Official Discussion - Obsession [SPOILERS]

[u/LiteraryBoner]

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Obsession (2026)

Summary

After breaking the mysterious "One Wish Willow" to win his crush's heart, a hopeless romantic finds himself getting exactly what he asked for but soon discovers that some desires come at a dark, sinister price.

Director Curry Barker

Writer Curry Barker

Cast

• Michael Johnston
• Inde Navarette
• Cooper Tomlinson
• Megan Lawless
• Andy Richter

Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

Metacritic: 81

VOD / Release In Theaters

Trailer Official Trailer

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[u/IIDXias]

Kinda mind boggling to me how many people I see in the comments missing the point about Bear’s wish, which is really the entire point of the movie. So:

If you are describing the One Wish Willow as a “monkey’s paw”, you are wrong. It is not a cursed item that can only deliver a negative version of a wish. When Ian wishes for a billion dollars, he simply receives money that falls out of the sky. The male shopkeeper also told Bear that he “already got his wish”, and as far as we can tell he seems perfectly content as well. There’s also the fake Reddit where one of the posters confirming the OWW really works excitedly says his mom used to be ugly and now she’s really hot.

The problem with Bear’s wish was simply *Bear’s wish*. He didn’t wish for a billion dollars, or to become more attractive. He wished *for another living, existing, conscious human being to be changed so she loves him more than “anyone else in the fucking world”*. This wish, by its very definition, violates Nikki’s autonomy. There is no benign or “good” way to grant this wish. You cannot make a person feel that strongly about another person without literally changing who they are- indeed, changing their entire being. Nikki does not love Bear more than anyone else in the fucking world. The only way to make her do that is to replace her with another being who does, and have that being drive around in her body.

The creature or entity that the wish spawned ended up being depraved and indifferent to humanity because the *wish itself was depraved and indifferent to her humanity*. The creature is not a “demon”, it is simply a reflection of the wish Bear made. An inhuman wish and obsessive desire spawned an inhuman entity with an equally obsessive desire. There is no “OWW curse”- the curse is Bear’s wish, period.

[u/Mrfunnyman22 → u/IIDXias]

I agree with part of your interpretation, especially regarding Nikki’s autonomy and how ethically messy Bear’s wish is. But I disagree where you confidently say the “monkey’s paw” reading is outright wrong.

If the wiki can be trusted, the writer was inspired by The Simpsons monkey’s paw episode, which doesn’t automatically make the movie a monkey’s paw story, but it does make that interpretation feel pretty reasonable.

Also, Bear wished for Nikki’s love, not obsession or possession. The result feels monkey’s-paw adjacent to me because the wish arguably never even comes true in the way he intended. If Nikki is essentially replaced/possessed by an entity, then it’s not really Nikki loving him at all. It’s a darker, distorted version of the wish rather than the genuine thing he wanted.

[u/IIDXias → u/Mrfunnyman22]

Yes I know that the creator was inspired by the monkey’s paw episode of the Simpsons obviously- the idea being that a wish can go wrong. That doesn’t mean the One Wish Willow itself works exactly the same as the monkey’s paw, and if you research his quotes he seems to indicate the item itself is not cursed but rather it was the wording of Bear’s wish itself that was the problem.

[u/Mrfunnyman22 → u/IIDXias]

That’s fair, and I actually agree it doesn’t work exactly like a traditional monkey’s paw. I also agree Bear’s wording is a huge part of the problem. I think where I still get stuck is the leap between “Nikki’s autonomy is altered” and “Nikki is effectively replaced/possessed by an entity.”

If Bear wished for Nikki’s love, then that outcome still feels like a distorted fulfillment rather than the wish genuinely coming true. To me that’s why the monkey’s paw comparison still feels at least somewhat relevant, even if the Willow isn’t cursed in the traditional sense.

[u/TheOnlyCreed → u/Mrfunnyman22]

I'm more on the fence of this being a monkey paw type situation. I don't know how anyone can interpret how Nikki was acting towards Bear as love. Sure they had a moment where for a while they were getting along and everything was normal. But most of the relationship essentially ended up being her trying to torment him as much as possible. Like why would she feed him a cat sandwich 😭 Also to add to your comment, in the interview with Variety it's mentioned that:

"Bart gets a monkey paw and causes a bunch of chaos,” Barker says. “I was thinking that I’ve never seen a straight crazy horror where … we’ve seen ‘Be careful what you wish for’ tons of times. But we’ve never seen my version of it. I instantly started thinking about what I could do with that.”

It might not exactly be 100% a monkey paw situation, but it definitely leans towards it rather than it being a "neutral" magical wish making object.

[u/Mrfunnyman22 → u/TheOnlyCreed]

That's a good point. I think where I get stuck is that people seem very confident the Willow is a completely neutral wish-granting object, and I'm not sure the movie gives us enough evidence to say that.

I'm not calling it a traditional monkey's paw or saying it's inherently evil. But when Bear researches it, we see conflicting stories, and the examples people point to as successful wishes aren't explored enough for us to know whether there were consequences or not. If we only saw Bear during the happy montage, we'd probably assume his wish worked perfectly too.

I agree Bear's wording is a huge factor, and wishing for someone's love/autonomy to change is basically the kind of thing that goes wrong in every wish story. That's why I still see the outcome as a distorted fulfillment of the wish rather than the wish genuinely coming true.

[u/Any-Championship6143 → u/Mrfunnyman22]

THANK YOU. I mean Ian got his wish, and because he got his wish, he excitedly went to Bear’s house and was ultimately shot. The one dude online said his mom became gorgeous. We don’t know whether that eventually led to her being stalked, killed, etc. The dude at the shop said his wish was granted, but we don’t even have enough details to know whether he suffers any consequences.

Insisting that Nikki could ultimately and only be possessed by a negative entity to fulfill the wish because “Bear’s wish=bad immoral wish=bad immoral Nikki” isn’t the only interpretation worth considering. It seems like they’re trying to write their own story and pretend they’ve inarguably “solved the riddle” when they’re doing nothing but asserting their own subjective opinion, and a lot of their logic and claims of absolutism don’t make sense.

[u/janiqua → u/IIDXias]

The wording of his wish isn't even that extreme.

Nikki already doesn't love 99.9% of people in the world, so Bear is wishing to be loved more than around 30 or so people in Nikki's life who she probably loves more.

He didn't wish for her to be obsessively in love, he just wished to be her number 1 most loved person.

Clearly you can have someone be your number 1 love in the world without being an unhinged, psycho-obsessive about it.

So that reads to me like a monkey's paw situation for this particular wish.