. 🦇 ˙

dude honestly shout out to my guards i told them to seize this guy and before i could even finish my sentence they soze him. My goats

I think the most heartbreaking part of Obsession for me was Sarah. Not her fate, but what she did to Nikki. Nikki probably considered Sarah a true friend, but when she starts behaving strangely and even hurting herself, Sarah isn't truly concerned about her, she is concerned about Bear. Nikki is clearly not in her right mind and probably emotionally vulnerable, but she only thinks Nikki is using Bear, never the other way around. And then she meets with her friend's boyfriend at two in the morning in hopes of hooking up with him since Nikki "doesn't deserve him" in her eyes. Even if she felt betrayed because Nikki knew she liked Bear, that's a shit thing to do. Ironically, Ian ended up being a better friend to her because he was the only one who questioned Bear for even a second and said he was taking advantage of Nikki. And still, he did nothing. She was failed and betrayed by all three of her friends, but damn Sarah. Et tu, Brutus?

This is the moment that sets up the actual horror of the rest of the film (because there has been NO horror before this point). Even without the wishes, this is still the turning point. Bear was given an opportunity to confess like an adult, so that he and Nikki could handle it like adults. Nikki asked because she was telling him it had passed the point of awkward/cute/whatever and they needed to talk about it and he refused to! If it hadn’t been for the wish, Bear would’ve spent the next however long longing for/lusting after Nikki and it would have only gotten more and more uncomfortable the longer he refused to admit it and also refused to let it go. The wish is a plot device to highlight and exaggerate horror of those sorts of situations. He’s behaving childishly and selfishly and it’s going to harm himself and all of his relationships—but more than any of that, it’s going to harm the person on the other side of his obsession.

i’m not a nikki freeman apologist because nikki freeman did nothing wrong what would she have to apologize for

im the fakest idgafer youll ever meet. im so chalant. i care more than i can put into words

oh and another thing that devastates me about Obsession is how much nikki is judged and blamed by those around her. sarah and ian repeatedly telling bear that he shouldn’t have to deal with her, that she’s not his responsibility, that they’re worried she’s taking advantage of him. as if they aren’t also her friends, as if they shouldn’t know her well enough to notice something is off. there’s no concern for why nikki is behaving the way she is, there’s just distain towards it. she starts acting out of character and so it must all be intentional. but bear doesn’t get questioned. bear isn’t gossiped about. nikki loses all her agency and autonomy, and all she gets for it is judgment

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.

there’s something so gutwrenching about the fact that the female characters in obsession have real dreams and wishes but never get the chance to see them realized, while both male characters waste their wishes on short-term selfish satisfaction. they were complex, free-spirited young women who just wanted to create art, and they were destroyed by a man determined to confine them to his superficial perception of them. nikki wanted to be a writer, sarah wanted to be a tattoo artist and now neither of them will get to be anything at all