Would You Like To Speak To Her?

 Movies Watched (since last update): Obsession (2026)

October 10, 2026

I've had a lot of anxiety around Obsession, for a variety of reasons, and I'll start there before I get into discussing the film itself, because it does have a little bit of a thematic relevance to my previous entries, in which I talked a lot about communication, both personally and in the medium.

When the film came out, I wasn't terribly interested in seeing it, because...well, I've seen this one before. There have been no shortage of Monkey's Paw/Love Potion No.9/Mind Control/Robot Lover/Careful What You Wish For/Stalker movies to fill the grand canyon throughout the history of cinema, and I haven't much enjoyed watching any of them, because they make me feel ill for reasons I still haven't been able to fully articulate. Ill in a way that I cannot really enjoy the film for what it is, like triggering my mental health in a way that I feel miserable. Started with a double feature of I Spit On Your Grave/Bloodsucking Freaks when I was sixteen. Felt sick to my stomach, couldn't handle watching women be hurt like that, y'know? I can watch Jason Voorhees take out a dozen teenagers, but the emotional nature of the violence, the control, the helplessness...that made me feel awful. So I've had difficulty with those kinds of stories my whole life, so I tend to avoid cinema with those themes. Not because I don't think it's important, but because the spiraling of my mental health issues could leave me feeling awful for days. I saw Eden Lake once in my late 20's and it took me weeks to recover (though that didn't have the mind control/rape revenge stuff in it, but similar feeling). 

So I didn't need another "Woman enslaved by Bad Guy" movie in my life.

I tried to articulate that when the film came out, and was dismayed when I had people I love and respect get aggressive with me on the subject, which triggered what became the main reason I started to avoid the film: rejection sensitivity from a long life of social trauma. 

Not sure where that started.

I was always a disposable friend, for the most part, and never felt like I was allowed to express myself because, if I did, it was always misunderstood if not met with outright anger or rejection. It was always "I didn't understand," or I was stupid, or I was contrarian, or whatever. Whole life has been like that.

So I started to avoid Obsession because I was afraid I wouldn't like it (and I didn't particularly like it, feels like I oughta rip that band-aid off right now) and the same people who got upset with me for my disinterest would be extra mad that I didn't like it. 

But, in the name of personal growth, which is part of why I'm keeping this film journal (not only to talk about movies, but also what they mean to me, the things they make me confront, the things they make me feel and think, etc), I decided to push ahead and talk about the film (and you have no idea how much it took out of me to even start the film, let alone discuss it. The amount of energy and self-affirmation I needed) and, while I do admit that maybe all this baggage does create a little bit of a bias that is decidedly not in the films favor, I gave my read of it the same amount of attention I would for something I was forced to watch in a film class. 

It isn't that Obsession is a bad movie. It's not. There are some good scenes, some good effects, some shocking moments, but it left me feeling very hollow, and a little irritated. The main thing I found myself thinking about was Chasing Amy. In that film, we follow a man who falls for a lesbian, becomes her friend, pushes a bit too hard about his feelings for her, she chooses to give him a shot, his own immaturity and unresolved feelings about homosexuality and sexual identity and sexual history causes him to blow it, he loses the relationship, and grows as a person.

Chasing Amy is a pretty decent movie, but it has one huge glaring flaw: It wasn't about the girl. That whole story focuses on our heterosexual lead and his experience with all this, when the story is really about her, and I found myself thinking the same about Obsession.

Nikki and her struggle with being ostensibly possessed due to a douchebag's thoughtless wish is the real meat of the film, but the film is too busy seeing everything from Bear's perspective and there are two problems with this: 1)Bear is a man, and 2) Bear suuuuuuuuuuuuucks. Taking out even personal revulsion of the character (which is earned: Bear is unmistakably the villain protagonist of Obsession) he isn't terribly well drawn or developed as a character, just a walking bag of meat who makes faces sometimes. We know nothing about this idiot, except a collection of traits we associate with incels, or "nice guys," but the attitude of the film seems to be that, as long as we're making it clear he's bad, it's okay that we follow him through the narrative. It also feels relevant that I got the impression that this was supposed to be funny, like in an It's Always Sunny kinda way? But I don't have a lot of conversation in me about that element, but it feels relevant that the tone is darkly ironic, as if following Bear is a subversive "men are bad" joke? 

Anyway. We should be following Nikki.

Why won't this story follow me?

The most interesting moments in Obsession come when she briefly throws off control of whatever entity is controlling her (the mechanics of what is going on is woefully under-serviced in the narrative, which would be fine if it was solely macguffin, but the One Wish Willow is so load bearing in this story (it becomes a plot point in the climax, and the empty box constantly appears as a reminder of how we got here) and there is no attention given to it. I'm more curious about how this world we're inhabiting contains literal wish granting items available through casual retail and yet the world is somehow totally normal? That's like Buffy saying vampires exist without mentioning that people don't know they exist...sorry for that sub paragraph, it's bad writing. It's an awkward analogy, too, but so much of Obsession feels like a Buffy episode where Buffy never shows up). She is in there, fighting for her life, but instead of showing us that, we need Bear regretting his actions. Feels like the only version of the Monkey's Paw/Love Potion No.9/Mind Control we haven't had is the story in which the victim is the point of view character. 

Anyway. 

This is getting a little long winded and maybe a little too aggressive towards the film, and I don't really want that to be the way this goes down, so I'll talk about some positives.

I liked the party scene. It was well crafted (and actually lit, which was a nice change of pace from half of this movie being lit like a storage locker at midnight in the bad part of town) and performed, and Inde Navarette (who gives a strong performance, even if I think it's a little too showy and could have been great if she had more to do than screaming and flailing) is good in it. The moments of violence in the film are actually quite well done, solid visual effects work combined with a lot of ferocity from performers and editing alike. 

I ended up giving it a 3 star rating on letterboxd.

See?

It's mostly competently done, lighting issues and underwhelming script aside, with a spirited lead performance from a talented young actress. It just has the focus of a straight, white, cis man telling a story that really should be told from the perspective of literally anyone else. 

We should have been watching Nikki.