Nice guys couldn't stand to be in a room with themselves (contains spoilers)

Obsession has been a sensation and underdog in the horror sphere. Made on a shoestring budget of $750k and acquired by Focus Features for $15 mill after it premiered at TIFF to rave reviews and audience reactions, the film is projected to creep near $300 million gross earnings at the box office–and renew humanity’s faith in cinema and the power of original scripts. I’ve seen the film a whopping three times, twice for work and once for pleasure. Unfortunately I endured a grating theater experience when I sat in my seat not as a journalist, but as a movie lover. Not only did almost my entire row have their phone on and turned up to full brightness, everybody in my theater laughed the entire time. I’m not a square nor a party pooper, I can acknowledge the breaks of humor and levity in Obsession, the comedy within its more absurd and hyperbolic moments. But I can’t really see what’s particularly funny about scenes of Nikki staring off into space, face blank, as Bear has sex with her. I also cannot find it in me to dig through the bleak tragedy and chuckle at the film’s finale, which features Nikki coming out of her trance and finding herself bruised and bloodied by her own hand, everyone dead at her feet. Many movie goers have echoed similar complaints online, how audiences in certain screenings don’t take things seriously anymore. The defense is that some laugh when they are uncomfortable, my rebuttal is that it’s annoying and you need to grow up or rent the movie at home for $24.99 on Amazon so the rest of us don’t have to suffer.

It was as I was leaving this third screening of Obsession that I started thinking about some of the film’s themes many have already spoken about. The covert villainy of the “nice guy” archetype, the concept of Nikki as an objectified woman or a rape victim and the ending of the film where she is left to bear (no pun intended) the brunt of the suffering and consequence of Baron’s actions. My rant on the car ride home to my boyfriend about all of these things was incited by a woman exiting the theater behind me, who was complaining that the film featured nothing but the suffering of a woman at the hands of a man, and she was tired of seeing this in films. “Maybe I’m too woke” she chortled, as I rushed across a busy street to escape her.

I understand the general sentiment but, you can’t be that stupid. The entire point of the movie is that Nikki is stripped of her autonomy (one of the only reads of the film Curry Barker has affirmed) and turned into an empty vessel in which her “friend” pours his expectations of her into. The arresting of her mind and body that causes her to act out and inclines her towards her obsession uncontrollably, IS. THE. WHOLE. POINT. The portrayal of Nikki is very sympathetic where it counts, when her veil lifts and the real her, unmoored, begs Bear to end her suffering. And his cold uncaring reaction, creeping out of the room and into the night. Not every movie is supposed to make you feel good, and making you feel bad is not an indication of the director’s morality or misogyny.

I thought about all of this, and I thought about Mr. Nice Guy as an archetype. Bear is textbook. Meek and sniveling and insecure. The first time we meet him he’s pulled a waitress away from her work to indulge him. Be his stand in Nikki so he can practice confessing his love to her. Beginning with a flat “stand in” for Nikki is basically foreshadowing for the rest of the film. Bear’s shyness is not his primary obstacle between himself and the relationship he fantasizes about with his friend, it’s his personality. Or lack of. The men of Obsession (particularly Bear and Ian) bring out the best and worst qualities of each other in an interesting way. Where Bear is seemingly sensitive, Ian is unserious and a bit inflammatory. Where Bear is blank or boring or two dimensional, we see Ian is fun loving and passionate about his hobbies and social life. Bear is the static of a disconnected television, there is nothing about him for Nikki–or anybody else for that matter, to like. And he knows it, that’s why he agonizes, apologies, fumbles.

The shots we see of his home are dark and sparse, he is floating through the ghost of someone else’s life. He inherited his grandma’s home and has done nothing to make it his own. One of my very smart mutuals from my tiktok days Mandi Bossard made a great video analyzing Bear’s living conditions. To echo her findings: the house is full of old lady stuff. The 80’s art deco revival lamps, Nikki hiding in the dark next to towering piles of hat boxes. We see a flimsy Wayfair looking black desk haphazardly shoved into the corner of the living room for Bear’s computer. In the bedroom, small flyer sized posters he’s hung up to make it his own. The effort feels pathetic and half hearted. His clothing, equally bland and uninformed by any inklings of personal taste or opinion. Plain white tees, a bunch of grandpa sweaters in office-meeting-room color palettes. Even when his cat dies in a rather shocking fashion, he doesn’t seem to really care. He has no personal ties to anything, he has no opinions, no objections. He moves about the world as an unnerving blank slate. Maybe this is why he has attached so much hope for his future and what his life could be onto Nikki. She is full of life, talented, outspoken, opinionated. She has dreams that confuse him. He can’t even seem to fathom why she would be unsatisfied at the semi deserted music store they all work at. Her value and sparkle would afford him value and sparkle by proxy.

After Bear makes his wish and Nikki changes, instant like a light switch, she loses all of her personality. This makes sense of course, her main inexplicable objective in her brain has become Bear. Be close to him, love him more than anything, make him happy, be what and who he wants. The wish makes Nikki fervent, she wants to pander to Bear and do things to win his affection. But this poses difficulty when there is nothing notable about Bear. Mandi also mentions in her video that this may be why Obsessed Nikki harps so much on Bear’s cat. It’s practically the only significant thing about him. What else does Bear like or do? He goes to work and seems to have no feelings about that, he goes to trivia each week and has no feelings about that, his cat died and he was somewhat bummed and he loves Nikki. Well, we already checked one box, Nikki is here, so that leaves the cat.

In any scenario where romantic obsession or objectification is present, the method used to win over the object of desire is typically mirroring. It’s a trope we see in film often and behavior we point out and mock in “pick me’s”. That girl likes that book? I will pretend it is my favorite. That guy likes video games? I will pretend I’m the only girl around who does. The assumption is often used to discredit the genuine interests and hobbies of women, but nonetheless. Mirroring is common when trying to win someone’s affections. Aligning yourself with their tastes and interests. So what happens when Nikki becomes a mirror for Bear? What happens when all of the quirks he loved about her disappear, and in their place…nothing. Just himself. This is the point where Bear loses interest, and I don’t even necessarily think it’s because Nikki’s behavior became terrifying. It’s because Bear ends up in a relationship with himself, and though he may not be aware of that, he has to face the fact that he is empty. Or rather accept that he is being met with emptiness.

All Nikki cares about is Bear, and what Bear cares about is nothing. They become colorful birds staring into a mirror, parroting each other. He wants her to do something entertaining, she wants him to like her and she has no material to go off of as to what exactly he likes. It’s basically selfcest, which makes Nikki’s Hansel and Gretel horror erotica reading even more fascinating to me. Wish Nikki seems to have some basic understanding that there is a sameness or kinship between them, that what Bear has created in wish Nikki is akin to some kind of biological depravity. Once Nikki is emptied out and has nothing to fill herself back up, because Bear has nothing to give, he can’t stand to be around her. The irony in this is that he expected real Nikki to be not only content, but enthusiastic to spend her time around this same flavor of emptiness he grew to hate when she reflected it back to him.

All of this points to an overarching theme of objectification, and a sense of entitlement in men like this who want the world though they have nothing to offer it. The objectification of Nikki feeds into the themes of rape that audiences have been arguing about. Some point to the uncomfortable sex scene where wish Nikki stares blankly at the wall as Bear thrusts atop her, not noticing because he doesn’t bother to look at her. The scene has all the makings of assault when you think of real Nikki as trapped in her body, a voyeur to her own dismantling. Later when Nikki is asleep and real Nikki begs Bear to kill her, this point is strengthened. Others argue against this, pointing to the fact that wish Nikki is simply placating Bear by moaning enthusiastically though her face and body seem indifferent to the sex. The rebuttal being that wish Nikki is just trying to make Bear happy, the “entity” has no interest in sex and is just indulging the object of its obsession. Real Nikki is not conscious during the sex, citing when she momentarily gains lucidity and says “I’ve never been with you, Bear”. Curry Barker has made it clear this is not a possession movie, and that the wish Bear made propels Nikki towards him and she just can’t explain why. Her mind and body are compelling her to do things she typically would not and in moments of lucidity, she’s more confused than anything else. The scene where Bear calls the wish company and the mysterious man on the other line puts (what we assume to be) real Nikki on the phone confuses this assertion a bit. Real Nikki seems to be screaming in agony on the phone, and later begs Bear to kill her, saying that “she” (wish Nikki) is asleep, and not to wake her up. Making a distinction between the two, rather than being one whole person experiencing a “puppet on a string” phenomena. While Obsession is fun and original and has all the necessary pieces of a hit (many have called it technically perfect) Curry has some inconsistencies in his storytelling and the explaining of his own story that I’ve noted above. All clues point to her being trapped in her body, feeling everything but wishing it would stop. Even with the sex scene taken out of consideration, the entire film has been likened to a rape allegory: a man stripping a woman of her autonamy for his own gratification, ignoring her pleas and leaving her to sit in the mess by herself. Where she will live with the consequences and after effects for the rest of her life.

I don’t think any of these readings on Obsession are necessarily incorrect, I’m of the belief that once any art has left the hands of its creator it can take on shapes and lives of its own. But I do think a lot of these nuances and layers were happy accidents. I’ve met and briefly spoken with Curry, and at risk of losing any pseudo-journalistic street cred i may have accrued by saying this: I don’t think any rape allegories or meditations on the expectations men thrust upon us were on his mind at all. I don’t actually think he cares all that much about those topics or the exploration of them. He made a good movie, really good–obviously. But as one part of a sketch comedian duo whose punchlines were often bro-y gay jokes or something about someone’s girlfriend, he doesn’t strike me as particularly sympathetic to the “female experience”. I wouldn’t go as far as to say evil raging misogynist, but as benignly as possible, I just don’t think he’s trying to go on a David-Lynch-Laura-Palmer-Sensitive-Rape-Portrayal journey. Maybe I’m biased from our five minute interview in which he stopped looking at and listening to me as I spoke to him, opting to initiate a conversation with a random man to our left instead. From his press tour and second “you broke so many records!” press tour it sounds like he simply wanted to make a crazy girlfriend movie, and that at most he was aware of and putting intention behind the stripping of Nikki’s autonomy. But it seems to stop there. He notes many times that’s why the wish is cursed. The One Wish Willow as a mystical object isn’t inherently evil, but Bear’s wish is inherently cursed because of the implications. Because of what must happen to Nikki for him to get what he wants.

I think that’s why the thematic scraps audiences have parsed through have no hard answers or satisfying conclusions. Why there is ample evidence for both sides of every argument as to what exactly the film is trying to say. It’s because Curry wasn’t thinking about these things at all. He wasn’t thinking about objectification or rape or being a prisoner in your own body. He was thinking about how scary it is when your girlfriend goes bananas, and how cruel and vindictive she can be. What we love about Obsession, really, is owed to Inde Navarrette. The nuance that shines through lies in how she played Nikki and not even necessarily how Curry wrote her. He just got lucky in casting the perfect actor who would be determined to ground the audience in her character’s humanity. She flowed and moved within the gray area of his script, swimming in the spaces between.

I think all of the conversations surrounding Obsession have been fascinating, and as a professional complainer I’ve had my fair share of fun standing on my soapbox and going on and on about the plight of women and the evil of insecure men. The older I get and the more movies I watch, the more I enjoy moving within the gray area of film analysis. There are of course some themes and intentional choices in films that are hard facts. Interpretations can only go so far and are only fun if you can point to the source material for at least some shred of evidence. But, the conversations some films spark and the things they prompt me to think about and write about are more valuable to me. I become an archeologist, brushing away thin layers of dirt and searching for things that may not even be there, and I don’t mind because the hunt is half the fun.

Anyway, turn your damn phone off in the theater.