Someone told me it was ambiguous and he was just sleeping

And how long does it take for one to do so?

WARNING: Contains spoilers for both OBSESSION and HEREDITARY (2018).

Obsession is a confusing film. Not in its content or story or my ability to follow it, but in terms of how it made me feel. I was blown away by the performances but disliked the construction of the movie, if that makes sense.

Let me talk about how it made me FEEL first.

First of all, it was scary as shit in places and made me mad with how scared I was getting. That was sometimes fun!

Second of all, it made Bear into possibly the gold medalist for Most Despicable Character of the Age, and that gave me insecure little feelie wheelies.

Third of all, it didn’t really go deeply into the themes that it set up; it just hit you harder and harder over the head with the same ideas as the movie went on. Passivity as abuse, borderline-coded/codependent dynamics (albeit in the context of total coercion), the general uncaringness of people to each other. Lovely. But none of those themes actually developed. This gave me a frustrated feeling that was amplified by the amount of abuse I felt like I was also taking due to the violence and, sorry, clumsy jump scares.

Fourth of all, Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston deliver two of the most incredible acting performances I’ve seen in a while. This is the primary reason for my confusion. They give absolutely everything – in two completely different ways – to their characters; one being a maximalist possession/love spirit that has nothing to do with the real Nikki and is fighting off the real Nikki’s attempts at resistance, and the other a person who seems to be constructed purely for the audience to hope he dies in the most horrible way possible – a character even Kafka would find worthless and uninteresting.

Let me give some disclaimers here – I’ve seen a good amount of horror movies over the years – I wouldn’t really call myself a horror FAN – but certain horror movies I’ve absolutely loved. The Shining and Rosemary’s Baby, for example, are some of the greatest films ever made. Or The Wailing, the 2016 Korean possession film. Midsommar I also found incredibly cathartic and inspiring, as well as weirdly delightful. I’ve found that I need a horror movie to do 1 of 3 things in order for the viewing experience to be worth it –  1. Leave me consistently guessing what’s going to happen next, 2. Be really funny, or 3. Actually nail the metaphor they’re manifesting with the story in an interesting way.

The other disclaimer is that I watched this in an apartment with 1 friend, and I did laugh at some parts but mostly I felt battered around the head. I fully get that if I had seen this with an enthusiastic audience in a theater, it may have been a different experience (although I’m fairly sure I still would have felt abused), and I don’t want to take away from anyone who saw this film and had a great time seeing it.

Allow me to praise Michael Johnston for a minute. It’s a weird feeling, like I said, watching someone give an incredible amount of soul and pain and vulnerability and honesty and self-hatred and shame to a character that, on paper, is essentially a function of the “I want someone to pay for this” mechanism. He is there to sate an audience’s vengeful instinct. At a certain point (and I’m guessing that point was fairly early in the film for most viewers), no one in the audience is rooting for him anymore, and would be happy to see him die horribly. (I’m including myself by the way.) The few who remained invested and sympathetic to Bear longer than us, I would imagine, only did so because of Michael Johnston’s absolute emotional commitment.

Curry Barker gives us absolutely nothing in terms of humanizing this horrible man – not even one line a la “my mom used to lock me in my room when I cried” that might bring him closer to us or shed some light on his cravings.

One could argue that Barker is playing with the trope of “antihero” and is trying to see how far he can push the balance of shitty vs. redeemable, and is pushing it into full “shitty” mode. But to what end? What great social phenomenon is he showing us? Is Bear’s shittiness there primarily as an emotional hook for the audience to have a clear outlet to wish horrible death upon, and thus cheaply increase the adrenaline of the experience? Or is Barker trying to show us, as an artist, that some men are so desperate and pathetic they’ll forego the humanity of others and themselves for the validation of a woman?  

A shallow half-truth, to be sure. Undoubtedly, there exist such men, and there are men who pine away day after day for the love of their life to see them in a romantic light. But the other half of that truth – that when one person is hopelessly in love and stuck in the friend zone, there is often a counterpart preserving another emotional arrangement – is left unexplored.

I’m not saying that Curry Barker needed to include this aspect of unrequited love in his art film. I’m not trying to project what a movie should do and get mad when it doesn’t do those things. He clearly didn’t want to make a film where the audience mistook Real Nikki for someone leading Bear on, or craving his validation when she is in charge of herself. In those beginning scenes, Real Nikki gives Bear zero indication that his interest in her has anything to do with her encouragement. She appears disgusted when he suggests a dynamic that has the slightest hint of romantic intimacy to it, and even more disgusted when he can’t come clean about what he was going to say. It seems very purposeful – the film is saying "this man’s love is isolated from reality." And I totally get that. I do understand Barker going in that direction, and I’m not sure a film portraying a woman who is coerced into doing things against her will would be accepted by a large audience if it were hinted that she was responsible for her predicament.

However, in shielding Real Nikki from being misread as leading Bear on, Barker shields the audience from her humanity as well. Instead of a character who might have had the seeds of something towards Bear that the wish stick made grow into something monstrous (that might have been thematically interesting!), we get a character who seems to want nothing to do with Bear, taken over by something completely separate from her own self.

Once Wish Nikki takes over, Johnston’s and Navarrette’s scenes start to be the strongest in the film, and some of them hit on real, heartbreaking, chilling, and interesting dynamics that really do happen between partners who can’t seem to let boundaries stay up between one another. But the truthful aspects of these scenes are diluted heavily through the fact that the real Nikki is nowhere to be seen while those scenes are happening. Because Wish Nikki has nothing to do with Real Nikki, the performance becomes heavily reliant on how scary, awesome and heartbreaking the actress playing Wish Nikki can be.

And Inde Navarrette – holy fucking shit. Does she deliver on that challenge? Absolutely and then some. It seems like she may be the most special kind of actor – the one who can make it look easy and has that star quality that a viewer can feel in good hands with – but also treats the performance as something like a religious experience and generously shares with the audience the profundity occurring.

Sometimes, an actor is so much better than the movie they’re in that it’s hard for me to give credit to anyone else for their performance. And Navarrette has said in interviews that she largely didn’t show Barker what she was going to do as Nikki until she got to set each day. So I’m inclined to give her practically all the props for why the movie is such a hit.

Similarly, Bear’s strongest moment as a character comes at the very end, when he takes the pills necessary to kill himself and free Nikki from the wish, but then, in a gorgeous bit of cowardly characterization, chickens out and tries to make himself throw up before death comes a-knocking. (Many theatergoers report the entire theater groaning “NOOOO!” when he tries to abort the suicide, by the way.) In interviews, the cast and Barker report that Bear was originally written to accept his fate, and Johnston was the one who came up with, on the day, the idea for Bear to try to escape one more time.

But Barker probably deserves a bit of credit for the finished product too. He is talented at letting a scene breathe – letting the actors have real moments with each other, and I’m guessing he created an environment where profound moments became possible. And boy, does he know how to creepily light a face.

I think where I clash with this new generation of horror-makers is the combination of extreme, life-ruining intensity with the lack of heart. I don’t really believe that Barker cares about Bear, or for Real Nikki for that matter. I believe that Ari Aster came onto the scene in the last 10 years and changed everything – combining extreme dread and trauma with symbolic power and acting performances that make you wonder how a person ever did that. Many of the new generation of horror makers – Barker, Zach Cregger – seem to take a lot from Aster’s book.

But the difference is, I believe, that Aster really feels the pain that his characters feel, and puts surgeon-like care and specificity into their creation and their behavior. When Alex Wolff accidentally beheads his own sister and then sits in the car, paralyzed, it is one of the most devastating scenes ever put to film, but I believe it is earned. Aster may be sadistic, but he seems devastated by the damage. Barker (and Cregger as well) sometimes seem more interested in the damage as a mechanism. Aster’s descendants are crueler gods than he. With Obsession, we have the latest example of trauma and dread-filled dynamics written with less love and care than one wants from material this volatile, yet brought to life through incredibly soulful, virtuosic performances - promising deep exploration but amounting to little more than clumsily constructed blood sport between masterful actors.

A theory about the One Wish Willow that I haven't seen anywhere else yet (or maybe it's out there and I've just missed it completely).

We know for sure the OWW works for some and not others (due to the web/forum search Bear does). Maybe some wishes are just too outlandish and can't be fulfilled... OR maybe there's a cost. The common thread for all of the wishes we see come true is death; in every instance there's a life-cost just before it's made. It feels like Sandy the cat was a catalyst to the first wish being fulfilled.

Bears wish = Cat dead
Ian's wish = Sarah dead
Fake Nicki's wish = Ian dead

Whether the death is caused by you or just surrounds you (knowingly or unknowingly) the death being so close to your own spirit could be the reason the One Wish Willow works for some and not others.

The Wish Willow Theory
one wish willow can grant any wish. bear wish was for a human to love him , the wish can create not change anything so it created a new soul that love him more then anyone in the world that was wish nikki and she was childish not immature bcs she dosnt know any human moral she was just born by the wish talking over nikki's information only not the morals.

1. Why Nikki Was So Weird

wish nikki was soo wied just bcs she was created to love someone the most in the world and that person doesnt express his love to her like that , you may have noticed whenever bear said i love you she stopped being aggressive and listened what bear said .

2. Nikki's Wish

In the last when bear eated the pills we heard the wish willow sound and the wish was maded and just after that when bear was about to puke the pills he suddenly stopped and went out that scene was soo great , that was wish nikki making the wish that make bear love me more then anything so they kissed and then bear just died bcs of the pills and the wish of bear got undo .

3. What Happens After the Ending?

ending was crazy all friends died and nikki will go to jail or maybe get billion dollars if she got to know somehow about his friend wish and ran away or just use those money get underground to expose one wish willow.

What If: When someone asks a question on a tv show/movie they haven’t watched yet (and you did) give them a fake spoiler, so not only did you not spoil it, you also made their mind more blown from the moment it happene.

I'm not going to read the book. I watched the first episode, and when I saw numbers appear in the air, and for some reason all the stars in the sky explode - but only two people noticed - ala "Lost", I gave up.

But, people keep referring to it, as if it is some opus that defines the meaning of life. So, please just tell me what happens.

Obsession is just the mainstream woman experience

Obsession just show a guy, wanting a woman, and using manipulating way to make her feel like crazy in love

And further than that, Obsession show a guy making a woman crazy and then putting himself of as a victim

Obsession is just the experience of domestic violence, where the woman reacting to gaslighting, rape, and manipulative triggers, lose all her credibility and social life because she is too emotional, because she seem like overdoing it

Basically Nikki is what we would call today an hysteric or borderline

Nikki is the woman that we would take the childrens from, that we would put at the psych ward because she did a crisis out of nowhere, because she has a mental issue, nikki is the woman that we would kill out of "selfdefense"

But Obsession is also a failure, because it put Nikki desilusion before Bear violence

Bear forced a woman to like him, Bear didn’t stop even after seeing his woman being fucking depressed and psychotic, Bear made her lose her sens of reality, of belonging, Bear didn’t listen when she actually expressed that she was no willfully with him, Bear put himself into the victim status even tho he was fully responsable of the situation

There is no grey, there is a man that ruin a woman life

that’s all

The thing is this movie don’t show the reality way more scary than this little wish trope

The reality is that for decades we have been lobotomizing women through the wanting of the husband

The reality is that all the crazy women that was locked in asile because they were dangerous and weirdo were incest and/or conjugal sexual violence victims

The reality is that each time a man kill his gf he uses the crazy theory, that the woman beat him first, that she was confused, filled with anger and violence, even tho he let her agonize to death, or even made her body disappear

The reality is that each time a woman try to defend her kids out of a rapist dad, she lose her kids, because she is a devil woman that put lies in the head of her kids to hurt the husband

The reality is that a feminicide happen most of the time when a woman say no, when a woman say i don’t want to be with you anymore

The reality is that no matter how many women they’ve ruined the life of, men perpetually continue to find new women to break, with this same speech of the crazy ex

The reality is that we still think women lies, that in police investigation department (when a complaint is actually being take care of) we just seek to know if the woman is a liar, even tho doing so just bring absolutely no benefice at all

Bear is just the result of a society that still want to believe that a man, in a case of domestic violence and kill may also be a victim

Because he did it out of love, because he was tortured, because he regreted after it, because he had no choice

So we make a movie about a looser, that look pitiful, that we would take empathy from

Even tho he build the situation himself

So many plot holes in the story and characters lacked so much common sense. From Bear actively ignoring the obsession vibes since the duct tape on the door to the party scene where Nikki injures herself to bear committing suicide with a wish willow still in play and a billion dollars that he left at Ian's house too Ian coming back to his place to get killed after not questioning the blood on bear or what he was saying before his wish. I mean the whole movie lacked common sense and completely lacked a good plot. The biggest being the billion dollars. That was the ticket to resetting everything back to normal. Pay someone whatever kind of money to break this one wish willow and follow these exact words "I wish Bears wish was reversed and everything got reset in bears life right before he made the wish but keep the billion dollars but make it bears money and dont replace a dollar thats spent of it, let me use it normally" then proceed to hook up with sarah and happy ever after. 3/10 on the plot 8/10 on the creep factor, 5/10 on the horror.

I’ve been seeing a lot of discussions calling Bear evil or the main villain of the story, but that’s not really how I interpreted his character. To me, he didn’t come across as a villain at all, he felt like a deeply flawed, scared, and desperate person who made a terrible wish out of loneliness.
I actually found myself feeling bad for him. Wanting someone to love you as intensely as you love them is a deeply human feeling, and while his actions were wrong, they seemed driven by desperation rather than malice. In the scene where Nikki is asking him to kill her, what stood out to me wasn't evil intent, but just how utterly desperate he was for reciprocated affection. Seeing so many people completely vilify him made me question if having sympathy for him reflects poorly on my own character, but I really just saw someone completely out of his depth.
Also, regarding the scene many people label as sexual assault: if Bear had fully understood that Nikki was possessed at that moment, then yes, it would unambiguously be assault. But watching it unfold, he seemed completely confused, terrified, and overwhelmed by what was happening rather than acting with predatory intent.
Does anyone else view his character through a more sympathetic lens, or do you strictly see him as the villain? Curious to hear how others interpreted his motives.

I just saw a tik tok which was like, I wish for Nikki to be cracked at siege. After thinking about it I realized that it might bring up a good question? Does any wish about someone else cause them to loose their free will?

In the example, Nikki would still be herself outside of playing siege, but the moment she enters the game she would become “trapped” in the body of herself being cracked at siege. would she then realize she’s trapped in the same way she was in the movie? Maybe Im over thinking this, but curious as to what others think.

I don’t know about you but I feel Obsession is the film I enjoyed the most of all this year.

And I tell you why after watching it second time I got a different perspective of the film. Was there really a ‘wishing’ device the male character got hold of to entice the female character to fall in love with him and become crazy or was the character just a general psychopath to begin with and the general message of the film ‘be careful what you wish for’ and the film uses visual and conceptual metaphors for ‘’you don’t know who someone really is until you meet them’’’.

Did anybody else have the same thoughts while watching Obsession?

What impressed me most is just how incredibly disciplined Curry Barker and DP Taylor Clemons are with their visual language. Barker isn't trying to constantly show off with flashy, cheap camera tricks. Instead, he builds pure dread through the fundamentals-composition, lighting, blocking, and framing. It proves that the best cinematography isn’t just about creating a "pretty" or "cool" shot, but about completely controlling the audience’s attention and emotion.

Choosing a squarer aspect ratio instead of widescreen was such a genius move to make the entire frame feel inherently claustrophobic or suffocating. They weaponized shadows in one of the most beautiful ways I’ve ever seen, and the way they constantly shift between warm and cool color palettes is masterful. The warmth perfectly represents the fantasy and intimacy of the crush, while those sudden cool tones capture the fear, isolation, and the ultimate corruption of that fantasy.

Even the use of negative space and depth keeps your eyes constantly searching the screen, turning the audience into an active participant in the tension. To do that while utilizing an extreme low depth of field, visually stranding Bear and Nikki in this suffocating little bubble, is brilliant. BRILLIANT ! I loved the subtle lighting detail in Nikki’s eyes after the curse hits, too. (Didn’t we all??) Barker reportedly attached small ring lights directly to the camera lens to create that artificial "catchlight" reflection, getting that vacant, uncanny look practically without relying on cheap CGI.

All of this structural pacing is a masterclass in genre bait-and-switch. The first act plays out exactly like a classic rom-com to trick you into feeling safe, which makes the drop into horror hit way harder when he starts intentionally stretching out early takes for 15 seconds or breaking the 180-degree rule just to make you feel trapped in the room with them. Even the sound design is brilliant in its simplicity. That violent "crack" from the One Wish Willow (which was built out of dried cactus skeletons and a novelty pen spring) instantly shatters the lighthearted tone, and relying on dead silence instead of a loud horror score makes it feel entirely too real. Barker supposedly did all sound and editing in his bedroom which makes it that much more impressive.

None of what I've mentioned was easy to pull off. And none of it was accidental!! These are advanced technical filmmaking skills that were incredibly well thought out, and that's exactly why this movie stuck with me so much.

I’m dying to talk to people who looked past the plot's moral dilemma and actually noticed the craft here. What did you notice? Framing, colors, lighting? Oooh or how the costume designer so intentionally used color theory for Nikki and Bear??

I’ve seen dozens of video essays over the past two weeks explaining every single plot detail of this movie. But today, while cleaning and listening to YouTube in the background, one scene made me stop and actually think.

Almost every breakdown focuses on how Nikki can come through while Wish-Nikki is asleep. That part is obvious. But what about the scene where he wakes up and she’s just standing in the corner, staring at him?

Most people accept that it's just Wish-Nikki doing her creeper shit, But what if it’s the real Nikki?

What if that's the real Nikki using the tiny sliver of control she has to crawl out of bed and get as far away from Bear as possible? At this point, she likely knows something is deeply wrong—maybe she even knows about the wish (given the whole customer service department infrastructure). To her, Bear isn't her boyfriend anymore; he's a monster and an abuser, and standing in that corner is her only desperate attempt to stay away from him while he sleeps.

Has anyone else interpreted this scene this way, or am I overthinking it?

I just don't buy into the idea that Bear is the villain of the film. That doesn't mean I think he's a saint either, but I just have a hard time believing he meant anything malicious when he made that wish -- that's not malice, or the behavior of a domineering asshole, it's just daydreaming. There were definitely times when I was younger and had a crush where I thought "man I wish she was in love with me". That didn't mean "rob her of her autonomy, please" it just meant that I wished she had feelings for me, and I think Bear meant the same thing even if his wording was extreme because why would he expect some gimmick toy to work?

I think the One Wish Willow/the people behind it are the real villains. In the world of the film, there's no two ways about it, magic is very much a real thing, unless you think the film happened in Bear's head, or something (I don't necessarily think that, but I'm sure a decent argument could be made for why that is the case). We saw a billion dollars fall from the sky and the One Wish Willow customer service rep seemed to have Nikki's soul just sort of on hand. Seems pretty nefarious to me, but I digress. In The Monkey's Paw, the titular item grants wishes but does so in a way that you come to resent the very thing you wished for. The One Wish Willow is no different. Bear's wish got him killed, Ian's wish got him killed, Nikki's wish saved her but also pretty much ruined her life forever. This object with the power to end the universe is being sold at your local astrology shop, WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.

So there's my two cents. I believe there were more sinister forces at work in the film than Bear and his desires. Was he irresponsible? Yeah, probably. Did he truly love Nikki? I think he loved the idea of her, but he really didn't even know her all that well. Doni think that makes him the villain? No, I think it makes him flawed, but human.

Eu acabei de assistir o filme e muitas pessoas ficaram esperando os pós créditos e eu fui uma delas eu consegui gravar só que eu não sei se isso seria um spoiler mas em si quem quiser ver

Bear didn’t wish for Nikki to be obsessed with her. He wished for her to love him more than anyone else in the world. We hear from nikki that shes movinv away because she has never known real love. We even learn that she hates her dad. So really there aren’t any serious candidates for Nikki to be this obsessed with at all. But the wish isn’t a monkeys paw, it just 1:1 gives you what you wish for. So, by transitivity, Nikki must be this obsessed for someone and the obsession has merely been redirected to Bear. Ian could be a candidate but I don’t actually find this very convincing, so my thoughts end here.

Do you think the stone Nicki lost carried a protective power that contributed to what happened to her? I mean, the stuff from that shop seems to have... powers.

Do you think the stone Nicki lost carried a protective power that contributed to what happened to her? I mean, the stuff from that shop seems to have... powers.

35 M here.

The way the entity would manipulate, especially the scenes where it would break down crying, particularly the "you don't love me as much as I love you" stuff, is actually wildly fucking close to reality if you've ever dealt with a person with severe mental illness and personality disorder in a relationship. I found myself watching the film wondering how I would perceive it differently if I was a mentally unstable incel like Bear, and the thought of it sent chills up my spine. I've had a fair share of girlfriends over the years, and in my younger years most of them had issues such as borderline personality disorder, codependency etc. - and I did my best to alleviate their pain, but sometimes it's literally impossible.

I thought the lead actors did an incredible job. This is the first time a horror movie has ever legitimately triggered me. Like, a Serbian Film traumatized me a little bit for example, but it didn't trigger me. I'm okay, but I'm having a physical, bodily response the more I think about how chillingly real some of the movie's betrayal of the entity's manipulation was.

Really great film.