Obsession

Obsession is in this weird spot of establishing a good foundation, but it's so bad at rationalizing its plotting and ends up undercutting itself a lot. I like the idea that both leads are victim of a supernatural force out of their control, but I think it hurts itself by not playing up any social responsibilities either of them has. Nikki knew people before associating with Bear and I don't believe for a second that no one within her circle wouldn't be concerned over how she's acting. I think the film does a good job of establishing a conceit that can lead to both being sympathetic, but the framing is more concerned with Bear's trauma and inconvenience which I think undermines the overall tragedy of the narrative. We keep seeing Nikki's father brought up and how she's been lying about what's happened to him, but how come the father in question is never contacted or shows up? You'd think that with the way she's acting Bear would be seeking people within her personal life to try and fix her mental state? Why is it that only Bear's social circle matters within this relationship? Yes, I get that Nikki has become cursed to care about nothing BUT Bear but it treats her as if she never had a life before any of this happened. It doesn't help that the smallest bit of autonomy we do see from her is literally her screaming "please kill me!!!!" Which to me makes it come off like Curry doesn't want to see her as anything but a victim of this circumstance. Yet he doesn't actually play into her victimhood as much as he should.

The priorities of this movie are less about exploring the ways such a twisted dynamic affects people's lives and is more so interested in trying to make its concept be a thrilling horror spectacle. But that just makes it more frustrating! There's a clearly good concept to play with in this, but the film refuses to engage with it beyond "how can we make the yandere girlfriend do something outlandish and funny?" And never wants to think about its implications beyond that. There's so much interesting stuff you could do with this. How does something like this change your social responsibilities if you truly believe you love someone? Even with true affection, to what extent can we tolerate excessive clinginess? Does Nikki actually like Bear and how much does this spell reflect her true feelings? What does a spell like this say about how we value the people we crush on? What has become of Nikki's identity? How much does autonomy matter in a relationship? You can find glimmers of these things but they're barely visible at best because the movie doesn't care much at all about Nikki. It's about the horror she causes Bear specifically and I think it loses a lot by doing this. Most people who frame Bear as the villain do so moreso on the premise this movie contrives and less on what the film actually wants to discuss. Curry claims that Bear being the "villain" was intentional, but he never feels compelled to challenge Bear on the way he acts and is concerned more with his autonomy. At its core, it's Bear's horror and not Nikki's, even if it is easy to argue that Nikki is functionally a bigger victim.

I don't think the movie has much to say about relationships in the grand scheme. There's an undercurrent about how forcefully we demand affection and the expectations men have of romantic partners, but none of this is anything that Bear specifically demanded and it's also so hyperbolic to be absurd. Yes, Nikki being forced into being this "ideal" highlights how damaging it can be to personal autonomy but I don't think the movie cares about her autonomy if it has no relation to Bear. When do we get to know anything about her outside of Bear's relationship? Why does no one seem to care about her and why is it only Bear whom people are sympathetic with? There's definitely framing that Bear is hiding his responsibility for her actions, but it loses me because it's so easy to scapegoat the responsibility onto the wish and this is generally what the movie does. It's more concerned with Bear's circumstances than his responsibility.

I also don't think it necessarily hits an ideal of the "incel" type either; do incels really desire a woman that's so obsessed with them that they literally don't use the washroom without their discretion? No doubt their idealism is vapid and unrealistic but I don't think their demands from women require that they act in such an outlandish way. Bear himself certainly did not want Nikki to act this way, yet why should we act as if he should be held responsible for a wish he clearly did not make? He wished for her to love him unconditionally; he did not wish her to be extremely obsessive to the point of committing murder. When you have this framing, it's easy to take responsibility away from Bear and turn him into more of a victim than he should be. What annoys me is there's something valid in pushing the horror if she acted in a way that Bear actually wanted. There could be something strong about making people act to your ideal against their consent, but the movie doesn't play into that as much as its conceit lands on "be careful what you wish for!" Even if you want to frame this as uncharitable from Bear's end.

He is undoubtedly negligent and acts like a cowardly dumbass in this context, but to say that Nikki acting this way is his fault is fallacious. A lot of the driving point people put against Bear is that he could have been more responsible in this circumstance and find his lack of care for Nikki's integrity to be disgusting. This is true, but also consider that he's responding to something that he did not actually conceive. The framing here suggests that he didn't even know his actions were actually bad and early in the film he's oblivious to what the wish did. People act like Bear is this extremely evil, vile person but I came off of him thinking he's just an opportunistic idiot who the movie is being overly charitable towards.

It might have held more meaning if she actually acted to his ideal; or at the very least he was more consistently cognizant of the curse, but it's clearly not interested in that. At best, this comes off as a strawman of incel idealism rather than an active criticism of how it hurts a woman's autonomy, especially in this film where Bear is treated as not being at fault for this. It's not like film hasn't historically touched on the damages of masculine idealism for women. Films such as "Audition" and "I Spit on Your Grave" play into this theme far more tactfully; by contrast, Nikki's trauma is treated as a comedic spectacle where Bear should be seen as the victim moreso than Nikki.


I think it undercuts itself by playing too much on how Bear is a victim who can't be faulted for this despite the way he acts. There's something of an angle that Bear is being socially manipulative and there are things he does that are morally repugnant upon seeing how Nikki is acting, but I don't think that the movie takes this at face value in any earnest way; they put too much weight on us wanting to broadly see him as a victim who never wanted any of this and that's to its detriment. Are we supposed to think Nikki is the one we should be sympathetic for during the party scene? When she kills the other love interest Bear interacts with? Is the concern the entire cast has for Bear supposed to lead us to think the horror is worse for Nikki than for Bear? Why don't they care about Nikki's mental health when she clearly does batshit insane things in public? You could be lame and argue that It's implying that people care about men's mental health more than women, but the amount of suspension of disbelief you need to rationalize any of that is too extreme for me to agree to. Nor do I think the movie itself is even aiming for this to begin with. It's frustrating that Nikki is clearly the bigger victim in all of this but the movie doesn't care to explore this aside from a few throwaway scenes at best.

Beyond being a total dumbass, what's there to be invested in with Bear? What's the hook for us to be invested in this character beyond his victimhood? What's the underlining to his desired relationship to Nikki? The movie insists so much on Bear being both hapless and manipulative that it gets insufferable, yet it doesn't reach for any aspect of humanity for anyone's relationship. It comes off like it's disdainful of any human relationship whatsoever and that conceit is so eyerolling to me. I don't think the film is totally unsympathetic to Bear but what is his depth beyond the one-dimensional role they want him to play into? People point to the "what's wrong with being in a relationship with me" scene as masterpiece of storytelling but all I got out of it was a vapid reinforcement of its own conceit. It's not made any better by how this is followed up with a bombastic murder scene that reinforces Bear as the victim RIGHT after saying something like that!!! Come the fuck on!

But okay, taking in the idea this movie is more about its thrills than its themes, how well does it do that in practice? In terms of presentation, I found it grating. I can't think of a horror movie that's this overbearing in its music and editing choices to the point of being obnoxious. It comes across as lacking confidence that the audience can identify this as a horror film and demands that its audience find its premise horrific. On a technical level, composition is super basic, and the lighting is as conventional as you can get for a Blumhouse horror film. Possibly even worse than that. There's nothing visually ambitious or unique about what this film does. It's about as safe a modern horror film can be in this sense. The silver lining here is that Narravette is effective in the material she's given, even if a lot of it is just her acting cartoonishly over the top and acting like a goof. It makes me think if given the right material, she could be amazing in a comedy movie. But here it just comes off like her obsessive insanity is treated like spectacle, which is far less compelling than something more subdued or at least her mannerisms being treated with less bemusement. I can get superficial enjoyment out of her antics but I also come at it thinking it's done to be performative and entertaining than earnestly playing into something thematically interesting, and I find it utterly eyerolling that modern filmmakers are incapable of conveying insanity without resorting to bombastic displays like this.

I also struggled to suspend my disbelief for this movie because Bear makes decisions that are impossible to buy into. I took it that they wanted to portray Bear as being socially meek and vapid, but even these people have limits. I don't believe anyone in this situation wouldn't at the very least call the police or some sort of expert to try and resolve this situation. Nikki isn't some powerful menace who can physically force anyone to do anything, so she wouldn't be difficult to pin down. Nikki also doesn't have any real social clout over him, so why does he not attempt to move away from her, even discreetly? Why would he stop at his one friend to make the counter wish when there are millions of people he could aim to convince to do that for him? There's an aspect of this where Bear is scared of what Nikki might do if he tries any of this and that he doesn't want to admit guilt for it. But so much of the supporting cast is on Bear's side to the point that it's impossible to believe anyone would take Nikki's side in such circumstances. Otherwise, if people want to paint Bear as completely callous and manipulative, then I feel this falls flat.

How can any of this be rationalized on Bear's end if everyone in the plot thinks Bear is justified in how he acts against Nikki? If we're to assume Bear is trying to avoid responsibility for how she acts, why would anyone think her extremes are his fault given that literally no one is acting as if he's at fault for anything or is sympathetic of Nikki? If she actually kills herself, why would anyone think it's his fault she does this when there's nothing to communicate that anyone would blame him for it? The only thing that can be assumed is that he does care about Nikki on some level and doesn't want her to die. Maybe selfishly, perhaps. But he at least thinks what happened to her is bad. So painting him as a malicious villain here requires that you either go through crazy leaps the plot isn't justifying or at least admit that he's not totally morally repugnant. Because it's so easy for him to be dismissive of Nikki, but he doesn't. I take this to be because the plot wants you to think Bear is a pathetic coward unwilling to go these extremes, but I view that as being unbelievably daft storytelling because there's so many easy outs for him he doesn't take yet I'm supposed to suspend my disbelief when he doesn't despite the social circumstances heavily favouring him?

There's a solid irony to the ending of Bear killing himself right as Nikki wishes that she loves him and I can accept the reasons people like it. But it's also a thing that there's weak ground when it comes to how it's justified; what reason does Bear have to kill himself instead of easily killing her if we're to believe he's manipulative and selfish? Even the biggest idiots have some sense of self-preservation; the reasoning for him doing this is so unbelievably tacky to justify ending it on a tragedy. This is where I don't think the viewpoint of Bear being actively evil or malicious works because this is an instance where he could have taken a much more selfish route but doesn't. We're supposed to see him as pathetic here and yet he goes for the option that benefits him the least? I couldn't help but roll my eyes at how this movie can't even do a good bit with a manipulative dumbass. You want me to think he's manipulative and evil? Sure, but why go to such lengths to make him act in this way when the entire world is making it so easy for him to dispose of Nikki's existence to his convenience?

So much of the discourse on this movie is people proclaiming Bear to be the villain, but no one discusses if he's a *good* villain. The basis people have for praising him is what he represents, and not if what he represents is actually good. In my view, I think the issue is that the movie didn't make him vile ENOUGH. It's way too forgiving and way too charitable about his circumstance to the point it's possible to justify his victimhood. It's very easy to argue the conflict wasn't even his fault; he wouldn't have done anything if not for something he unintentionally fell into. And honestly, most of the things people call him vile for are so damn tepid relative to how manipulative male would actually act in a toxic relationship. A lot of it is just rude and inconsiderate at best. There's a case to be made that Bear is too cowardly and inept to be on that level of toxic, but I think that makes him more sympathetic. That he's not self-aware of how poorly he's acting and it's tragic that this lack of self-awareness got him killed. If you want to sell me on this character being as vile as people make him out to be, then you should go all the fucking way with it. Obsession feels like it wants to be nuanced without understanding actual nuance and it becomes insufferable to me for that reason. It's too hyperbolic to be believable and also too invested in its spectacle to let its psychology work. If we're to look at Bear as a representation of toxic hookup culture, he's at best a strawman of that and at worst a laughably vapid and wrong representation of it. Horror is defined by taking the mundane and taking it to extremes to redefine it as something to be horrified by, but nothing in this movie horrified me as much as I thought its conceit was laughable. Horror movies have succeeded with focusing on its spectacle, but the director and fans of this movie insist that it's more than that. Yet I don't find either its theming or its spectacle to be compelling.