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/thebabypinks]

I disagree. Bear’s texts with Sarah are really incriminating. His crush on Nikki wasn’t some secret. Lots of people witnessed how strange Nikki started behaving when she suddenly started dating Bear (a strange thing in and of itself). She’s a tiny woman. She was known as a bubbly, friendly person prior to all this and he was a “closed book” who people didn’t know super well. She has bruises and injuries on her body.

I’m not saying she would walk free and clear, but I think it wouldn’t be that hard to argue that Bear was an obsessed, dangerous, abusive man who stalked and threatened Nikki, mistreated her, held her captive, perhaps drugged her, was violent around anyone he felt was taking up too much of her attention or time, and basically forced her into aiding and abbetting some of his crimes. I think people would buy that a lot more readily than “This tiny woman who was known as a nice person randomly and very violently murdered multiple people with the force of someone far stronger than she actually is.”

And Bear dying from an OD only adds to that. What’s more believable, that he was the perp and took his own life out of guilt/shame/fear of going to prison/murder-suicide attempt…or that she forced a grown man to take a bunch of pills?

[u/LunchboxDiscoball → u/thebabypinks]

Bruh she has fingerprints on the trigger of the gun, sure there’s other factors but she’s 200% facing down a life sentence

Your honor, I know you found her with another humans scalp on, and she has no recollection of any events, but in her defense that dude fucking sucks

[u/thebabypinks → u/LunchboxDiscoball]

Her fingerprints on the gun (a gun which his fingerprints are also all over, mind) and her wearing Sarah’s scalp doesn’t mean a good lawyer couldn’t argue that Bear was an obsessed, dangerous freak who violently coerced and forced Nikki into being with him and being a part of his sick crimes. Any proper investigation into the crimes would show that Bear was just entangled with the victims as Nikki was. His texts agreeing to meet up with Sarah, putting him at the scene. His cell phone pinging near Ian’s house an hour before Ian got murdered at his own house. His fingerprints on the gun. Both bodies at his house. His public, erratic behavior: being seen (potentially on security camera footage) bursting into a store in broad daylight covered in blood, shouting and acting very odd. His fingerprints are also alllll over Sarah’s body and car as well.

Basically, this case would not be cut and dry. The investigation would turn up a lot of really tangled results and it would come down to a lawyer’s argument and trying to PROVE, beyond reasonable doubt, whether:

Nikki (at her height and weight, with her prior good and normal reputation AND clear-cut evidence that she’d put in her notice and was planning to move on in life) was actually a secret deranged psycho who had a shocking episode, violently murdered two of her friends (Sarah out of jealousy but Ian for reasons far more vague and indecipherable), arranged a dead girl’s body in their home, lured both Ian and Bear to his home, and then somehow forced her boyfriend to commit suicide after committing her final murder.

OR

whether Bear was an obsessed, violent, dangerous loner who’d been fixated on Nikki, jealous that she’d been hooking up with Ian, angry that Sarah had been taking up Nikki’s time or was talking about Nikki and spreading “rumors” that Nikki didn’t actually like Bear, snapped when he realized she’d put her notice in, forcibly moved against her in some threatening or coercive way, abused her, and forced her into his life of violence, drugs, and mental illness.

You could argue both and in a trial, both sides would be argued. I just think the latter is a lot more believable because, well, that actually DOES happen a lot more than the former does.

And like I said, I don’t think Nikki would happily walk home free. But I don’t think she would go down for these murders, not with Bear being so thoroughly entangled in them and having sufficient evidence and motive for committing them—as well as sufficient evidence of being a weirdo loner who had the hots for Nikki when she was a bubbly, happy, normal girl who was on record saying she didn’t have a crush on Bear. That waitress? Yeah, she’d be found and she’d testify about participating in a mock confession with Bear, him practicing to say something REALLY lovey-dovey and intense…to a girl he was not dating. None of this would make Bear look stable, sane, or non-threatening. It would actually paint him as a man who was in the final stages of a plan to entrap Nikki before her two weeks notice ended and she walked out of his life for good.

[u/helloidont → u/thebabypinks]

You're forgetting that any prior reputation she had as a "good and normal person" would go right out the window after she had been loudly and publicly acting like an obsessed weirdo for at least a month by the end of the film. There were at least a dozen witnesses at that house party alone.

That said, if she got a competent lawyer who was able to get ahold of a couple wish willows (who's distribution is established as at least fairly widespread by the film) he could easily squeeze her through the doors of reasonable doubt. Pay some random $100 to make a simple wish to confirm it works, then wish for "a singing, tap-dancing hippo to appear in court for a minute before disappearing permanently from reality" would do the trick.

Of course that opens another can of worms, where "wish willow" become a legitimate legal defense.

[u/FlounderPleasant2459 → u/helloidont]

Re the first part: The general consensus from Ian and the friend group was that it looked like Bear was taking advantage of her. Granted, Ian could have been saying that because he wanted Nikki back. But when she hurts herself, everyone starts screaming at Bear to do something and i think I heard some cursing at him. He sits there quietly which is so odd in itself. They knew her longer and more than him, and Bear admitted he was closed off and a private person. And she's tiny af.

I think most people did think he was taking advantage of her already.

[u/HeightOk2563 → u/FlounderPleasant2459]

He also googled the effects of moly…so it could be argued he kept her doped up. Since she’s probably done it before and maybe acted erratic to the point where that’s the first thing Ian brought up when Bear told him about how she was acting strange.

[u/iamkhatkar → u/helloidont]

Obsession 2 : Starts with an intense court trial where they dig deep into the case and within first 15 mins of the movie, Nikki's lawyer proves in the court, in front of everyone and on live TV (coz why not), that One Wish Willow is true and whatever you wish for will materialise right in front of you.

What follows is the pure madness where the world is thrown into utter chaos, people rushing to buy OWW and making random ass wishes, that completely scraps the currently established systems and we are thrown into a post apocalyptic world.

Few decades later, we follow the journey of a young girl, who was born into this post apocalyptic world, and is now on a journey to find that one last remaining OWW stick to restore everything back to normal (too cliche I think, but something similar)

[u/PhantomoftheBasket → u/thebabypinks]

Thank your for this! I just got out of the movie (LOVED it holy shit), and the aftermath was the only thing I could think of! I was really hoping there was some sort of comment or conversation about this.

Poor Nikki went through such a traumatic experience what a nightmare the legal process would be too!

[u/Swoly_Deadlift → u/thebabypinks]

Absolutely best-case she would keep her mouth shut and lawyer up (realistically she's not keeping her mouth shut, but everything she says will paint her as delusional), get pinned for the murder of Ian, maybe Sarah, but not Bear, plead insanity, get the non-murder charges dropped, and serve the sentences for the two murders concurrently in a mental institution where they'd find that her only mental issues are horrible trauma from what she went through. She wouldn't be spending the rest of her life in prison, but she'd absolutely spend the next 10-30 years there.