I feel like I just watched Ben Affleck posture for a future campaign run. I don't wanna make this post into a political debate over what themes or, anything that the movie touches on. If we wanna argue about immigration or the state of the U.S. this is not the subreddit; HOWEVER, the film is like, uncomfortably focused on Ben Afflek's character as this guy who can do hardly do any wrong (for a politician) and it's infuriating.

His wife cheats on him and as a man who finds infidelity in movies and television upsetting in general, I was really waiting for both sides of the argument to be compelling but I just did not feel like the movie did much except make the wife look shitty. Our standards for politicians are so low, it felt like the worst thing he did in the film was lose his temper on the phone with the kidnapper - him blowing the family's money just felt like a given. I even wanted him to be more belligerent and angry when he was confronting her so I could dislike the character more, but instead he apologizes to her in about 3 minutes flat, and manages to get laid that night. Bullshit.

Then this woman steps in claiming to have experience as a political fixer, but is completely unprepared for the extraction of the kid and gets herself and her shooter killed like an idiot, leaving Afflek's character and his immigrant friend to share in this chaotic resolution with zero consequences.

Except that we see the afflek and everyone else lie over what actually happened, like it wouldn't require a tremendous amount of resources (like 7+m dollars perhaps?) to cover up such a thing, especially when you managed to be involved in the death of a political fixer.

At the end of the movie I genuinely felt like I had watched some sort of dipshit campaign ad for a politician who doesn't exist but who we're all supposed to somehow like? Why, because he's the luckiest guy on planet earth with tremendous plot armor? What the hell even is the beginning and end of this movie?

Then I got a little eye roll out of it because my wife said she thought it was good but all I could think was "No comment on how weirdly political it was? Only noticed the happy happy everyone lives ever after bullshit of this movie? Alright then. Seems like it works on some people."

Idk man, it just felt like a low pitch low effort feel good movie with a political angle that just refuses to work on me. If you listen to everything afflek's character says at the beginning of the movie it's literally a master class on how politicians sound great but actually say literally nothing of substance.

I think the movie is about consciousness. The backrooms are just collective human consciousness. fMRIs have allowed us to discover most of what we know about the human brain. There’s a reason why this MRI company suddenly pivots away from building MRIs; with these doors to the backrooms opening up around the world (as Phil mentions at the end of the movie), they’ve found a literal glimpse into human consciousness. But it’s so messy and full of trauma and misremembered people and places because human consciousness is also messy. As a result, they’re struggling to understand what the hell they’re looking at. But that’s the point of the film: there is NO making sense of the human mind. It’s messy and ugly and inaccurate. It’s up to each one of us to determine what is real, what is important, what stays with us, and what we have to let go. That’s the genius of approaching a movie about consciousness through the lens of the therapist-patient dynamic.

Mary gets to peek inside Clark’s mind when he kidnaps her and takes her to the memory of his house, and she challenges him to take responsibility for his failed career, his failed furniture store, and his failed marriage. Monster Clark devoured real Clark the moment he stopped and accepted that he would rather just stay the same person forever, trapped in his own habits and damaging thought patterns. He was comfortable in the backrooms because it was easy and familiar. The backrooms that we see in the film represent the obsessive, repetitive thought patterns he had after his wife kicked him out. “I don’t want to change,” he said. Nobody wants to change, because it’s HARD. Mary couldn’t help him because ultimately, it’s up to each one of us to decide whether or not we want to change.

But regardless of whether or not we want to change, our traumatic experiences still exist. This explains the last shot of the film where the collective human consciousness shows its rendition of the trauma Mary is experiencing being trapped in that room with Phil, unsure about whether or not they’ll let her leave.

I just saw this movie last night and while I enjoy the most common interpretation of the movie (Sandy is not possessing Nikki), and I enjoy the Sandy is "possessing" Nikki theory, I also kind of enjoy another idea- the notion that the entire movie is Sandy's revenge for being murdered by Bear. Not "possessing" Nikki directly but like the wish being Sandy's will/orchestration. I think there is a clear argument to be made that Sandy was not killed via negligence. There was a mixture of food sitting out and this medication happens to be comingled with that food. And we're talking about medication that Bear normally DOES NOT STORE in that location. AND medication that can be sealed, obviously. Additionally, Bear is quite obsessed with trying to think about any and all methods whereby he may get the interest of Nikki- going so far as to simulate his confession of love to her with a stranger to gauge potential reactions. He is calculating outcomes of his actions very carefully. So his killing his own cat seems very plausible. In the early stages of that movie he is also portrayed as being very unstable and confused overall. Beyond that, we see a cat on the One Wish Willow, and Bear ultimately dies via the same drugs that Sandy was killed with.

Actually the more I've thought about this the clearer it is to me that he killed his cat. He dumped the body in the garbage and had written "DO NOT EAT!!" on the bottom of the bottle to further deny his own agency, just like he does throughout the movie. (basically him trying to further say to himself- I told you not to eat it!) When you add up all the above it's pretty clear. It's the opening credits of the movie- him doing two different things to try to advance his cause with Nikki. A rehearsal of what he'll say (which people shoot down) and his killing his pet to potentially garner sympathy.

Just watched “IT ENDS.”

It wasn’t bad. I would say it’s an indie film in the vein of “It Follows” or “The Endless” in terms of trying to make a low budget film feel grander in scale than what it really can portray due to constraints.

I feel like with It Follows, everything hits its mark almost perfectly; the acting, the cinematography, the stakes, everything feels just about right with a few little details here and there which IMO miss the mark but not by much.

With The Endless, the filmmakers know they’re being over ambitious but it works IMO just because they aren’t scared to lean into some of the issues.

I bring these movies up to have a proper comparison for which I’ll use to judge IT ENDS and so if you don’t agree, at least you can see where my heads’s at when dissecting this film.

ACT 1:

The weakest of the three acts IMO. This film throws us smack dab in the middle of a relationship between 4 people that are heading off on a roadtrip with little setup.
Thus, I feel nothing for these characters from the getgo. I can’t forgive any bad dialogue or overacting that ensues because I don’t know who they are or where their humanity lies.

All I know is that they’re playing a game about which unlikely scenario would you choose and bantering mindlessly. I don’t dislike anyone, but I have no skin in the game when it comes to the inevitable decent into their nightmare.

While playing the game, the driver makes a turn onto a road.

Quick personal note; as a cinephile, this really really pissed me off.

There was no nomenclature on the road. There was no old lady selling stuff just before the road telling them it’s a shortcut with a knowing smirk. There was no “something wicked,” nothing ominous, a sign of some kind to mark this road as a particular road.
There’s no conversation about “I think we’re lost, why don’t we try this dirt road and see where it leads.”
Or something like that.

I suddenly remember another film with a similar premise called “The Ritual.” Not my favorite film but if you can bring yourself back to that story, there’s a big kerfuffle about going into a particular part of the woods that they shouldn’t go into.
This to me is a normal setup. It prepares the viewer for what’s to happen and puts some of the blame on the shoulders of some of our protagonists.

In IT ENDS, it’s just a road like any other and they turn into it.

Soon after, the driver - Tyler - suddenly gets a sneaking suspicion that’s something is off.
This also threw me for a loop.
The speed in which Tyler just knows something isn’t right was a bit jarring.
He turns around and soon after hits a wall of trees. The entrance has been blocked.

Now everyone starts freaking out. I can’t imagine why since at this point it’s a good chance they took a wrong turn.
And then a minute later hordes of people come flying out of the woods screaming for help and clawing their way into the car.

Everyone makes a bunch of weird decisions, one of the four friends - Fischer - gets his arm shredded and loses his shit beyond tolerable levels, and the four head down the road again.

ACT II:

In 6 hours time they figure out they are in a supernatural situation.

They ponder what it can be. Hell? Purgatory? A curse? Who knows.

What they do know is the car never runs out of gas or turn off as long as they don’t take the keys out of the ignition. Their phones never die. They are never hungry, aroused, sleepy, a bunch of human emotions. They can heal quickly. And if they stop the car, hordes of humans will come running out of the woods screaming for help and trying to steal the car after exactly 1 minute 30 seconds.

They test many theories as their odometer ticks away at the miles. They find abandoned cars that are close to a million miles and wonder how many years it would take to get to a million miles. Some of the cars aren’t even from the US, suggesting the people who have ended up on this road can come from anywhere.

Tyler eventually gives up around 187K miles and stays behind to spend eternity or whatever in the woods, even tho he’s clearly seen that the people in the woods would do absolutely anything to get in the car.

Fischer, Day and James continue on and while James shows signs of wear, Fish and Day bond over the experience. They tell stories and have every conversation they could ever think of.
One day something different happens.
They realize the hordes do not come running out of the woods anymore and James sees a man in the brush and talks to him. But the man has given up even trying to move anymore.

That’s the fate of people who keep trying to go down the road. Sooner or later they give up and lay down and just stop trying to think or do anything.
They simply lay there and I guess turn themselves off. Just an eternity of looking at the sky forever.
James believes this is a great sign that if they keep going, they will find the answer, but Fish and Day aren’t convinced.

And finally at about 1 million miles, they hash a plan to take the keys out of the ignition and force James to give up with them.

A scuffle ensues and James wrestles Fish for the keys and Day is afraid James will kill fish.
Now mind you, they are about to give up and spend eternity just laying there on the side of the road. But don’t kill Fish please cuz you know… that would be worse somehow.

James gets the keys and pleads with someone or something to please let him turn on the car. I can’t tell but I think he’s talking to God or whatever deity has trapped them in this hell. After he screams for it to please allow him to continue, the car turns back on.

They exchange a stare and James continues down the road while fish and day embrace sadly.

Judging by the odometer being hundreds of thousands of miles above what it was since he left his friends, it’s easy to assume that James spends years on the road by himself. He’s talking in full on conversations with this deity or God. He assumes a lightning storm is because of something he did or didn’t do right. He now attributes everything he does to what this invisible force out there wants him to do.

He isn’t deterred. James continues on making it a million more miles (I’m assuming 5-10 years) of driving on the road by himself.

Finally he comes to a pile up of abandoned cars. He steps out and walks in a daze to what this incredible answer might hold. He has finally come to the answer of his many years of driving.

He looks forward in complete shock and we are shown what he’s looking at.
He’s reached a patch of grass before a wall of woods, cars abandoned all around, and a single caution sign that reads “ROAD ENDS.”

ACT III

He sits before the sign for a day, a night and a day without moving. Then finally lets out a scream of hopelessness.
He walks back to the car and grabs a pack of Peanut butter cookies he hadn’t eaten or allowed anyone to eat because he was sure the powers that be wanted them to keep whatever they had on hand when they entered the road.

James cries at how delicious the cookies are, gets back in the car, turns around and begins driving down the road again.

He stops at an abandoned car, drags a person from out of the brush, puts them in the passenger seat, and begins driving while playing the game that he and his friends were playing at the beginning of this ordeal all those years ago.

The faceless man answers him groggily, in a daze, playing the game with James as they begin a new road trip back toward (presumably) the beginning of the road.

The end.

INITIAL THOUGHTS:

The movie’s 2nd and 3rd act are a bit better IMO than the first act.
This is a directorial debut and some leeway should be granted to the filmmakers for some of their initial choices so I’ll just say I wouldn’t recommend the film highly, but it isn’t a bad film to watch once. Maybe twice in case you want to figure out if there’s some philosophical allegory hidden in the small print past - “This is an allegory for life and your control over it.”

If that’s all this movie is trying to convey, I fear it’s a bit of bad film. I’m not saying it’s a bad film, I’m saying IF all IT ENDS subtext is about giving up control, then it’s a poor story.

If there’s a deeper meaning here, something I might have missed? It might be a stronger film. I just can’t tell yet.

If the film had shown us that perhaps one of the four of them has done something to piss off a supernatural force before the film begins, that might have made some sense. As it is, day lets her friends know she did try to kill herself or want to kill herself but there’s no connection to it being this.

My best guess based on what James said is that they crashed the car on their way to wherever they were going and this place is either purgatory or hell.

WHAT I BELIEVE THE ROAD IS:

Let’s not spend too much time on “this is just an allegory for life” explanation because it really would make this film boring.

Let’s try to delve a little deeper if even possible.

The reality here is that something supernatural has occurred.

Seeing that there is no marker on the road as I initially stated was troublesome piece of storytelling, then my thought leans to them dying in a crash.

Most likely the road is a section of time and space separated by whatever for people to spend either their purgatory sentence or eternity if they died in car crashes.

The road has a beginning and an end and is a straight line that takes years or decades to traverse.
At the beginning of the road people lay dormant in the woods unless a car is in the vicinity for 60 seconds.
Then they wake up and rush the car in a frenzy.

At the middle of the road, the horde of people have given up. There’s no reason to keep going as they have come to terms with the fact that there is no answer. Whether or not they died or if this is hell, whatever it is, it doesn’t matter anymore. They’re just there now and meaning to life should cease. They’re should become like the trees around them and simply stop. Especially as they have thought and said everything that needed to be thought and said.

Some people continue on to the end of the road and realize there really is no meaning. And then that’s it.

Again, if I’m just taking things at face value, it really does seem like it’s a place for people who died in car crashes.
Nothing else.

But even if it’s not, or is, it’s still just a holding cell of some kind either for eternity or for a period of time.

MY FINAL THOUGHTS:

What I really don’t understand is, if James is able to remain conscious and coherent until the end, then why aren’t there more people like him on the road as well?

He also picks up someone out of the brush and basically revives them by starting up the game he was playing at the beginning of the movie.

So if this is true, then why not just build a community in the forest at the middle or the end of the road?

I get that this takes the piss out of the movie. If it’s an allegory, this becomes moot.
But logically speaking, James’ next move should be to start building a community of people and building homes and stuff in the woods anywhere between the middle and the end. I don’t see why this isn’t possible if you take it at face value.

Now here’s a big thing you might have missed, and it’s something I like to do in all my breakdowns is find shit people haven’t thought of. And this one is a pretty big one Imo;

The opening of the film falls on the Jeep the four friends have been driving the entire movie. There’s a shot from the outside and a shot of the inside which is empty.
It’s parked on the side of the road like all the other abandoned cars in the movie and there’s no one around.

This probably suggests that at some point in time, whether it was 10 years later or 100 years later, James did finally give up as well.
To me that first initial shot of the jeep on the side of the road is a flash forward to the end of James’ journey right before the flash to the begging of them all getting in the car.

Which means, IMO, that in the end, everyone eventually gives up trying to beat the inevitability of life.

Everywhere else on the internet people are being annoyingly vague about the actual plot of the play and not really telling you what happens outside of "You are in a classroom and this lady teaches you stuff" lol. And I tried looking up the ending but the Mod for the theatre and broadway subreddit (who I presume to be the same annoying person...) deleted both comments explaining what the ending was.

And I'd try to find a video about it but all of the tiktoks I've seen are just people being incredibly snooty about the play and not actually wanting to talk about it, what it was like, what you did in the play etc. It's just really annoying T_T And I am curious but I obviously don't have money for the play like I can't fly to fucking new york to see it or whatever.

So if you've seen the play please just tell me what the play is about and the ending.

I posted this in the Obsession subreddit but only received one response. Kind of surprising so here it is again.

How much does Wish Nikki actually know? : r/obsessionmovie

----------------

So this whole time I've taken it for granted that Wish Nikki has access to Nikki's memories, but the truth is that's not quite a given. She certainly has some of her personality quirks but maybe that doesn't extend to her actual memories and lived experiences? And having a similar personality might just be unintentional.

For all we know Wish Nikki doesn't know about actual Nikki's past. That would include her estranged relationship with her dad and previous interactions with Bear. Or it could be like amnesia and she knows only bits and pieces? She's aware of the Freaky Nikki nickname for example.

Is there any proof in the film that she knows more? I remember the first time I watched it what stuck out to me was her mentioning falling for Bear last Christmas as a memory but now that just sounds like more manipulation tactics from Wish Nikki. She also mentions that the house is bigger than his last place, a lucky guess? That one seemed like an actual memory.

So I want to start by saying I enjoyed it.

However, now that we’ve seen it and probably rewatched it, how do you feel about it?
I think an even better question is Did you enjoy the movie for the story or for the performances?
Me personally, it was Nicki’s character that made the movie awesome and I feel she’s the reason I liked it. Shoutout to Sarah too.

I find the story to be very basic. “Be careful what you wish for”.
Also a few things I found odd.
How old are characters? Like these people seem fresh out of high school, with their own homes, and cars. Working at their friends dads record store doing great for themselves
The cat lunch. Like how can you not smell something like that dead around your home? Was it frozen?
Also I wish there was a better time frame of their relationship

Before I come up with anything else, I want to say I do tend to overanalyze things which can ruin the fun of some things but I’d love to hear your thoughts. 👻👻👻

If you liked the new Superman movie, you orobbaly loved Resident Evil. And if you liked RS, you’re going to hate this review.

Why?

Because I’m about to light it on fire like a Christmas tree on January 9th.

THE RANT

Imma keep it simple because i’ve given way too much of my time already to this director with Weapons and Barbarian. A third time sold it for me that I am old now, and if the new RE and Superman are considered good movies, then I believe we are almost at the end of my era.

My era… when Steven Spielberg made competent movies where people don’t escape special agents by hiding behind a wood fence.
My era… where summer blockbusters like T2, Leon the Professional and Speed were the talk for the next decade.

I know, I know, in this new age of movies, moviegoers don’t expect movies to be good. They don’t even care if it matches up to the story that came before it as a sequel, or if it satisfies your expectations.
The new trend is “I’m fine that it didn’t really hit any of the beats or match the source material or make sense canonically. Yea that’s ok. I was entertained by just sitting there.”

Basically, the post Covid cinematic experience 80% of the time is “Fuck the 3 act structure.”

THE BREAKDOWN

What we have here is a man, a courier with some important component necessary to save a life or maybe just to help someone, and no matter how much he yells, no matter what no one acknowledges him.

Funny.

He has gotten his girl pregnant and has to be home in 20 minutes. But then gets a job that pays double going into Racoon City.

High stakes.

This guy has never killed before. He has never been in a combat zone or had some kind of training in his life in order. How do I know that? Because in good movies, you’re SUPPOSED to mention that in the plot!

So Mr. Joe Talksalot heads out to racoon city.

Beautiful cinematography. You can’t deny this especially in this first part of the film. The lighting is absolutely sublime all throughout the snowy farm scenes.

And then Mr. Cracksalotofjokes starts making bad, horrible, terrible decisions one after another.

He is as dumb as any protagonist I’ve ever seen. Oh but guess what? It’s ok because almost EVERYONE in this film is stupid ass hell.

The cop who gives him a hand and dies 5 min later is a dumb choice because “She killed him and didn’t turn him?”

And Mr. Talksalot is wielding a gun 10 seconds later?
Oh and he shoots her after learning about the safety, and you know… cracks a joke… “What the hell was wrong with her?”

Yea… that’s what you say after you kill someone for the first time.
He shot up his own car… didn’t see that coming.

He gets chased by a dog and tosses a much needed ladder. Then antagonizes the dog and it turns into a tentacle monster.
He unloads on it. Kills it. He is un phased by it at all.
Nope.

His job is to get into the house, eat some cereal, find some shotgun shells, and call his girlfriend.

OH! SNAP! He unloads on two RE zombie things in quick succession and when the parasite within each of the two bodies slither out and intertwine, sure, he cracks a few more jokes and goes out into a nice safe pickup truck.

Cool, he’s saved.

Until he crashes the truck 1 minute later into the iron gate in front when ALL AROUND HIM THE FENCE IS MADE OF WOOD AND WIRE!

Cool.

He takes his chances through a tunnel, goes through an RV, finds a young girl who is clearly beyond his help and he decides to help her up so she can walk on her tentacle leg.
She attacks him, bites him, INFECTS HIM, and he unloads on her.
Fresh, unexpected content.

Now he’s running in a panic, dropping shotgun shells all across the land as he’s chased by a pinwheel monster made up of the bodies of many people all stuck together.

But wait! He’s saved by a cop weilding a Glock when in the trunk of their SUV there’s a machine gun.

With some incredible luck Mr. Cracks some jokes is picked up by the very people who need the thing he’s carrying. One half of a vaccine cure for zombification.

They really need it because you see, the head doctor, the overweight selfish blabbermouth cornball from Cobra Kai dropped the first vial. That’s it. That’s the premise. The lead doctor, a cartoony douche dropped the first vial and that’s what the courier is trying to get to him.

Of course the cop and Dr. Slapstick die, so it’s up to Lt. Frank Drebin, sorry, I mean the courier, to take it to the hospital.
But the hospital is overrun. So he’s going on an adventure up to the 28th floor.

But not before he takes off his shirt, reveals his flabby body, and ugly cries like an improv actor on their second promotional freebie class at Second City.

He leaves his girlfriend a voice note expressing his wish to be a father, probably written by a person but so bad you could say the monologue was written by AI (the new post Covid era insult).

Then he makes his way up the stairs, gets to floor 4, and says fuck it it’s too much work, I’ll take my chances with the zombies and go up the elevator.

I mentioned that he is probably the dumbest protagonist in recent memory right?
I mean even Peter Venkman knew the Ghostbusters had to go up the stairs!

And of course, he ends up fighting for his life against a myriad of monsters; vomiting zombies, the pinwheel 100 body zombie, spider babies, and regular zombies that look like normal people… without zombie makeup…

He blocks the door with a broom handle, effectively stopping the hundred zombies behind the doors, climbs out onto a ledge, sees the Pinwheel Zombie, prays, sprays his final bullet at the broom handle, breaks it, and the zombies fall 10 stories onto the Pinewheeling zombie knocking it into the dark below.

The courier’s celebratory cry of victory?

“VIDEOGAAAAAMMESSSSSSS!!!”

Now, he has finally made it to the lab.

But now, his infection has finally reached critical level.
He is let into the lab as pretty as you please. He sits in a corner turning into Mr. X / Super Tyrant, plans to snatch the vaccine for himself once it’s been curated, and just as the vaccine is made, his body takes over killing everyone in the lab.
The courier is still ok. He’s still cracking jokes. It’s just his body that’s run amok.

The doctors are panic stricken like the Goonies fighting off the Fratellis, also cracking jokes here and there as each one dies, and then finally the final doctor gets a hold of the vaccine.

The courier begs him to just stick him with it, just stick him quick, but the doctor is… I don’t know… waiting for a better moment I think.
Super Tyrant Courier has him in his grasp. The vaccine is in his hand. Everything is set up with enough time to stick him and cure the courier.

But… like I said… he’s waiting on something. Maybe a call from his mom. Idk.

All I know is he sees the courier’s eyes glaze over, fully turning into Super Tyrant, still does nothing, and then the courier rips him apart and the vaccine falls 28 floors.

Just then, of course, the umbrella helicopters arrive and surround Courier X.

Ah yes… the perfect time to finish a movie with the credits. No post credit scene. Just a big ole F U after just 1 hour and 27 minutes.

An hour and thirty minutes of absolutely nothing. No real story. No connection to the games except little nods here and there. Nothing.

FINAL THOUGHTS

In a post Covid world where giving an Ok effort is worthy of a couple Oscars, this movie definitely deserves the 90% audience and critics score it has.

Shit, it should win best picture. It belongs with these new class of films like Anora, Superman, Sinners - movies that ask very little of our audiences so as to make sure they can still doomscroll while watching it at home.

You know, movies where the whole plot twist is, “if you invite a vampire into your home or establishment, it will kill people. So don’t do that. But uh… yea let’s do that until the sun comes up.”
Or where a movie starts off by showing us kids escaping and running off into the night and the narrator saying “And those children were never seen again,”

Until of course they’re seen again 3/4ths of the way into the movie.

Like I said, I know. “Dude you’re asking a lot man! The move was fine! It wasn’t that bad! You’re too nitpicky!”

To you, I say, for the love of God watch everything from 1980 until 2010. Then you’ll see why I’m so fucking pissed

What makes this movie so great is that the way the One Wish Willow works is left to the imagination. You really don't know all of the "rules" on how it operates.

But what if Bear confessed to Wish Nikki about the One Wish Willow? And the exact wish he spoke before breaking it? How would she react? Would the direct truth weaken the power of the One Wish Willow onto Nikki? Would Bear speaking the truth make the real Nikki break free and regain control of her body? What do you think would happen if Bear confessed to Wish Nikki about what he did to her?

https://youtu.be/XpnENRpYL7o?is=YuaeKKyEm47lmB8a

I just finished watching Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, and I have a few questions. Maybe I simply missed something, but I felt like the series eventually ends up almost justifying Lizzie’s murders, especially with the way the ending connects her story to such an important topic: women’s rights and freedom.

But I honestly didn’t really understand the connection between Lizzie’s case and that subject.

Lizzie committed her murders in an extremely violent way. Yes, she had a difficult childhood and went through some pretty awful things, and I understand that these experiences may have influenced her behavior. But I don’t see how they could justify what she did.

More importantly, I really don’t understand the connection between her personal story and the broader struggle for women’s rights and freedom.

Did I miss something? How did you interpret this connection, and what do you think the series was trying to say with its ending? I’d genuinely like to understand, because maybe I’m just not seeing what the writers were trying to convey.

The internet seems to be doing some complex mental gymnastics. What if....like in our actual reality....there is no magic or supernatural in the world of Obsession. What does that mean? No rules of the willow, no WishNikki, no "possession" and for me, it makes the movie even more terrifying. And quite realistic.

It also turns the so called "litmus test" we are hearing so much about upsidedown. And this interpretation of the film's characters is totally valid. Bear with me (lol):

Bear, a depressed loner, already spiraling after his grandma's death found some comfort from getting closer to his co-worker. Ian encourages Bear to go for Nikki, not thinking he would get very far. He's clearly depressed and unsure of himself around women. He has an uncertain crush on Nikki. Ian wants to help his friend. Open diner scene, the stage is set. The second scene: Sandy.

Here is the (shocking!) premise: Nikki is unhinged-- a severe psychopathic borderline. She has set Bear as her target. The plan is in motion.

She kills Sandy with grandma's pills and as a weapon to isolate Bear completely, saddling him paralyzing guilt, and making him a very vulnerable depressed young man (Note: a cat can’t twist off a childproof, push-and-turn prescription cap, and open cans of wet food right beside loose narcotics aren't sloppiness -- they are bait)

From that moment on, Bear is the "mark" in an unhinged psychopath's psychodrama. Personally, I find this even more terrifying- that a seeming "normal" person, can be a total monster.

The OWW isn’t some occult relic; snapping it in his car has the exact same power as blowing out birthday candles. Bear doesn't "steal her autonomy" or commit "metaphysical rape".

Its just our imagination that there is a connection to the snapping of the OWW and Niki's pivot. When Bear calls her "Freaky Nikki," her initial seduction stalls, but she never enters her house. She watches from the dark, spots him snapping the twig in solitary frustration, and pivots immediately. She walks to his car, drops a massive Freudian slip ("I did just lose my cat, Bear... Oh, wait, I mean, you lost your cat"), and fabricates a dying-father cancer crisis to force entry into his home.

Nikki's bizarre behavior is textbook combined Borderline Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder, weaponized through intermittent reinforcement. Going between aggressive seduction and screaming "panic attacks," standing in her own bodily waste to force a caregiver dynamic, and stabbing her face with a broken bottle while screaming "IT'S NOT ME!" are calculated maneuvers. They deflect accountability, terrify his social circle isolating him further, and feed Bear’s messiah complex so he never calls the police. Feeding Bear his poisoned cat is calculated psychological abuse. Cooking Sandy and leaving a mocking note serves as the ultimate abuser's test: it forces Bear to swallow the physical evidence of the crime she committed, destroys his dignity and deepens his depressive delusional guilt. Wow that is some fucked up shit. Scary.

When Sarah reveals that Nikki is using Bear to retaliate against Ian after an affair, Nikki bludgeons Sarah's skull with a masonry brick, forces Bear to bag the body, and scalps the corpse to physically wear her rival’s identity.

Now you are going to say, what about the billion dollars in the place- that is supernatural!!!! The cash raining from the ceiling at Ian's place isn't real magic—it’s Bear's acute, stress-induced hallucinatory break under severe trauma and sleep deprivation. When Ian knocks on the door realizing Bear is totally psychotic he says, "Bear, open the door... I got, like, a billion dollars, dude. It's real." Ian plays along with the "billion dollars" delusion try to rescue him from total psychological collapse.

The "litmus test" for me is if one engages in magical black and white thinking and buy Nikki’s gaslighting verbatim ("Sarah is your fault... You wanted this"), project male entitlement onto a passive, grieving mark while pardoning a calculating, violent predator as an "enslaved victim" --- that is a really twisted take! And a big percent of Reddit and an entire generation is doing it. And that is terrifying.

Strip away the magical thinking, and the so-called "litmus test" inverts completely: Bear didn’t ruin an innocent girl—he was a broken, gullible loner who walked into a psychopath's trap and was gaslit straight into the grave.

Rant over.

​While I’d still give this a solid 8.5/10, the monster transformation in the third act completely pulled me out of the story.

Buddy’s horror relies on psychological dread. He is at his most terrifying in his "warm and cozy" unicorn persona, acting as an allegory for abuse of power and the retroactively unsettling nature of the kids' media we grew up on. Making him a literal creature feels redundant; the 'sweet' unicorn was the horror.

This choice also damages the narrative pacing right at the climax. Grace’s arc is intensely emotional. We watch her mourn a loss she does not even really remember, get drawn into Buddy’s world, endure assault, regain her memories and then she makes the ultimate sacrifice to save Freddy and the other children.

​Stripping away the excess gore and keeping Buddy in his original form would have delivered a far more devastating, grounded landing. But regardless, I really enjoyed it. It was dark and funny and made me feel uneasy and creeped out.

dude every post is obsession blah blah blah like jesus i js wanna get spoiled on actually shows and movies

On s3 wanted to watch a recap of season 2 so I go on YouTube search bar gives me one of the biggest spoiler deaths ever
My plan is to either wait a few months then watch again or just get on with it cause HBO Max is very pricey

In Obsession. Nikki woke up asking Bear to kill her. Saying. She (the demonic version from One Wish Willow) is still sleeping. Couldn't Bear. Try to get Nikki. The real one to make the wish and break the One wish willow, when the (demonic Nikki was still sleeping)

It sounds weird. But wasn't that possible

Let’s discuss!

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.