A Vamp's Reflection

i do think what gets ignored about carrie as a character is that she’s an incredibly easy target to bully; she’s a chubby, sheltered acne ridden teenage girl who wears frumpy grandma clothes and regurgitates the jesus freak shit her violently abusive mother tells her. she has violent thoughts about her classmates and is uncomfortable to be around. she’s far more interesting being a victim that’s somewhat uncomfortable to be in the head of than a tragic waif. she’s not a martyr, she’s a child and a child who’s been victimised her whole life shouldn’t have to be kind and angelic to be recognised as a victim. suffering teenage girls shouldn’t just be presented on screen as toned down glamorous thin ophelias, suffering teenage girls can be fat and poor and think violently. i do think we need to examine why culturally we need teenage girls to be beautiful and kind to valorise their suffering and treat it as bad

the first description of carrie on the first fucking page of the book is "Carrie stood among them stolidly, a frog among swans. She was a chunky girl with pimples on her neck and back and buttocks [...]" like can we be serious

you can whinge about how "fat in the 1970s isn't actually fat" but for all intents and purposes to the narrative and the characters within it she is, functionally, fat. she is treated like she is fat. she is stephen king's version of fat. the distinction between "real fat" and "fake fat" means very little based on the way the book and everyone inside it talks about her

i love it when a new horror movie comes out because some of my mutuals are like wow!!! life changing cinema!! and some of my mutuals are like. what the fuck was that trash tbh!! and the rest of my mutuals are like i long to have a beautiful lesbian romance with the girlbeast

maybe this is too woke but i really hate the trope of naked older women = scary or vomit inducing or gross or whatever. like you even see it used in horror on occasion like oooooo so scary theres a woman with saggy boobs and wrinkles. There is something to be said for unconsensual veiwing of nudity. sure. it’s uncomfortable and violating for someone to be nude in front of you that you don’t want to see. but rarely that’s seen as the issue and instead the real ‘horror’ or gross out joke is the very idea of a woman who does not have a body that is sexually desirable to men. The very idea of an older woman’s body is treated like it’s something that we should all know is gross, sick and wrong. It’s just something that really bothers me

#its been in horror a lot more recently and its like. ENOUGH

also all the sympathy from viewers for sarah over nikki is so weird like sure, she didn't deserve to die at all ... but imo she was an awful friend. like here's a girl you've known forever, who's told you that she's not into a man two days before she starts acting insane over him, is clearly having a mental breakdown (at the very least), and instead of checking in with her, or making sure she's okay, you try to shoot your shot with the guy she's with??? really??? not to mention her line to bear about 'how it wasn't fair for him to have to deal with her problems'. it pissed me off so much how ian and sarah were nikki's friends too and they never actually spoke to her once the wish kicked in and instead asked bear if she was doing okay or not. what sort of fucking friends are that??? every single one of her friends let her down. obviously what bear did to her was by far the worst but the others were awful to her too.

Obsession posting on main but it really is incredible how well the whole thing is set up just in the first few minutes. The first shot is a POV from a woman's perspective as Bear talks at us and tells us his feelings. It cuts occasionally to the girl thinking this is cute but is clearly a little uncomfortable, only to learn that this person is not Nikki, but just some poor waitress who was on her break and who they presumably kinda roped into this. They don't even listen to her thoughts on the matter, start talking exclusively to each other, and then they just thank her and tell her she can go now and her entire break was apparently used up on their confession practice. Just kind of using women for an imagined scenario and not wondering what she might think about it even in the first five minutes. Incredible stuff.

I need to see it again to pinpoint the details but I really like how the opening scene of obsession (2026) is Bear practicing his confession with a diner waitress... like already you have a woman (who is not Nikki) fulfilling the role for her, saying the response she thinks Bear would like to hear, but the moment this woman gives her own opinion, offering genuine advice to Bear (something along the lines of buying Nikki something she likes, like her favorite candy, flowers, etc)... Bear disregards it... but then ends up using Ian's recommendation from this same conversation (calling Nikki "Freaky Nikki")... like god its all already right there

One thing about Obsession (2026) that I enjoyed was that it almost asks you to feel empathy for the entity possessing Nikki as well as the real one. Like, obviously the things she's doing are horrific and fucked up, but I think the scene where Bear is asking her to "just be Nikki!" and she eventually just desperatly screams "I can't be Nikki!" does a really good job of showcasing the entity's inner feelings. She's been created with the sole purpose of loving this guy more than anyone else but no matter how perfect it is or how much he claims to love her, its not her that he loves, its Nikki. And any time she stops pretending to be Nikki, he reacts (albeit rightfully) with disgust and horror. She can't be Nikki because Nikki would never love Bear, and so Bear will never love her.

mike flanagan you are going to hell

Something about the bastardization of the story time and time again proves that nobody in power really cares about the people who would resonate with King’s Carrie White. A girl so ugly and repulsive she’s been removed from her own story. The societal need for women and girls to be constantly perceived as attractive is what fuels a fair amount of her torment in the book, but that person isn’t even allowed to exist on the screen. We cannot empathize with her; it isn’t allowed. It’s fascinating to me.

I genuinely appreciate how obsession doesn't try to frame bear as morally grey but just fully leans into how deplorable he is. a lesser movie would have tried to give him redeeming moments along the way but no, at every single crossroads bear makes the wrong choice. when the customer service rep asks him if he wants to cancel his wish, he says no, and asks to alter it. when nikki, the real one, begs him to kill her, he asks her "if it would be so bad to love him", and right at the end, backs out of killing himself and tries to throw the pills up. he is the villain, not another victim, not a confused, cowardly boy, the villain.

nikki begging bear to kill her and all he does is ask whats so bad about being with him. one of the most nauseating scenes ive ever witnessed

Just saw the interview where Curry Barker explained that it's totally possible to get a normal wish from the One Wish Willow, and I love the way they did that so much. The reason Obsession happened isn't because it's trying to twist Bear's desires into something evil. It's not even because he phrased his want wrong. Obsession happened because Bear got his hands on a magic item that could do anything in existence, and chose to force someone to fall in love with him, which is an inherently evil thing to do.