Over the past couple of months, I’ve seen some inspiring feature directorial debuts: the Southern Gothic revenge thriller Is God Is from playwright-turned-director Aleshea Harris, Kirill Sokolov’s English-language debut They Will Kill You and Backrooms from YouTube phenom Kane Parsons. I’m reviewing the latter for a different outlet, so mum’s the word on that, but I’m impressed by this new wave of genre filmmakers and their ability to get people talking about big themes. 

Which brings me to Curry Barker’s Obsession, a film I had the pleasure of watching in a packed theater last night. The Focus Features horror-thriller follows a fearful-avoidant “good guy” named Bear who goes to a crystal shop to buy his crush, Nikki, a necklace, and instead purchases a mysterious novelty toy called a One Wish Willow, which grants the purchaser one wish. Basically, it’s a Gen Z monkeypaw story about a rejection-sensitive guy secretly pining for his friend.

When Bear takes Nikki home after trivia night and she flat out asks him if he likes her, he denies his feelings, then negs her… as one does. With that, Nikki’s done. She heads up the walkway to her front door, Bear cracks the novelty stick in half (per the instructions) and makes a life-changing request: for Nikki to love him more than anything in the world.

And poof goes her agency!

Warning: Spoilers ahead

From that point on, Wish Nikki exists solely to service Bear and command his attention while the real Nikki’s consciousness disappears into the film’s version of the Sunken Place. And Bear can finally, finally, possess her.

The film introduces Bear as a sad “good guy” type. He’s awkward, grieving his cat, practicing confessing his love to a friend and overall uncomfortable with expressing any real feelings. It’s easy to empathize with him, but that quickly dissolves before the first act break for some viewers. Others, based on social media discourse, are completely aligned with Bear throught the whole runtime, despite him being an obvious villain because:

Bear had no idea the novelty toy would work! 

Nikki [redacted] his [redacted]!

And the dreaded, all too common: Nikki’s a crazy bitch! 

But come on, people. He’s a villain the second he realizes that wish came true and proceeds to hook up with her.

Vicious acts of sexual violence against women are a hallmark of horror — I’m thinking of I Spit on your Grave and the brutal attacks in Last House on the Left. In Obsession, the possessed woman is often hurting herself, and the assault that occurs is less overt than in those other films.

Nikki is magically stripped of her free will, which means she can’t consent. I see this glossed over in some arguments defending Bear, and it speaks to a broader conversation about coercion and how we define sexual violence.

But one aspect of this tale of manipulation and co-dependence that I haven’t seen discussed much is the film’s warning about friendships. You gotta choose your friends wisely, or proceed with caution if you’re crew is composed of fearful avoidants, which is very much Bear’s situation.

Ian, by all accounts, appears to be Bear’s best friend. At the start of the film, we see Ian and Sarah sitting in a diner with Bear, role-playing a conversation to help him practice confessing his feelings to Nikki. In that scene, Bear and Ian dismiss Sarah the moment things become uncomfortable, and Ian gives Bear some incredibly shitty advice on how to handle possible rejection from Nikki: call her a freak. (Slut-shame her playfully.)

What we don’t yet know is that this friend group is shady AF. Sarah secretly likes Bear. Bear secretly likes Nikki. Nikki is secretly hooking up with Ian, and Ian secretly likes Nikki more than he admits.

Because of this, everyone makes increasingly selfish and terrible decisions. Bear makes a wish for Nikki to love him instead of telling her how he feels and seeing if she feels the same. Then he privately deals with the consequences of his wish, and every time he’s given the opportunity to confess or take accountability, he shirks it until the damage becomes impossible to ignore.

Sarah spends most of the film trying to be Bear’s emotional support in hopes that he’ll finally see her. She’s the one who hugs him when his cat dies and is there whenever he needs comfort or reassurance. But Bear keeps her at arm’s length because she isn’t Nikki, who’s his “perfect” object of desire. And as the movie unfolds, we see this strange animosity she has toward Nikki who could really use a friend. Not a girl’s girl at all! I also peeped that they had the same boots on in their first scene together paralleling Nikki wearing her clothes and hair in the climax. What a detail!

Meanwhile, Bear is baring his soul to Ian who doesn’t have the nerve to admit he’s been sleeping with Nikki for TWO years. His sole concern is protecting trivia night. Like come on! If Ian is truly Bear’s friend, why not just say, “Hey man, Nikki and I are hooking up”? Free your man from the shackles of this fruitless crush!

And when Ian’s given the chance to make a wish that could potentially undo everything, he asks for a billion dollars instead. Not a bad wish in this economy but if your friend comes to you covered in blood, completely out of his mind, and begs you to make one simple wish to help him, why wouldn’t you at least try to soothe his nerves as you reach for the phone to call for help?

Because Ian hates him. And Bear is too self-involved to realize it. He’s also a terrible friend. They all are.

Beyond that cursed novelty toy, the real-deal horror of Obsession is being a twentysomething in a friend group full of people who would rather destroy themselves and each other than endure one vulnerable conversation. The magic simply externalizes what already exists between them: jealousy, projection, cowardice and the desperate need to be chosen without ever risking rejection.

I’d love to believe that if I’d stumbled across a One Wish Willow in one of those metaphysical mall shops in my twenties, I would’ve wished for money, or to become a world-famous auteur. But who knows? I wonder how many of us, especially at that age, would use that kind of power for something equally selfish or emotionally destructive. Are any of us really that much better than Bear at our lowest or most vulnerable moments? A truly terrifying thing to ponder.

In any case, I can’t wait to rewatch so I can catch all of the world-building details that I missed the first time around and to confirm that Sarah and Ian were indeed frienemies like I suspected from the start.