Obsession isn’t just the biggest horror movie since Sinners; it’s the surprise box office phenomenon of the year, and now it’s available on premium VOD as its record-breaking theatrical run continues. So basically, however you like your horror movies — darkened theater with a crowd screaming along or lights-on in the living room — Obsession is available to capture your attention, and possibly your demonically assisted devotion.
But what, exactly, is Curry Barker‘s debut feature about a romantic wish gone wrong saying about gender politics, relationships, and, uh, obsession, if anything? Luckily, your friends (and not more than friends!) at DECIDER are here to decode the ending (and all the rest) of Obsession. Read on for a quick catch-up on what happens in the film, and our analysis of what it all means in the end. Naturally, major spoilers lie ahead.
Obsession Plot Summary
While Obsession isn’t a traditional demonic-possession movie, it is a form of that horror sub-genre. If you haven’t heard about it yet, it’s about a meek twenty-something nicknamed Bear (Michael Johnston) nursing a crush on his longtime friend Nikki (Inde Navarratte), whom he’s known at least since high school. Bear and Nikki both work alongside other longtime townies at their friend’s dad’s music shop, and Bear keeps trying to work up the courage to ask Nikki out, at the urging of their mutual buddy Ian (Cooper Tomlinson). But instead of confessing his feelings, Bear wishes on a novelty toy called a One Wish Willow (which he initially purchased as a gift for Nikki) that she would love him more than anyone else in the world. Almost immediately, Nikki’s affection for Bear morphs from close friend with ambiguous romantic intention to full-on love, lust, and devotion.
Or is it? It becomes clear that this isn’t the same Nikki, with magically clarified feelings for Bear. She has glitchy moments that imply the “real” Nikki is trapped within her own body, as some kind of force takes over and enacts its mission to obsess over Bear. That also explains why “Nikki” has ways of showing affection that don’t quite seem in-character with her early scenes as a semi-sardonic but soulful aspiring writer — or, for that matter, within the realms of normal human behavior. The possessed version of Nikki does stuff like creating a gruesome memorial for Bear’s dead cat with the animal’s remains, and then, a bit later, cooking said remains for his packed lunch. (It’s a little fuzzy as to why this force interprets these things as acts of love, but presumably it doesn’t have much experience in the human realm.) She also fixates on Bear to the point of paralysis, standing in his apartment all day awaiting his return or watching him sleep all night. Eventually she murders their friend Sarah (Megan Lawless) out of jealousy.
This material is where the movie becomes open to (mis)interpretation. Plenty seem to have received Obsession as a nightmare version of the stereotype of a clingy, possessive girlfriend, and Barker is certainly playing with that trope through the possessed Nikki’s behavior, which is often grotesque and sometimes (as with the cat-leftovers gross-out) grotesquely funny. At the same time, what’s truly scary about this situation isn’t really the threat Nikki poses to Bear, but, as in a demonic possession story, the harm done to her own body and self by an outside force that refuses to surrender her. (This hasn’t stopped some viewers from looking at the movie mainly through a crazy-girlfriend lens. I spoke to some audience members at a packed screening, and some women wondered aloud if they had acted like Nikki in the past, seemingly ignoring that it’s not really Nikki acting like that at all. It seems akin to a child wondering if their tantrum was on par with Regan in The Exorcist.)
There’s admittedly some resulting disconnect in a horror movie where the person experiencing the most direct terror isn’t the film’s point-of-view character, though that’s also part and parcel to the possession subgenre, which tends to blur the line between empathetic horror and a selfish desire to look away. Whether Obsession fully works as a satirical critique of male weaknesses and insecurity is debatable. Ultimately, Bear may not be an interesting enough character to fully sustain that kind of a movie, especially with so many scenes that mostly restate the same basic problem: Nikki has been made a prisoner of his desire. In a sense, all of the movie’s characters are too trapped by Bear’s selfish (though not intentionally cruel) wish to really develop much further. But the movie is effective on the most immediate level, helped immeasurably by Navarrette’s physical performance as the not-quite-Nikki, and the film’s non-demonic, non-religious approach to a possession narrative. So what does the ending do with these ingredients?
Obsession Ending Explained: Can the Wish Be Unone?
After Nikki murders Sarah, Bear finally seems to understand that he needs to do something beyond his wishy-washy attempts to reverse the wish or correct “Nikki”‘s behavior. He obtains more One Wish Willows and tries to convince Ian to use it to undo his wish (because Bear, having made one wish, cannot make another). Ian, not believing the toy actually works, wishes for a billion dollars instead — and that, too, is immediately granted. With one willow left, Bear attempts to get Nikki to wish away her own possession. She refuses, and also shoots Ian, who shows up at Bear’s apartment.
Despondent, Bear locks himself in his bathroom and attempts to overdose on pills, having been previously told by the One Wish Willow customer service that his death will end his wish. At the last minute, he attempts to reverse that decision and vomit up the pills. At that moment, the possessed Nikki finds the last One Wish Willow and uses it, presumably wishing for Bear’s devotion to her. Again the wish comes true; Bear emerges from the bathroom and kisses Nikki. This interrupts his attempts to vomit up the pills, however, and after the kiss he slumps over, dead from the overdose. Nikki prepares to commit suicide alongside him, but his death finally snaps her out of the possession, and the real Nikki returns to her body. She screams in terror at the dead bodies surrounding her.
So, yeah, the ending to Obsession isn’t especially ambiguous. Bear receives a comeuppance of sorts for his wish, but with two of his three closest friends dead, and only Nikki surviving, scarred but hopefully intact. It’s very much the “all are punished” Romeo and Juliet ending. Barker only really leaves us with a few logistical questions.
One is how aware the real Nikki was of everything going on after she was wished into submission. There are moments throughout the film where she peeks through, most notably on Bear’s customer-service call (where a representative offers to put her on the line, and Bear then hears the sound of Nikki screaming from what seems like some kind of purgatory) and in a scene where she says the possessed version is dormant/asleep, and she begs Bear to kill her, which he refuses (seemingly in a snit that the real Nikki would rather die than live like this, easily his most damning moment in the film). Is she watching the events of the film unfold as a prisoner in her body? Does she only occasionally wrest control from some kind of further-away hell dimension, only faintly aware of what’s happening in her absence? It’s one of the movie’s most chilling ambiguities, and you could make the argument that its lack of answers here mirrors Bear’s ultimate selfishness. When he has a moment with what seems to be the real Nikki, his only question is whether it would really be so bad to be his girlfriend. It might be the scariest moment of the film.
The other question is whether it would have ever been possible to undo the wish with Bear and Nikki both intact. Would someone else wishing away Bear’s initial wish actually work, or would it have a similar monkey’s-paw effect, causing unforeseen damages in other way? It seems like an easy path toward more misunderstanding. After all, could anyone secondhand-wishing to undo Bear’s wish truly know what they’re wishing for, not fully understanding it firsthand? (More absurdly, would a flatlining approach — killing Bear and then reviving him — suffice to break Nikki’s curse?) The movie doesn’t say either way, but it strongly implies that Bear must be sacrificed, whether willingly or not, to return Nikki’s full personhood. Maybe that’s why Bear fails to develop as a character beyond a certain point. Earlier than he understands, his fate has been sealed.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.