ִ ࣪𖤐 — my thoughts on Obsession
Watched Obsession at the cinema last night and I just have to share my thoughts or I might go insane. Please beware that this is a very spoiler heavy review!!
I genuinely do not know how to explain the effect Obsession had on me other than saying that it made me feel absolutely miserable. I gave it 5 stars on Letterboxd, but after leaving the cinema I just sat there staring at my screen, completely unable to put my thoughts into words. I have watched a lot of horror films, but I have never had a film get under my skin quite like this one. As I’m writing this review a day later it’s still predominantly on my mind.
First of all, the performances are absolutely incredible across the board, but Inde Navarrette completely blew me away. Her performance is genuinely one of the most impressive horror performances I have ever seen. The amount of emotion, physicality, and sheer terror she brings to the role is unbelievable. There are scenes later in the film that simply would not work with another actress.
What struck me almost immediately was how insane Nikki was from the point Bear broke the stick. Going into the film, I assumed Nikki’s behaviour would start out relatively normal and gradually become more extreme. Instead, she is deeply unsettling from the very beginning. The first scene after Bear makes his wish already made my skin crawl. When she gets back into the car, puts her head on the dashboard, and starts sobbing, it sounds like she is crying so hard she can barely breathe, yet her body and head remain completely still. It is such a small detail, but it instantly gave me goosebumps.
What I love a lot about this film is that the One Wish Willow itself is not cursed. At first, I assumed that was where the story was heading. Surely the One Willow Wish was evil, right? Except it isn’t. Ian gets exactly what he wished for. The shopkeeper already used his wish and seems perfectly fine. The problem is not the wish. The problem is Bear!!
Bear’s wish is fundamentally selfish because it completely destroys Nikki’s autonomy. There is no “good” version of granting a wish that somebody loves you more than anything else in the world when they simply do not feel that way. The wish cannot create genuine love, so it has to replace Nikki with something that can provide it, some kind of entity. That idea becomes more horrifying the longer the film goes on. Nikki is possessed, but she is still there. Trapped and suffering :(
This is where the film’s portrayal of Bear becomes so effective. He is such a perfect depiction of a “nice guy”. He claims to love Nikki, but he has no interest in knowing who she actually is. He is in love with the idea of being with her. Every time Nikki’s humanity tries to break through, his concern is never truly about her wellbeing. His concern is maintaining the fantasy he wished for which is why he tried to change the wish instead of trying to cancel it immediately (not that that would have worked anyways, but it was very telling of Bear’s character)
The moments where the real Nikki briefly resurfaces absolutely broke me. The phone call where you hear her screaming in agony sent chills down my spine. Her confused “what the fuck?” when she temporarily regains awareness. The tears in her eyes and her blank expression while they have sex. Her desperate attempt to kill herself with the broken bottle. Every single glimpse of the real Nikki made me feel worse and worse.
The most devastating scene in the entire film for me was when the entity is asleep and the real Nikki briefly emerges. She just quietly begs Bear to kill her over and over again. By that point I was already emotionally exhausted, but that scene genuinely made me tear up in the cinema. And then, somehow, the film immediately makes it even worse!!
When Bear responds by asking, “What’s so awful about being with me?”, I genuinely could not believe what I was hearing. My boyfriend and I exchanged the most horrified look imaginable. It perfectly crystallises everything wrong with his character. Nikki is literally begging for death rather than continuing to exist in this state, and his response is still centred on himself. It is one of the most selfish and disturbing lines I have EVER heard in a horror film.
The tension throughout the second half is almost unbearable. The car scene with Sarah was especially brutal because you know exactly what is going to happen. The entire sequence is built around anticipation. You know Nikki is coming. You know somebody is going to die. You spend the whole scene waiting for it, dreading it, and yet when she suddenly smashes through the window it STILL scared the living shit out of me. The violence that follows is so gruesome that I genuinely had to look away while Sarah’s face was being repeatedly smashed into the steering wheel…
And then there was this one moment I thought was absolutely brilliantly made, because when Nikki started walking backwards like a stop-motion character, I nearly went into cardiac arrest. I had goosebumps for what felt like the rest of the film.
By the final act, I felt genuinely sick to my stomach, just utterly miserable. The film keeps finding new ways to twist the knife. Bear eventually trying to end the wish by getting someone else to wish for it should feel like redemption, but after everything that happened, especially after he tried to modify the wish instead of immediately ending it, I found it impossible to sympathise with him.
Which is why the ending felt so perfect. Of course Bear does not have the courage to follow through with killing himself. Of course the only reason he dies is because Nikki uses the wish against him, forcing him to love her just as obsessively as she loves him. It is cruel and completely fitting. The entire film is built around the horror of having your identity and autonomy taken away, and in the end Bear experiences a fraction of what he inflicted on Nikki.
I left the cinema feeling awful. I had goosebumps throughout the film, I had goosebumps walking out of the screen, and I still got goosebumps thinking about certain scenes afterwards. I have genuinely never had another horror film affect me in quite the same way.
Obsession is one of the most evil, cruel films I have ever seen, and I mean that as the highest compliment possible!!
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