I really do think Entity! Nikki is a childish existence and on top of it I think that's why it feels so bad to see her becoming traumatized from being with Bear when his wish ripped out parts of her that made it impossible to love him. Not! Nikki exists as sparknotes of her former self with the missing pieces filled in by Bear's own personality and habits, but she's still being traumatized because fundamentally Nikki and Bear's relationship is defined by her saying no and him not caring. It why I see the ending scenes of the movie as really nauseating because Not! Nikki is this new being without life experiences gauging her personality and behavior off of Bear's reaction and she starts to associate her genitals with violence. Entity Nikki is crying in the corner and starts to force herself to sleep at night and give Nikki full control because before that scene E! Nikki has the real Nikki's nightmare about how Bear raped her. It makes me feel sick since she's like a child that can't comprehend what's happening or why this is all hurting, and why she feels terrified by someone she loves. She doesn't understand why she feels so violated when one of the scenes with her and Bear is her assuring him he didn't violate her cause that's what Bear wants her to be telling him
Obsession did something really cool… it made the real horror feel quiet, undetectable, and deniable— if you’re not aware of it. Because the real horror wasn’t how possessive, terrifying, and uncanny, Nikki could be.
The real horror was Bear not seeing nor caring about how violent his wish and complacency was for Nikki. The real horror wasn’t in the haunted-doll-like apparition of Nikki watching Bear sleep, or moonwalking backwards like some cursed rewind clip… that was scary, but it wasn’t the theft of autonomy, the self-erasure, the neglect and rewrite of somebody’s inner life.
The real horror was Bear being quietly and totally destructive, and then seeing himself as the victim. The real horror is violation that doesn’t announce itself boldly. The real horror is that most doors that lead to evil are opened quietly, unceremoniously, softly and subtly, by an entitled hand. The real horror is when there is nobody else who sees the unfairness, the despair, and there is no repair or justice.
Think about it. Curry Barker said Nikki is probably fucked and going to jail for a long, long time. Nikki’s friends all told Bear she “lost it” and it’s “not your responsibility” to help her. Nobody cared. Nobody intervened. Nobody noticed how bloody Bear’s hands were.
the reveal that ian and nikki were hooking up before bear used the one wish willow is really disturbing to me because that context takes the opening scene from “oh he’s just horrible with women and/or doesn’t know nikki well” to “he’s deliberately trying to fuck up bear’s chances with nikki.” and yeah, nikki doesn’t like bear like that, but what if she did? he’s deliberately trying to ruin their chances together without giving nikki a say in it. he interrupts them at the bar on purpose. he tries to keep them from getting a moment alone together. his “worry” when nikki is acting up is really jealousy now that she’s with bear instead of him. he digs into her estranged dad’s medical history!! ian is JUST as controlling and weird as bear and is constantly trying to exercise control over nikki and their relationship, and i think it’s really disturbing that every guy in her life felt like they had this “claim” to her or that being with her was their right
The more I watch Obsession (2026), the more I learn to appreciate it, and the more I understand just how malicious, self-serving, callous, and objectively evil Bear's behaviour is throughout the film.
One show of selfishness I find to be particularly egregious (and something I have noticed has been overlooked in many of the reviews and analyses released by large creators across various platforms) is what, precisely, Bear asks Ian to do.
"I need you to wish that I never made a wish."
He doesn't want to undo the effects of his wish, he doesn't want to restore Nikki to herself, he wants to have never made a wish at all - which, potentially, would give him his one wish back.
A wish that, this time, he could word properly to get the result he wanted the first time.
And, just in case an argument can be made that this was not his intent, Bear's follow-up to bribe Ian unto wishing what he wants him to wish *still* reveals him to be a disgusting person:
"And then you can be with Nikki."
Not 'and then Nikki can be herself again,' not 'and then everything will go back to normal,' but 'and then you can be with Nikki.' Nikki regaining her autonomy isn't even a *consideration* for Bear.
His best case scenario for her, now that the shine has worn off, is being handed off from own owner to another. Bear's wish made Nikki his property, and Ian's wish can make Nikki Ian's property.
At every turn, at every crossroads, Bear is given the opportunity to do the right thing, and, at every opportunity, he fails to do so. Even when he merely *approaches* the right decision, he does so either accidentally or for the completely wrong reasons.
Even in its smaller moments, the film is committed to showing us just how unforgivable Bear's actions and thought processes are, and just how irredeemable he is as a human being.
It's truly impressive how effective it is at doing so.
something i haven’t seen talked about with the movie obsession is bear’s relationship with his cat, particularly how he seemingly just tosses her in the trash once she passes
and this might be me cornplating, but i feel like that’s indicative of his relationships with both entity! nikki and nikki herself. i can’t imagine having a pet that you love and cherish and, once you find out that not only did she die but she died due to your negligence (the pills had a child safe cap, so the only way the cat could have accessed them is if he left them out and open) he proceeds to throw her away like trash instead of burying her, treating her with dignity or love or care.
she was dispensable to him, and she had fulfilled her purpose. and when it was complete, she was simply thrown away.
just like he wanted to do with entity! nikki. just like he tried to do with actual nikki.
A metaphysical and armchair psychological attempt to reconcile knee jerk reactions to Obsession with director's commentary.
Spoilers for the film Obsession (2026)
Right from the start, I do want to clarify that I am not going to be snooty about why people experience Obsession as a demonic possession story.
"Wish Nikki" behaves in such a way that one could quickly make assumptions that this is demonic. The rapid escalation from love bombing to feeding Bear his cat, to creating a shrine with the rest of the cat's remains, to the creepy walking, and the rest of her bizarre behavior creates confusion because this doesn't seem like how someone would behave if they love someone more than anyone else in the world. This just seems unnecessary, willfully cruel even.
Then when you throw in the phone call with customer support where Nikki is screaming as if in agony, it sure seems like she might be experiencing some sort of supernatural torture.
I get it! The idea that Nikki's body has been infested with a demon feels apt for the genre.
However, we have it directly from the director in multiple statements that this is not possession.
So then what is it?
If not possession, why possession shaped?
A more helpful reference point might be Dissociative Identity Disorder. Now contrary to the way its normally presented in pop culture, as its understood clinically* different personalities aren't always completely isolated, they can experience varying degrees of awareness of what is happening even if they aren't operating the meat mech right now.
What I propose is that at the moment Bear makes his wish, what happens is that a new personality emerges that is largely unaware of the original personality and is mostly in control of Nikki's body. Like DID, this is something that looks and acts a lot like possession but this isn't something you can fix with an old priest and a young priest.
Critically, this new personality seems to have Nikki's memories but doesn't seem to act as if it has experienced those memories first hand. It has an intellectual understanding of how to be a person but no real context for any of it to steer its behavior going forward. In some sense, this is a being who was "born" in the moment of Bear's wish, has some vague notes on being a person, an overriding compulsion to love Bear more than anyone in the world, and crucially: no real sense of self except in reference to Bear.
The increasingly "demonic" behavior I attribute to Wish Nikki's mental integrity rapidly breaking under the strain of violently needing to please Bear while not not having a clear understanding of what actually pleases him. Wish Nikki loves Bear more than anyone else in the universe, including herself, and also clearly needs for him to show love back. When he is put off by the duct taped door and enraged by the cat sandwich, these are devastating experiences for Wish Nikki because she's only days old with an extremely unsophisticated understanding of love and the only thing that matters to her is Bear being happy. If he's not happy, she's not fulfilling her purpose: to love Bear more than anyone else in the universe.
When Bear yells at her to be normal, Wish Nikki experiences a momentary break where she begins sobbing because she's failed again and Bear has asked her to do something she clearly does not understand how to do: be normal. Even when you have the average degree of socialization you ought to have as a person in your 20s, "be normal" is an ambiguous command. When you're days old and your only reference point for anything is whether it makes Bear happy, its practically cruel.
Which brings me to my grand theory of why Wish Nikki presents as demonic: she is ALSO suffering.
Her suffering is different from Nikki Prime** who is watching helplessly as her body is used to violate her will in increasingly disturbing ways, but Wish Nikki IS suffering. She is suffering because she is existing and trying to make do with a life that has one overriding purpose: love Bear. And it starts becoming more and more obvious that she is failing, the more she tries to fix things the worse it gets, and if she doesn't have Bear she quite literally has nothing. No purpose, no reason to live. Nothing matters except loving Bear.
And on some level, the firewall between Nikki Prime and Wish Nikki is not absolute. When she is watching Bear sleep, Wish Nikki comments that her dreams make her uncomfortable. Its implicit then that when she's asleep, Wish Nikki is confronted with thoughts and feelings she cannot reconcile with who she is as a person who is defined only by loving Bear: what if part of her, a VERY angry part of her does not love Bear? I think we pretty much get confirmation of this later on when Nikki Prime is able to speak when Wish Nikki is asleep.
I could be mistaken, but I think its also strongly implied that Wish Nikki is conscious when Nikki Prime is able to take control for brief moments and is terrified, if not by the sudden and inexplicable loss of control, then by the idea that something is causing her to take drastic actions that displease Bear - not even mistakes like cooking the cat, but full blown incidents that Wish Nikki is not responsible for.
For her part, I think Nikki Prime's primal scream when on the phone with Bear is perfectly explainable by means other than having been consigned to some sort of Hell where she is actively being tortured. Her present existence of having no control over her body and being witness to her body being used to do things she vehemently does not consent to IS the torture.
So I read this scene as Prime Nikki not having the bandwidth to speak to Bear. This experience is still fairly new and she is likely still very confused and very angry. By the time she is talking to Bear while Wish Nikki is asleep, Prime Nikki seems to understand what has happened in supernatural terms and that it can't be undone except through her death, but as of the phone call, it seems like Prime Nikki hasn't had anyone explain what has happened. Customer Service can have her "speak" to Bear, but hasn't really bothered to try talking to her it seems, or if they did, she wasn't in a receptive mood.
Later, Prime Nikki seems to have been quietly building her strength and working to understand what is happening and thus figures out she can speak to Bear when Wish Nikki is sleeping and is able to marshal some potency to break through and self harm at a moment when there are the most witnesses and thus the most consequences. I understand this as Prime Nikki having acclimated to her new reality up to a point, perhaps you could say she's moved through the stages of grief from anger to bargaining to a kind of acceptance that is actually more like a cold fury capable of some calculation rather than an uncontrolled rage.
And that's basically it. Not a capital P Possession, but a split personality where both are actually experiencing suffering, and the one you probably assume is being driven insane is actually slowly pulling herself back together to wage war for her body and the one you think is "stable" but evil is being driven insane by the impossibility of ever truly fulfilling her only and most important command: to love Bear more than anyone in the universe - and in every sense of the word.
In the end, Wish Nikki can't allow others to compete for his affection, and she must also love him more than anyone else as a verb, but also seems to have a deficit of reference points for what is "normal" and the more her behavior frightens and disgusts Bear, the more her sense of self crumbles. Its not active, conscious cruelty, its violent jealousy born of a profoundly insecure attachment style and an implicit interpretation that Bear can have no others before her.
*And even the clinical understanding of DID is a giant kettle of fish with a lot of consternation and accusations of misleading data and professional malpractice flying both ways across the proverbial battle line. However, this is not the essay for adjudicating between the different sides when it comes to the science and the pros and cons of encouraging or scolding self diagnosis. I do think its important that people know these conflicts exist though and engage with them thoughtfully and without unnecessary venom for whichever side you think is "wrong."
**Based on how I'm thinking about them, while I've used the terminology "Real Nikki" I'm coming to feel as if this minimizes the ways in which Wish Nikki, while clearly dangerous and with a severely warped moral compass, is no less a human being than someone who suffers from a non-magical extreme mental illness. Such a person may have severely limited or compromised agency with reference to objective reality or the median of society, but they still experience pain, fear, and the rest of the human experience and that matters.
I’d kill to be a fly on the wall and watch Nikki’s interview with the cops after she calls them and gets released from the hospital.
Nikki would’ve had to be inside and call the cops but way more likely she would’ve ran outside to the first person she called or to a place she knows to beg them to call. The police show up and find a woman covered in blood, and wounds (if they can’t see the glass in her head wound the hospital will inform them later), wearing another woman’s hair, and has strange drawings scribbled all over her as she’s almost incoherent.
They GO to Bear’s house and there’s a man at the front door who’s been executed, and then there’s a body of Sarah enshrined, naked, and has her face beaten beyond recognition with no wounds on her body that aren’t post mortem. A glance at the body shows tattoos that match the living victims scribbles and dna collection is gonna show the hair on her is from the body too later on. Then you have a body which clearly ODed with zero wounds on him, gunpowder on his hands, and was pushed off the couch from someone’s lap before rigor mortis set in.
The later investigation will show that Nikki and Ian are exes before Nikki suddenly and inexplicably became fixated and attached to Bear. She’s telling everyone she’s relapsing, Bear showed no signs of caring about her relapse during, and they all recount her suddenly freaking out and trying to kill herself the last time they all met. Some will even confirm the OD victim had no reaction as it happened besides frowning, and didn’t even look at her. Ian’s phone will confirm text messages from Sarah long after she died, but they’re not gonna be able to tell whether they’re from Nikki or Bear. They’ll also be able to search Sarah’s car and find the acceptance letter from Luther if not in the house if Bear took it with him. They find gunpowder on Nikki AND Bear’s fingers (Bear man handled that damn gun during his suicide pondering). Even if they drug test Nikki to see if she was drugged if she took anything in the last 6 months (unlikely since the whole group stopped doing drugs for at least a year by Sarah’s comment, and she relapses because her friend group is falling apart and she doesn’t think she’s getting into her art college). If that shit DID come back positive it would only help Nikki? I don’t think whether it comes back positive or not matters for the evidence.
The story that paints is Bear wanted Sarah, forced Nikki to play the girlfriend role for her, then when he found out Sarah was going to be leaving to art school he snapped and killed her. He then made Nikki dress up as Sarah and wear her hair and clothes out of regret. Ian came in to confront Bear (about Sarah’s whereabouts or as to where Nikki is and why he’s still keeping her drugged without helping her recover at all), and Bear executed Nikki’s ex to keep her. You can’t tell whether Bear or Ian died first so you have to assume Bear killed Ian then killed himself out of guilt for everything and loss of his love. (Which is also a really good point to the romance trope of “I was here the whole time”).
Now Nikki’s INTERVIEW and account of what happened? That’s gonna be the insane shit. I said in the last what happens after post that Nikki’s going to match all of the baseline descriptions and patterns of a hostage victim. We see touch screens in the film! Criminology started considering the psychology and patterns of killers and victims decades ago! Sarahs body alone and the nature of her being found stripped naked and presented while her cause of death is so insanely violent puts a crime of passion and fixation on the absolute top of the list for what’s going on. Too many people know Nikki and what she’s like to point to her being capable of doing I tout of jealousy for a rival love interest as much as Bear being the socially awkward guy who doesn’t have deep friendships snapping and killing the girl who he talks with the most.
Nikki’s account of things is that she asked her friend Bear who she knew was crushing on her to drive her home. She got in her house then everything went pitch black, she woke up outside and wasn’t acting like herself as she talked to Bear. She blacks out again. She wakes up naked and in BED with Bear and making out. She’s conscious during sex and can’t ask him to stop or do anything against him. At this point she’s mostly blacked out, she regains control at night and begs for Bear to kill her. She HEARS him walk away. Now every time she regains control she tries to kill herself because it’s so miserable to live terrified and flashing in and out of consciousness. Then suddenly she wakes up surrounded by her dead friends with a gun in her hand pointed to her head, and she finally feels full clarity alongside the fear of what’s going on
I like that the wishing willow in Obsession (2026) takes your implications in the wish while also following exactly what you said for others. Bear only said Nikki, he meant his friend Nikki, but he didn't specify and it still chose her. On the other hand, Entity! Nikki can't take care of herself because the phrasing "I want Nikki to love me more than anyone else in the fucking world" also applies to self love. It could've amplified her familial love for Bear or to Bear as a friend, but it didn't because Bear meant romantic love. Entity! Nikki can't be a good friend to Sarah or Ian which is why Sarah assumes they stopped being friends anymore because she can't feel that platonic love or affection anymore. She must've felt sexual attraction and lust towards Ian before since they were sleeping together, and that disappears because the part "more than anyone else" takes away all other forms of love from Nikki because Bear cannot fathom a non romantic love.
