil thing to do.

One thing about Obsession (2026) that I enjoyed was that it almost asks you to feel empathy for the entity possessing Nikki as well as the real one. Like, obviously the things she's doing are horrific and fucked up, but I think the scene where Bear is asking her to "just be Nikki!" and she eventually just desperatly screams "I can't be Nikki!" does a really good job of showcasing the entity's inner feelings. She's been created with the sole purpose of loving this guy more than anyone else but no matter how perfect it is or how much he claims to love her, its not her that he loves, its Nikki. And any time she stops pretending to be Nikki, he reacts (albeit rightfully) with disgust and horror. She can't be Nikki because Nikki would never love Bear, and so Bear will never love her.

I genuinely appreciate how obsession doesn't try to frame bear as morally grey but just fully leans into how deplorable he is. a lesser movie would have tried to give him redeeming moments along the way but no, at every single crossroads bear makes the wrong choice. when the customer service rep asks him if he wants to cancel his wish, he says no, and asks to alter it. when nikki, the real one, begs him to kill her, he asks her "if it would be so bad to love him", and right at the end, backs out of killing himself and tries to throw the pills up. he is the villain, not another victim, not a confused, cowardly boy, the villain.

What's really grating when people discuss Obsession is how much weight people put on Bear's wish. Like the wish is what made him the bad guy. No one can sit and say they've never wished upon a star or thrown a coin into a well for something to happen. You're not expecting it because logically you know magic isn't real. Same thing with Bear. There was no reason for him to think he needed to choose his words wisely while he was making a wish over a $7 toy he got from a novelty shop alone in his car. There was even less reason for him to think magic was real and the wish would work. Nothing that happened there made Bear the bad guy.

What did make Bear the bad guy was everything he did once he realized the wish was real. Once he realized that his action was causing suffering, then the onus is on him to stop immediately. That's why the dinner scene was so important because it wasn't the phone call to the customer service representative that made Bear realize the wish was real. It was the dinner scene where Bear is told that 1) Nikki sees him as a brother and 2) she lied about her dad being sick. Bear then asks Nikki if she loves him more than anyone else in the world and she says yes. Without a shadow of doubt, Bear knew the wish was real right at the moment. Yet in the very next scene he has sex with her knowing that she could not say no. This moment is what makes Bear the bad guy for the rest of the film, not the wish he had no reason to think would work.

oh and another thing that devastates me about Obsession is how much nikki is judged and blamed by those around her. sarah and ian repeatedly telling bear that he shouldn’t have to deal with her, that she’s not his responsibility, that they’re worried she’s taking advantage of him. as if they aren’t also her friends, as if they shouldn’t know her well enough to notice something is off. there’s no concern for why nikki is behaving the way she is, there’s just distain towards it. she starts acting out of character and so it must all be intentional. but bear doesn’t get questioned. bear isn’t gossiped about. nikki loses all her agency and autonomy, and all she gets for it is judgment

Moments where the real Nikki breaks through the wish
OBSESSION (2026) Dir. Curry Barker

i absolutely love how nikki is nearly always bathed in shadow (whether it’s fully in the dark or with a single light behind her with her as the faceless darkness). she’s quite literally become a shadow of her former self. no autonomy, no personal thoughts or emotions, just a carved image of what bear desired.

nikki breaks my heart so bad because in the brief moments we see her before the wish kicks in, she's so cool and funny, clearly kindhearted, very driven about her future (telling bear about how she was going to quit her job to focus on her writing), and also very sure of herself as a person. ive seen people describe this movie as "mean-spirited" and I think thats so apt because it was a 2 hour long tragedy of the torture of this innocent girl, taking away everything she's ever had, including her own sense of self, putting her through unimaginable horrors, and leaving her with nothing except the three dead bodies of her friends, with the one who she trusted most being the one who did this to her. nothing for her to look for hope in, because she has nothing before her except a lifetime in prison or in an institution. it would be one thing if the movie ended on a note like weapons, where everything was over and there would hopefully be recovery somewhere down the line, but here, not only was the evil not committed by a random stranger but her closest friend, but she doesn't get any chance at recovery either. so goddamn tragic. on that note, if anyone can come up with some sort of fix-it for nikki please link it to me because I will be crying about this girl forever.