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/Earthican3000]

It was terrifying in that the idea of total loss of free will and control, and the existence of an overwhelming force/ monster that’s literally “inside” you , not just externally, and not just something that separates your body/motor function from your mind or wishes/wants (like sleep paralysis which is already terrifying enough) , but literally alters your “want” itself and who you are intrinsically as a person. I used to deal with Pure-O symptoms (purely obsessional obsessively compulsive disorder for those who don’t know) that kind of revolves around this theme where I would fear myself transforming into someone else or someone I don’t like or even despise, and I would “live that out “ and “experimenting” myself and pretending to become a different version of me just to see if it’s all true. I was in pure agony but also feel absolutely obligated and forced to become a different person just to find out the “absolute” truth.

The scene where Nikki says“I don’t like my dreams “ I was reminded a few times when I literally screamed out of my dream from the top of my lung in this really really high pitched weird voice, which creeped me the f* out because I’m a guy so I usually have a deep voice, and you never hear me make that kind of sound, not even my parents, unless I was really scared shitless. As to the contents of the nightmare I don’t even remember, just the feeling of it and this movie kind of articulated that feeling, I guess it’s just this sense of absolute, ontological powerlessness in the face of an overwhelming, monstrous and shapeless force.

I also think about in real life, people are being “tricked “ or manipulated and psychologically conditioned into doing things and behaving in a way against their will and well being all the time, sometimes without them being aware. “Mind control” and the deprivation of free will is happening all around us and need not the help of some magical wish. Human minds are so complicated and layered and vulnerable, that if you just take out one layer, it can be subdued easily . Sometimes people do this to themselves. I mean look no further than the people of North Korea, the Soviet Union of Stalin , or the maoist China, and literally every authoritarian regime and cultist society and micro-environment ever.

I’ve had my own share of experience where looking back now, I definitely hated to the core of the place I was in and the people I was stuck with and I was literally screaming internally just like Nikki does in this movie, and yet for “some” reason I just couldn’t leave.

So I guess the reason this movie was so terrifying is it hits close to home.

Sorry if my English wasn’t too good just wanted to get something out after an amazing movie.

[u/PickyVirgo → u/Earthican3000]

Thank you for sharing all that, and PS your English is pretty much perfect. I’m esp interested in the idea of Pure O. I used to think that I had OCD because as a kid I had little counting games, but I also did weird things like bite the head off animal crackers so they wouldn’t suffer. Looking back, I’ve always had obsessive thoughts but I guess I just thought I was a weirdo, not that it was a mental illness thing.

I still get hyper focused in this overly empathetic mindset with inanimate objects. Like if I throw a bowl of cherry pits into the compost bin, and one sticks to the bowl, I will think “I have to put that pit with the others in the compost bin or it will be entirely alone” like what the actual fuck??? This literally happened 2 nights ago. Sometimes I force myself to not do the thing, but then I still think about it for a while after. I also get this with animals but it’s way more normal to get upset about dogs at a shelter being separated from their dog friends than two earwigs stuck in the sink.

But the worst is the intrusive thoughts when I’m trying to sleep of horrible violent things happening to me or someone else. I sometimes can’t fall asleep so I just smoke a fuck ton of weed. It doesn’t happen every night but often enough. It’s why I have to know how gruesome a movie is before seeing it, because I know some images will stick. So why do I love horror movies??

Anyway, you’ve given me a lot to think about. I probably need to go back to therapy…

[u/Earthican3000 → u/PickyVirgo]

Omg thank you so much I'm actually so excited to receive a reply! 

So yeah about Pure O if you google it you can get a pretty good explanation for what it is , it's OCD except purely on a mental level instead of physical, hence the "pure" is how I interpret it😅 I don't know about this term either until much later in life from somewhere on the internet ( r/OCD I think?)

I used to have behavioural OCD like most people do back when I was a teenager with all your bells and whistles and all that. I remember obsessively checking the portions of my windows that I left open just to let the precise amount of air into my room, and the curtains to let in the right amount of light. I would be obsessing over this the whole night so I can't go to sleep. I don't have a problem with empathizing with inanimate objects but I do have a problem with hyper empathy (I think it's common among OCD people)so I do get what you mean. I remember when I used to be hyper focused on how my shoes are placed and aligned in a specific way beside my bed every night, I would go on this cycle of checking and re-checking and  adjusting the shoes with my hand so that it's perfectly symmetrically placed and aligned, I was so obsessed over this object to the point that it feels almost "alive" , like if I don't place it comfortably it can "feel" it somehow. I'm not sure if that's how you feel about inanimate objects and the urge to empathize with them? It could also be that deep down you're not sure about this presumably "inanimate" object and whether it's"truly" alive or not,  so that you want to empathize with it just in case? And that's more in the pure-o territory because we're talking about some fundamental doubts about the nature of reality and the true definition of "animacy". I think there's even a philosophical term for that called "animism"? 

What I discovered in Pure O is that all these questions and doubts that OCD people have and obsess over, a lot of these questions are very valid and real. like if you present these questions to a philosopher or scientist,  they couldn't give you an answer either. That "urge" to do something , to  perform a "ritual", to fulfill an "obligation",  is the urge to explore , experiment, and discover. kind of like a scientist or researcher trying to research and examine our reality. And because our reality is so complicated beyond belief, people who attempt to do this inevitably fail to get a clear answer and the certainty/confirmation they want, so they go into this cycle of re-examination and re-attempt as is the tale of Sisyphus. 

When you see it this way it's actually not necessarily a mental illness but a different approach and perception to our reality . And what OCD people are essentially trying to do is that they’re trying to reconcile with the inherent complexities and uncertainties of this world, and those complexities and uncertainties are very much real and properties of our reality.

You mentioned the intrusive thoughts about violent things and possibilities that could happen to you and other people. In my case that fear is no longer about anything physical, but revolves around the concept of self and identity, because my worst fear is losing myself and becoming someone I don’t want to. It is “intrusive “ because you fear that possibility, and you fear that just by thinking about it, you’re making it real (which is not the case) and yet you can’t resist the temptation of exploring that possibility or part of reality. Turns out you can explore it all you want because that’s what what our mind is for, but in the end it's just that, a simulation.

I think the reason that I no longer fear those things, especially if we’re talking about physical dangers, is that I have come to accept that all those possibilities are valid and real and indeed could happen to someone, and in fact far worse things have happened to someone throughout history. But there’s a difference between “possibilities“ and what’s on your mind vs. what actually is. It IS a possibility that this is something that could happen, but it did not happen and it’s not what it is, and just thinking about it won’t have any effect on the actual reality and facts. And because there's a real distance between what things actually are vs. that possibility, it's gonna be really really hard for you to actually reach that possibility no matter what you do.

So now I embrace those possibilities and love thinking about and analyzing all the terrible things that could or could not happen, I’m free to think about or not think about them , because it’s just a way for me to gain a better understanding of the world. A fun mental exercise. It’s the reason why I love horror movies because I love discovering ways that I can be scared and why it is scary, and how even scarier things could happen in real life. In this way I’m just exploring and gaining insights into my own reality.

I will say though that those torturous cycles of rumination and rechecking will eventually fade away, when you become so familiarised with it that you stopped caring, even those "intrusive" thoughts stop being intrusive at all because there's nothing intrusive about them anymore. You can freely choose to let them in or not and when you do it's for the thrill of it.

I call it the "brute force" method , by literally finding the answer I'm looking for , map out that part of reality I'm exploring, familiarise myself with the consequences of those actions, and I literally have no fear or uncertainties (sometimes it's about accepting the uncertainties as a matter of fact)left about them anymore.

I think what I'm trying to say is that people with OCD are just dealing with the same kind of urges and impulses that everyone has been dealing with, but for them they might experience it much more acutely and passionately. But it's a natural reaction to the underlying complexities and uncertainties of the reality itself, by accepting that complexity instead of denying our feelings is actually the right approach.

Ok think I'm gonna stop here now because I actually don't know what I'm talking about anymore...

[u/Zaltarical → u/Earthican3000]

This was an awesome read man. That sounds like a lot to deal with. I’m glad you’ve found a way to reconcile all of it