I don't want to start every single blog post I write with an iteration of "I've been absent but I'm back now" so let's skip that part this time around and accept the fact that this blog isn't a regular thing. I think I've made peace with that at this point. In any case, I have recently seen Obsession (2025) with my partner and I have some thoughts about it, so let's talk about that.
TL;DR
The film is good, like, really good. Although it doesn't shy away from horror cliches, it still was genuinely thrilling and at times truly horrifying. It's definitely one of the best horror movies I've seen recently. Though it isn't without its faults, there's nothing that took away from my enjoyment of it. I'd say for horror lovers this film is a must-see, and even if you aren't a huge fan of the genre, I'd still recommend giving it a watch if you aren't too squeamish.
Beware, unmarked spoilers beyond this point.
Small Recap
We follow our protagonist Bear, who has a crush on his coworker and friend Nikki. However, due to being the most pathetic man on the face of the planet, Bear is unable to do anything about this fact. Even when Nikki gives him multiple chances to confess his feelings to her, he's paralyzed with fear and misses the opportunity. To vent his frustration, he uses the "one wish willow" he bought for her, wishing that Nikki "loved him more than anyone in the entire world". This wish, which magically comes true, turns out to be his biggest mistake. Horror ensues.
Man vs. Bear
The film starts off by building our protagonist Bear up. It wants you to sympathize with him, which isn't a hard task. We are looking at a young man in his early 20s, who has a crush on his friend but is too shy and afraid of rejection to bring himself to say it to her. His seemingly closest friend Ian is clearly setting him up for failure regarding this situation, but he seems oblivious to this. He clearly has some issues and is resorts to self-medicating with his dead grandmother's pills. We even watch him lose his pet cat right at the beginning of the movie.
However, it's not much later when the film starts breaking that sympathy down. You wonder if he's really just throwing the body out like trash as you watch him put his cat's corpse in a garbage bag. You wonder why he doesn't tell his friends what happened as they pressure him to come to trivia night at a bar, and you wonder if it was deliberate when he blurts it out to Nikki just as it seems like her attention is slipping away from him. There isn't anything explicit by this point, these are all "hunches", which could be easily missed. Hindsight makes it clear later on that these were all expertly planted by the writer to signal his personality.
Later on that night, we get the scene where Bear fails to confess his feelings to Nikki over and over again, and it's legitimately frustrating to watch. It seems it's also frustrating for him, as this failure prompts him to make his aforementioned wish. It works immediately, as we watch Nikki make a literal 180. While this irks Bear a bit, and makes him ever so slightly suspicious of the wish he just made, just like any sane person he thinks there must be something else going on. At this point, you can't blame him, nobody in the world would think a cheap gag gift actually grants people's wishes.
By her insistence, Bear takes Nikki home where it becomes clear something is definitely wrong with her. Bear suspects drugs, and this is where the film makes it clear that he is the antagonist of the film. While he at first shows concern for her, Nikki doesn't have to convince him at all to make out with her. And as she gains a moment of clarity and jumps back in horror, all Bear can mumble to his friend who is clearly not well is some variation of "hey, this was your idea".
As the story progresses, you come to hate Bear and frankly the entire friend group. There are no "good people" here, no clear victims, except, of course, Nikki. Everyone that we interact with during the entire runtime of the movie acts selfishly at every turn. Concerned more with their wants and needs, and their appearance, than anything else happening around them.
Just in case the point isn't clear, the film hammers it quite strongly later on. Two particular scenes make it clear that the only problem Bear has with overriding Nikki's autonomy is that she's acting weird and creepy, and if she acted more like "his Nikki" he would be more than okay with this arrangement. Bear isn't the most pathetic loser on the face of the Earth because he's shy, it's because he would rather turn his crush into a mindless blow up doll version of herself than to let her go, as long as this doesn't inconvenience him. Similar sentiments are visible in the other members of the friend group as well.
The bleak story, and the way that the characters act, really helps to put you in Nikki's shoes and feel the hopelessness of the situation. Even the credits scene acts as a tool to convey the dread Nikki feels about everything she went through. The use of music, lighting and overall cinematography enhances these feelings even more throughout the story.
However
Like I said in the first section, while I loved the movie, I don't think it's without its faults. Though none of them were egregious enough to pull me away. The first problem I had was with the pacing. The dynamic between Bear and the wish-altered Nikki is clear enough halfway through the film, and it's also clear enough that Bear is not willing to do anything about it other than trying to cover the situation up. Even so, we go scene after scene after scene exploring the very same dynamic. At the same time, the ending and the resolution felt rushed. Especially, Ian's death scene felt almost nonsensical. I wish we saw less of the former and spent more time with Bear facing the consequences of his complacency.
My second gripe is with the one wish willow. The movie makes it very clear this isn't a Tales From The Crypt / Twilight Zone "Be careful what you wish for" story. The problem isn't the willow, we see it working perfectly fine for others throughout the film, it doesn't work like a Monkey's Paw where it will corrupt your wish to be ultimately harmful to you. The writer-director of the movie himself makes this very clear in interviews, if the evidence in the movie isn't enough.
The problem is that, at least according to the film, Bear's wish is inherently harmful by itself. However I'm not sure if I agree. Bear doesn't know the willow works, and nobody in their right mind would think it works. Nobody is a horrible person for wishing their crush loved them back, especially making such a wish after frustrating themselves with their inability to convey their feelings. This doesn't mean that the person wants to ignore their crush's autonomy, or turn them into a slave. It's what Bear does after the willow works which makes him horrible, and his complacency when he realizes that Nikki doesn't do any of the things she does of her own free will, not the wish itself. Maybe the willow somehow feels people's intentions when they make the wish, and Bear really meant it in a "make her love me despite herself" way, but if that's the case then the film does a terrible job of conveying that. Especially after we watch him question and try to alter his wish.
The second problem is, what happens to Nikki as a result of the wish also doesn't make sense. There's absolutely zero reason for her to do any of the creepy stuff that she does like the inhuman movements, the T-Rex walk or a myriad of other horror cliches. The wish didn't ask for any of that, they have nothing to do with loving a person, and the director makes it clear she isn't "possessed". So what is it? Bear clearly hates it, Nikki clearly doesn't act like that normally, so what about the wish makes it necessary for her to act like she just watched Possession and thought the subway scene was neat? I can confidently say that any person ever who has had the capacity of love had someone they loved more than anyone else. Some even love that person more than themselves. I don't think many of those people stand motionless waiting for their loved, urinating and defecating on themselves in the process.
Of course, I understand that these were choices made in order to tell a story, including the choice to make the willow work the way it does. This story isn't about the magic of the willow, it's about love, control, self-determination and selfishness. If the problem were the willow and not the wish, it would detract from the horror of Bear's malice. And if the willow worked the way Bear wanted as it did with anyone else, then we wouldn't get this sort of explicit horror, but maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing at all. Maybe there's another universe in which Obsession is more on the psychological side of horror, where the wish works in the way Bear intended and we only see small glimpses of Nikki grappling to regain control from the "perfect girlfriend" wish-Nikki. Or maybe the wish itself is phrased in such a way that the outcome is more consistent with it.
In any case, that's how I felt about this movie. I already gave my verdict in the beginning, but no harm in repeating it. I loved it, and the small inconsistencies aren't big enough problems to really detract from the viewing experience or to pull you out of it. I would recommend everyone to give it a chance, especially horror fans.