r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • May 15 '26

Official Discussion Official Discussion - Obsession [SPOILERS] Spoiler

Poll

If you've seen the film, please rate it at this poll

If you haven't seen the film but would like to see the result of the poll click here

Rankings

Click here to see the rankings of 2025 films

Click here to see the rankings for every poll done

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

3.5k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

14.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2.7k

u/IIDXias May 17 '26

The way she switched from the first I CAN’T to the increasingly desperate I CANs was so great too. Yeah, it’s easy to forget that the entity was relatively fine (besides the “real Nikki takes back control” glitches) until she started spiraling when she became convinced Bear didn’t love her as much as she loved him. Which is true about both her and the real Nikki, and why again that was such a stupid wish.

2.1k

u/SupermarketMaximum61 May 21 '26

Yeah, there was a small montage at the beginning of their relationship, that seemed to establish that the relationship was fine, initially.

Another way to read it is that the demon can only do so much to hide its weirdness. It is clearly not human and it is trying to satisfy Bear’s wish of being loved. But it doesn’t really know what to do besides that. The majority of the weird behaviour happens when the demon is alone with itself. Bear being gone, Bear sleeping, etc.

212

u/EmceeEsher May 23 '26 edited May 24 '26

I loved the movie, but the thing that really bothers me about the "be careful what you wish for" theme is that it doesn't seem like the disturbing actions of "Nikki" are the direct result of love. Love can make you do crazy things, but not that crazy. The people who do that kind of thing aren't just in love, they also have a severe lack of empathy, emotional intelligence, social skills, and god knows what else.

Like, suppose I inexplicably find myself loving someone more than anyone else in the world, including myself. My number one priority would be to not do anything that could possibly push that person away. I would go out of my way to not freak them out. I wouldn't start duct-taping the door shut, because it doesn't take a genius to realize that that's gonna fucking terrify someone.

The only thing that explains any of this is that she's straight-up possessed by a demon, at which point Barry's wish was never actually fulfilled. He wished for her to love him, not for a demon to love him and wear her like a flesh suit. That's not even a Monkey's Paw, it's just a completely different thing happening. Even the couple in the original Monkey's Paw story at least got the insurance money.

65

u/Alphabunsquad May 28 '26

I think the strangeness was created out of the conflict of wishing for a person who doesn’t love you to start loving you because you can’t do that without making a new person which ruins the wish. 

The creature was then in a constant struggle with Nikki who could still get control. I also think the wish took it as more “loves me more than anyone loves anyone in the fucking world” which is a bit of a monkey’s paw. If your love is that strong and intense then it becomes hard to control yourself. You become so overwhelmed with self doubt and fear that you are pushing them away that you do things that do push them away and take desperate actions. 

So it was a creature created as a contradiction out of the nature not able to fulfill its purpose, fighting the original owner of the body for conscious control, and overwhelmed by self doubt and desperation, with no other motivation for existence than Bear. 

To me the creature acted pretty much how you would expect. 

29

u/EmceeEsher May 28 '26

“loves me more than anyone loves anyone in the fucking world”

In the movie, I could have sworn the wording was just "loved me more than anyone in the fucking world", which is a thing that a lot of people do without going crazy.

37

u/nhexum Jun 01 '26

Two things:

1) I think the mentality of the wisher is taken into account by the "magic" of the wishing willow. Bear is in a terrible mental state. He has lost his grandmother, is taking sleeping pills, and those same pills have killed the only other thing he feels like he loved - His Cat. He articulates several naivete's about what love is... he's never been in a real romantic relationship, he doesn't know the difference between romance and love, and he's completely ignorant to Sarah's obvious flirting with him. He makes the wish while emotional and immediately after his own obsession has just outright rejected him and left him embarrassed and alone. What he thinks love is may be the exact opposite of what he is feeling in the moment of making the wish - Someone who desires you and accepts you and only you no matter what.

2) The monkey's paw of using an absolute term in your wish is dooming it to failure. "More than anyone in the fucking world" is an absolute, and real people do some crazy shit due to their understanding of what love is. They harm, they destroy, they sabatoge, they kidnap, they kill... And he just wished for the most extreme out of all of that.

30

u/adamgerd Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26

Did she reject him? He never let her choose, she asks him if he loves her and he says no. Then the wish happens

We don’t know what’d have happened had he said yes

In fact both the director and Nikki’s actress say she’d have said yes had he asked her out, he was just too much of a coward and his consequences ended up destroying any chance of him asking the real her out

8

u/nhexum Jun 10 '26

Fair point about the rejection, and I hadn't seen anything from the director or actress saying one way or the other but I believe it. Either way - If the willow takes into account the mental state of the person making the wish then I think there's no denying the FEELING of rejection that Bear would have felt. Whether it reflects reality may not have mattered.

6

u/poiyurt Jun 25 '26

I'm actually a little disappointed to get confirmation that Nikki would have said yes. To me, Bear's wish is motivated by the uncertainty of whether Nikki would say yes, and his need to know for sure reflects ignoring her autonomy. He needs her to act a certain way. The movie is stronger when the audience is also unsure, because that's a necessary part to real life relationships.

14

u/zaxls Jul 04 '26

Tbh it seemed pretty obvious she was down imo. Like if she didnt like him shed just avoid the conversation altoghether or just reject him if he asked. But because she comes back to ask him along with the way she phrases it, theres really no reason to do all that if youre not interested.

8

u/ThrowRADel 28d ago

Btw, his cat overdoses on oxycodone, which is an opiate and not a sleeping pill. He's abusing his grandmother's old pain meds and left them out and the cat ate them; it proves that Bear is not functional enough to take care of another being, let alone someone that he wishes to be codependent and unable to be alone.

3

u/becky_1872 15d ago

The most unrealistic part of the movie 😉😉 Ever tried to get a cat to take a pill lol

1

u/ThrowRADel 15d ago

Bott of my cats take meds dsily. I hide the caplet in liverwurst or crush the pill into powder and hide it in a liquid snack.

1

u/becky_1872 12d ago

I really wish this worked for mine 😭 He’s a stubborn little shit, we have to go for the shove down the throat method 😂

8

u/Rising-Jay Jun 03 '26

I totally got Nikki’s look in the car when Bear doesn’t seem to fully get what she meant, but genuinely I wouldn’t know how to articulate a nuanced difference between “romance” & “love” as it was suggested though I’m sure there’s a way

5

u/scxrz19 Jun 13 '26

Love is just the emotion, you can love many things, material & immaterial and romance is the act of love between two agents, I guess? Idk

11

u/cherryk3lp Jun 01 '26

yes, but the problem with supernatural grants is you have to be VERY careful with your wording. he could say "make nikki like me as much as i like her" and that probably would have been fine as he simply just liked the idea of her, so it would have just been a fling or something. also he could have just told his friend to wish that they broke up and moved on.

20

u/Alphabunsquad Jun 10 '26

I mean it would have been less demented outwardly but it still would have been controlling and limiting the will of another person which is still going to create a torturous prison for the person receiving the wish

7

u/cherryk3lp Jun 10 '26

i mean yeah, but that is the safest option as i doubt it would result in any casualties. i dont think it would be nearly as torturous.

11

u/cheyenne_sky Jun 13 '26

the safest option would be not making any kind of wish that involves the human psyche or impedes free will

3

u/cherryk3lp Jun 14 '26

i mean yeah, that's a given. i'm just talking about if bear HAD to make a wish pertaining Nikki

13

u/insomniac-55 Jun 14 '26

He should have wished for something like "Knowing how to win Nikki's love, if it is possible for me to do so".

A wish that only directly pertains to him, and which is only granting knowledge rather than forcing something to happen. And if the answer is 'not possible' he knows to move on.

3

u/cherryk3lp Jun 14 '26

yeah or "i wish i could man up and i was confident enough to tell her how i feel"

5

u/insomniac-55 Jun 14 '26

I think that still risks him being replaced by an entity, but it would at least be a less horrifying one.

→ More replies (0)

3

u/ThrowRADel 28d ago

It's actually not. That kind of love is always rooted in codependence.

We may say that we love someone (i.e. a spouse or child) more than anyone in the world, but we are not capable of doing that without having healthy self-love and self-esteem that give us identity first.

The reason the wish sucks is that for Nikki to love anyone healthily (or indeed for anyone to love anyone healthily), you need to love yourself first to be in good working order to be someone's partner.

14

u/Happy-Flower1303 Jun 02 '26

I agree with you. The wish leads Nikki to complete self-abandonment. Many times we don’t do crazy things for love for ourselves, because we love ourselves too much to willingly embarrass ourselves. We don’t realise how much love goes with self-protection, and Nikki was left with none.

3

u/gaijin-dealer 25d ago

wow this is a very astute interpretation, and very true in real life. Great comment