When frustrated would-be beau Bear uses a Wishing Willow on his eternal crush Nikki, things spiral out of control in outrageous obsession.
The movie has quite polarizing reactions – either you love it or you hate Obsession, there is no middle ground. No mercy, no pity either, this is the kind of movie that shows off the absolute insidiousness of the more quiet obsessions in a way that gets under your skin and refuses to leave. With good tricks of atmosphere, well-placed sound bites and stings, and astounding performances pulled from the two leads, most especially Inde Navarette as Nikki, the film is an absolute Indie Horror treat. Make sure you’re prepared to make the right wish, and lets get into this!
Let’s be real here – Bear (Michael Johnston) really is no kind of boyfriend material, and aside from being milquetoast and awkward as hell, he’s also incredibly selfish and narrow-minded. We begin with a pregame scene where Bear uses some friends to try and help him have “the talk” with his crush Nikki, and while the scene is mildly charming because of its awkwardness, it doesn’t exactly have us rooting for Bear to win his girl. And his BFF Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) isn’t exactly the most helpful type, which is odd, considering how profoundly Bear professes his eternal love for Nikki.
The full first act can actually be totally characterized by this one word – awkward. Bear is awkward about wanting to confess his crush to Nikki, Ian is awkward about a giant secret he harbors about Nikki but still supposedly wants to help Bear, and Nikki herself is awkward about trying to be pals with everybody and yet still, wtf to do with this giant confession Bear just dropped in her lap. Everything is awkward, yet the friends press on, doing trivia night awkwardly together and in general trying to act as though one of them isn’t trying to shove two of them together, come hell or high water. And after Bear somehow gets the idea that Nikki would be into, like, crystals and stuff, Bear makes a visit to an occult shop, where he, say it with me now, awkwardly ends up eventually purchasing a thing called a One Wish Willow.
Despite being touted as “for entertainment purposes only”, the One Wish Willow nevertheless has instructions, warnings, and even a Help Line number to call. Absolutely none of this deters Bear from using it after being somewhat gently rejected, and to wish that Nikki would love him more than anything in the whole f*cking world, yes he did actually use those words, is remarkably selfish and even cruel. The tiny bits of awkward that were charming are rapidly disappearing, as Nikki suddenly does an actual literal 180 and begins showering Bear with rather obsessive attention. Smothering even, you might say.
What to do when your man has lost his beloved cat, and you’ve suddenly realized you love him more than anything in this whole f*cking world, and want to make him feel better? If you guessed dig up the poor felines remains and make a bloody shrine out of the parts, and leave it in his house, I question your life choices and recommend you see a therapist, but also, applaud your ability to see into the mind of the now demonically obsessed. Poor Nikki wasn’t the bestest most innocent person in the world either, lying about some things to garner sympathetic attention as she has been, but honestly, few brain-dead twenty-somethings just starting out into the world deserve what happened to her. The moment that “for entertainment purposes only” twig went snap in half in the hands of an incredibly selfish, one could almost say obsessed already, boy-man, the woman Nikki that he wanted so much went buh-bye anyway. And it was Bear that did it to her.
Bear and Nikki are now officially a couple, though a couple of what seems to be what Bear is asking himself not too much later, when Nikki begins acting, lets say, even more weird than she has been. Somehow. When Bear asks for clarifications on rumors he had heard, Nikki goes from calm little girlfriend patter to shrieking Karen in the restaurant in less time than it takes to have a heart attack. She is entirely unpredictable, savagely possessive, and both quietly terrifying and screamingly horrifying in equal measure, causing everyone around Bear to back away like they would a dangerous animal. And what does the cowardly Bear do while all this is going on to him, because of him? Well, what can he do? Bear endures, mostly in silence, because trying to reason with whatever Nikki has become usually just earns him more ghastly shrieking. Even trying the unhelpful Helpline for the Wishing Willow does absolutely nothing, other than reminding Bear that this was his doing, his fault, his Wish.
Things are building to a grotesque confrontation, the inevitable dust-up between the eternally awkward Bear and the poor possessed Nikki, and we all know who wields the real power in this dynamic. Having your sinister girlfriend inform you, as she stands there covered in blood and gore from head to toe after committing a shocking act of violence, that this was all your fault, is indeed a truly horrifying, and chillingly correct, sight.
Decide who, if anyone, deserves your sympathy in the polarizing Obsession, available on Peacock now, and on Netflix in later November 2026!
Reviewed by Alicia Glass