Thoughts on "Obsession" (2025)

with spoilers…

“Obsession” purports itself as the latest monkey’s-paw cautionary tale, repeating many other typical horror tropes along the way, but with the level of gore that (I guess) audiences have grown accustomed/desensitized to. Inde Navarrette, the actress who played Nikki, absolutely sold her role—in a way that the film would not have worked without—and the gore was realistic enough to be as visually unsettling as the psychological toll of the film.

But what also really stood out to me were the takeaways from viewers who apparently saw Baron (“Bear”) as an antagonist, and that’s what I wanted to talk about.

One experiences this film entirely differently than I, if they perceive Bear as willingly continuing the “relationship” because he’s still “getting something out of it.” I had an entirely different read while watching. Sure, after Bear’s initial freakout regarding Nikki’s strange behavior, they have a bit of a honeymoon phase that appears mutually consensual. But from the moment he discovers Nikki isn’t truly inhabiting her body anymore, the entire dynamic changes. To me it’s clear he is a victim 100%. He and Nikki are both unmistakably victims of whatever evil force trapped Nikki and torments Bear. There is no reason to assume Bear’s wish involved willfully trapping Nikki’s psyche, and the entity that replaced Nikki (precisely by replacing Nikki) failed to even deliver upon the wish. Bear is trapping Nikki? No, they were both trapped by the entity (and we never quite find out what it is).

Thus, Nikki is stuck in some screaming hell we never see, while Bear is visibly stuck in a silent hell, unable to get help from anyone (he knows that not even his friends will believe him), and anything he does to try to get away from the monster only sets her/it off.

It seems some viewers think men always want sex, regardless of where it comes from, and therefore Bear willingly kept Monster Nikki under his thumb, because he was still getting intimacy (which “of course” he must want!). But to me it couldn't be more obvious that everything Bear did for Monster Nikki, from the moment her threats began, was because he was terrified, scared and hopeless. The entity raped both characters. They were both victims of it usurping their agency.

Due to my life experiences, it was extremely difficult not only to watch a guy getting misled into giving himself over (sexually) to a woman without fully understanding what was happening… but also to discover that viewers were actually viewing him as essentially a rapist himself, willingly and intentionally taking advantage of someone, rather than himself being taken advantage of. To me it was horrifically clear the entity trapped and tormented them both.

Thus the film is not a cautionary tale about what happens when we get our wishes, but rather a cautionary tale about letting gender-based biases presume power dynamics that are quite different from what empathy and life experience can tell us.