Obsession (2025)

Rated R for just about everything that could be R.  First and foremost, and I'm only putting it first and foremost because sometimes I don't want things to pop up in preview mode, is that it is a horror movie.  There is gore.  There is death.  It is uncomfortable.  But this also a movie about sex and relationships.  Some of those relationships shouldn't be using the connatative term "relationship" because the whole movie is an allegory for date rape.  There is also suicide and animal cruelty in the movie, coupled with a lot of language and drinking.  It has it all.  R.

DIRECTOR: Curry Barker

It's amazing that I got to see this on Peacock so quickly.  IMDB has this listed as a 2025 movie, but I think it only got the wide release at the beginning of this summer.  I was kind of stoked to see this one.  I was told that I absolutely had to see that.  Normally, that is the thing that is going to hold me back on watching a movie.  I tend to raise the bar to an impossible standard when I hear that.  But Obsession is...pretty great?

I had seen one of the very indie films that Curry Barker had released on YouTube, Milk & Serial.  I didn't know that he had made this before I watched it.  Man, this guy gets grounding his horror pretty darned well.  Like, it isn't the most realistic depiction of twenty-somethings.  But it's also not-not that either.  While horror is definitely important to Obsession, the core of this movie is about the relationships between these characters.  I feel really full of myself writing this, but I do think horror movies live or die based on whether or not you care about the characters.  But like When a Stranger Calls, it also helps when the call is coming from inside the house.  

I can't imagine just watching this as a horror movie.  Like, it works as a horror movie.  It's genuinely scary and upsetting. But Barker is putting a heavy spotlight on the allegory of what is going on here.  I want to make this as clear as possible:  Bear sucks.  My God, Bear sucks.  For those people who feel sympathy for that dude, don't.  I do love that we've gotten to the part of story that the "Good Guy" trope is a big red flag.  Bear thinks of himself as the victim and the hero of this story for a lot of it.  Maybe in Act III, he finally understands that he's not the best guy in the world, especially when Nikki is begging in her sleep to be killed before the possessed version of Nikki takes over again.  There has to be a bit of a separation in that moment.  But Bear is the right level of pathetic to comment on the male loneliness epidemic.  (Note:  The Male Loneliness Epidemic is an even bigger red flag and I can't even completely separate myself considering that I thought I was probably the victim in my early 20s.) 

One of the things I may struggle with when it comes to Obsession is the fact that what Bear did seemed pretty inoccuous.  The notion of a One Wish Willow is something that is so innocent that the movie even comments on it by having Ian wish for a billion dollars.  While I never believed in superstition like throwing a coin in a fountain, the notion that someone would be punished for wishing for love is an odd choice.  Maybe that's not the crime that Barker wants to comment on.  For a minute, I thought it was an odd choice that Ian was accusing Bear of taking advantage of Nikki, especially considering that Ian knew what Bear thought about Nikki.  (We discover later that Ian and Nikki were hooking up, on-and-off, which contextualizes that conversation.)  But Bear seems to unpack early on that Nikki's behavior is the result of the One Wish Willow and sees that she's being tormented by Bear's wish.  That's the moment that makes Bear the villain and the commentary there is staggering.  

As a follow-up to this idea, I wonder about Bear's wording when it comes to the wish.  The film is called Obsession.  You would think that the actual wish would have something to do with the word "obsession" itself.  "I wish that Nikki was obsessed with me."  It's far more toxic than Bear's actual wish, "I wish Nikki was in love with me more than anyone in the world" or something like that.  It's the word "love" that is substituted that weirds me out.  Maybe all One Wish Willow wishes are perverted to the worst versions of themselves, but it doesn't feel like what Nikki gives Bear is love.  It feels like "obsession," hence the title of the movie.  

Maybe the whole movie is a cynical look at what people think that love is. The entire world of Obsession doesn't really show a world with love.  The closest thing that we can really see in this movie about love is Sarah's relationship with her father, which is strained.  I suppose we see Bear's love for his cat, but that even seems pretty mild, even for for a pet lover.  Instead, if we can glean that the wording that Bear uses to change Nikki into what she becomes, then the notion of love is a selfish concept.  It kind of aligned with the way that Bear treats the world.  Bear isn't in love with Nikki at any point in this movie.  He thinks he is.  But he's obsessed.  Despite the fact Nikki apparently had the moniker "Freaky Nikki" at one point, Bear is in this headspace where he can be the hero for this girl that he imagines is both perfect and broken.  When he makes the wish for "love", that's what he thinks that love is.  

The insane thing is how quick Bear gets scared of Nikki.  Like, the entire first and a lot of the second act have Bear trying his best to make this relationship work.  Sure, we get that montage of them having a happy relationship together.  Points to the filmmakers for having the chops to recreate rom-com imagery in that sequence.  I'm going to die on this hill saying that the filmmakers want to make a story about how toxic love is.  There is that honeymoon phase that Nikki and Bear have (which had to be incredibly quick considering that every other character can't imagine how quickly Nikki spirals).  But as the story grinds forward, Nikki gets scarier.  There has to be a practical reason for that.  After all, Obsession  is a straight up horror movie that is meant to be terrifying.  Part of the format of the horror movie is that the film needs to build to a crescendo.  Thus, the famous scene of Nikki standing there soiling herself can't be the most insane she gets.  It is a bit weird that the wish hadn't changed, but Nikki's approach to the wish changed.

Again, a lot of this has to fall under my own headcanon.  Maybe this is a commentary on the dangers of a honeymoon period.  It's weird, because the most fun part of a relationship is the obsession part.  It's the time that you are insufferable to other people.  Maybe Nikki's performance of love simply coincided with the fact that Bear was reciprocating that love appropriately.  But as small flags started going up and Bear started to look at her as a flawed person, Nikki escalated those reactions.  That's where the nightmare stuff happened in the movie.  But because this is a movie about obsession, there were never healthy conversations.

You want to know something screwed up?  I'm incredibly narcissitic with this movie.  This is one of those few movies that ended the way that I wanted it to.  I had a prediction about halfway through the movie about how this story would have ended and I didn't think the movie would have the guts to do it.  Nope.  It's exactly how the movie ended.  The movie kept on telegraphing that suicide would have to play a part in the ending.  But I was thinking, "Man, Bear is the worst.  There's no way that this movie would simply allow this character to make this self-sacrificing choice when it came to Nikki."  After all, the entire movie is a condemnation of people like Bear.  I knew that he thought that he was heroic enough (For those people who are dealing with thoughts of self-harm, suicide is never heroic.  This movie presents a very fantasy / convoluted scenario where it twists morality) to sacrifice himself for Nikki's freedom.  But when he e-brakes that decision, I started clapping.  That is absolutely Bear.  To couple the whole thing with Nikki wishing on the Willow?  And the fact that he dies immediately after?  That's what I wanted.  That's the thing I predicted and it happened.  Normally, I hate guessing the ending.  But that ending was so good and I'm incredibly full of myself.

Yeah, Obsession is pretty darned good.  It's really messed up, but it also has stuff to say.  I love when a horror movie has some meat behind it.