Obsession Turned the Nice Guy Trope Into an Actual Horror Movie

[00:00:00]You sure there's nothing [music] else I can do?

[00:00:02]>> Yeah, I mean, as long as you live.

[00:00:05]Sounds to me like you have a moral obligation to be there for her.

[00:00:10]>> Horror movies are basically a time capsule for whatever fear society has at the time. In the ' 50s, that fear was annihilation. Godzilla showed up less than a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That's basically Japan's nuclear trauma. America got its own version around the same time, just with different monsters. Giant bugs cooked by radiation, aliens landing, whole towns getting taken over by something that crawled out of space. Then came invasion of the body snatchers, and the fear shifted to something quieter. Playing with the idea of someone who looks exactly like the person you love, sounds like them, too. Except whatever actually made them themselves is gone. It was a fear shaped by cold war paranoia. The threat could be your neighbor or spouse, someone who passed every visual check and still wasn't really there anymore.

[00:01:04]And this fear isn't actually new to horror either. Steepford Wives was doing a version of it back in 1975 with husbands who traded their wives in for dosel replicas. Exmachina picked it back up in 2014. What's changed by the time we get to Companion, which came out last year, is that the premise barely needs explaining anymore because a real version of it already kind of exists.

[00:01:30]That's the genre working as intended, reflecting the anxieties of 2026, as apparently intimacy has become just another product with an add to cart button.

[00:01:41]>> Do you like me?

[00:01:42]>> What?

[00:01:43]>> Cuz if you do, now's the time to tell me.

[00:01:46]I think we're good friends.

[00:01:48]>> The second conversation worth having here too centers on one very specific type of guy who we pretty universally at this point refer to as the nice guy. For decades, pop culture romanticized him outright. For example, Jacob Black spent three movies quietly devoted to a girl who chose someone else and the narrative wanted us to see that as noble. The grand gesture only works as a genre convention because of a very long-standing agreement to read persistence as proof of devotion. Nobody wanted to clock it as a warning sign and that's been cracking for a while now.

[00:02:28]>> Hello you.

[00:02:30]>> Joel Goldberg is a running version of the same program except you forces us to sit inside his head while he does it and it stops feeling noble almost immediately. Obsession is the point where both of these conversations collide. Horror specific dread of intimacy without consent and pop culture slow reluctant realization that the nice guy might have been the scary one all along. Curry Baker's obsession tells that story through a guy called Bear who spent years in love with his friend Nikki from a distance and never once told her. He finds an object called the One Wish Willow and he uses it to wish that she'd love him back. Now said out loud, it sounds like the setup for about a hundred different romcoms. Nice guy pines gets his dream girl ro credits except almost immediately Nikki starts glitching and the rest of the film traces the ripple effects and the toll it takes on her him and everyone standing anywhere near it. So let's start with the part of the fantasy we've already been sold. The one this movie is actually here to take apart.

[00:03:38]Okay, let's talk about it.

[00:03:41]>> I wish Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone in the entire world.

[00:03:45]>> With most of the romance films we've watched, the entire plot hinges on sheer unyielding persistence. The good friend who's quietly pined from the sidelines for a while and never gave up. In pop culture, we've been conditioned to view that kind of relentless hyperfixation as ultimate proof of true love. But Obsession pulls a loose thread of that trope and just completely lets the whole thing unravel into pure psychological horror. A lot of you guys commented how the film should have been included in my Evolution of the Nice Guy video. If you haven't seen it yet, I'll put a link up here so you can go check it out, but after watching it, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. But I also think the film does something meaner and more interesting than simply critiquing the standard internet nice guy stereotype because it's critiquing the idea of ownership disguised as romance. The fundamental horror of the film comes from taking a deeply familiar and universally accepted romance fantasy and pushes it one step further.

[00:04:43]>> I know you like me, Bear.

[00:04:44]>> No, I Why do you like me? See, the thing about Bear is that he's not even really ready for a real relationship. He doesn't actually want one with Nikki because that would be terrifying. He couldn't even be vulnerable enough to put himself out there. A real relationship with her will be messy. He'd have to accept things he simply can't tolerate, like the reality that Nikki might not be the person he's created in his head, or she might have her own messy interior life, and most frightening, the complete freedom to reject him entirely. Now granted, it's not like he even truly believed it would work when he tried it.

[00:05:21]But even the wording he used with the wish told us a lot because he could have asked for the confidence to make a move or to make her say yes to a date, which isn't perfect either, but it would at least give him the chance to explore a romantic relationship. Or he could even have asked the wish to make her tell him how she feels about him, but he didn't.

[00:05:39][music] The wish appeal to him because he took Nikki's choice out the equation, bypassing the scary, vulnerable parts of love where the person gets to say no.

[00:05:48]It's the ultimate eraser of someone else's agency just to protect his own ego. When I have a crush on a guy, no one knows.

[00:05:56]>> I mean, in the car, Nikki literally said if she had a crush on someone, they'd probably never know. Suggesting that he may have actually had a chance, but he was too wrapped up in his own feelings that he barely even registered it. I do think the film leaves that intentionally ambiguous because we never truly find out how Nikki truly felt about him. And I think it's because in the end it didn't actually matter to bear. Her feelings were never the thing he was prioritizing. So why would the film give us an answer to a question that he himself never bothered to ask? [music] That's also why I think that there's not much room to give him the benefit of the doubt because he made the wish after Nikki asked him point blank if he liked her. To me, that seemed reason like she already knew how he felt or at least had an idea. So, instead of actually having a conversation or accepting whatever answer she could give him, he phrased the wish in a way that would guarantee the outcome he wanted.

[00:06:49]>> What would be so bad?

[00:06:53]What's so bad about being with me?

[00:06:55]>> OH, BROTHER, THIS GUY STINKS.

[00:06:58]>> TOWARDS THE end of the film, when the real Nikki shows up, the first thing he asked was, "What would be so wrong about being with me?" And that question is very telling because he doesn't actually care what she wants. He was asking her to justify not wanting him. Like a no only counts if she's got a good enough reason. He still doesn't get that she doesn't owe him an argument or an explanation. She can just not want him.

[00:07:21]And it's not like the supernatural stuff corrupted him or turned him into someone else. If anything, it just exposed the way he was already thinking. It brought out that classic transactional nice guy mindset that if you spent years pinging after someone and doing all the right things, you've somehow earned their love in return. Like he genuinely seemed to think the problem was that Nikki never realized how perfect they'd be together.

[00:07:45]It never once crossed his mind to ask whether that's the life she actually choose for herself. He was so wrapped up in the future he'd imagined that her own wants and choices barely registered.

[00:07:55]>> Her dad has cancer. Really? her dad in Washington that she doesn't care about.

[00:08:00]>> Which leads to the more important question in first half that asks how much did Be actually know Nikki because the film heavily implies that he basically knew nothing. He didn't even know she had been sleeping with his best friend for years. When practicing the speech he was going to give her, it was all about the nice things she done for him and how she made him feel. There was almost nothing about who she is as a person. When he wanted to replace the crystal that she lost, he didn't even know what type she'd want. Even when Wish Nikki told him about her dad being sick and how much it affected her, he just accepted it without question.

[00:08:36]Meanwhile, the other friends found it strange because they knew Nikki wasn't close with him and wouldn't have been affected by that news in the same way.

[00:08:43]What Be actually knew inside and out was himself. He knew his own longing and loneliness and this very specific fantasy that he built in his head about what a life with Nikki would look like.

[00:08:55]And so because he doesn't actually know her, she stops being a real person with her own feelings, wants, and complexities and gets reduced to a character in his personal self-pity narrative. Before The Wish, the audience naturally sympathized with Bear. He looks sweet and harmless, and most of us can relate to that stink of unrequited longing. But once the wish was made and Nikki became a completely different person, Bear didn't hesitate [music] to sllight into relationship with her. But because it wasn't something Nikki chose freely, it doesn't actually mean anything. And that's the darker side of the unrequited love fantasy. When given total control, the nice guy's desire looks like captivity. And all of this accumulates in what I think is the most beautiful haunting irony of the entire film. Bear achieves the exact benchmark that every obsessive romantic lead in cinematic history strives for. He gets the girl and she loves him more than anything in the entire world. But the result is a living nightmare. Bear was originally drawn to Nikki because she was this vibrant unique individual. But the wish only worked by taking away the very things that made her who she was.

[00:10:09]In order to guarantee she would never leave him, he had to strip away her independence and her agency. And the most disturbing part is that for most of the film, he didn't seem to care.

[00:10:20][clears throat] He was fine being in a relationship with this hollowedout version of the person he claims to love.

[00:10:26][music] He achieved the ultimate fantasy of being loved without risk only to realize that by trying to possess the person he loved, he destroyed the very thing that made her worth loving. And for the most part, he was cool with it.

[00:10:39]So, it's a romance.

[00:10:40]>> No, it's not a romance. It's a love story.

[00:10:44]>> Isn't that the same thing?

[00:10:45]>> Unpacking how Bear confuses ownership with romance is what transitions the film from a psychological drama into an actual nightmare. Because once Nikki's agency was stripped away, we got to the real issue at the center of it, which is consent. And what happens when that choice gets taken away completely? Most romance films imply that the share volume of what you feel for someone is what makes it real, but Obsession argues that it's about choice instead. Love only means something when both people have the ability to say no since that choice is what gives the yes any meaning. Take that ability away and the so-called love becomes indistinguishable from ownership.

[00:11:27]>> I thought we were having a nice day.

[00:11:29][crying] >> We are.

[00:11:30]>> Then why does it matter?

[00:11:33]doesn't matter to me.

[00:11:34]>> When we talk about consent, our brain usually jumps straight to physical or sexual intimacy. But one of the smartest things the film does is remind us that in a healthy relationship, consent is a continuous everyday loop. Think about all the tiny voluntary choices you make with a partner, like choosing to be emotionally vulnerable and tell them a secret. Choosing to spend your Friday night with them instead of your friends, choosing to offer affection when they're having a bad day. Every single one of those decisions only carry weight because you could easily not do them.

[00:12:07]You could choose to stay home. You could choose to keep your walls up. Bear never has to risk either one. The one wish Willow settles the question before Nikki ever gets a chance to answer it. Which means he skips past the one thing that actually makes being vulnerable with someone terrifying. And this is where the film takes a hard turn into horror theory. But it does it in a way that's incredibly subtle. If you look at classic body horror like The Fly, The Thing, or any possession film, the horror comes from visceral violation.

[00:12:39]The body gets infected, mutated, or physically hijacked by a parasite or a demon. There's a lot of blood, gore, or some sort of physical transformation.

[00:12:49]But in Obsession, while Nikki's body looks exactly the same, it no longer belongs to her. Through Bear's wish, an external force has overwritten her autonomy, completely stripping her of her ability to choose. When she smiles, it looks like a muscle spasm forced on her by the spell. When she says things about Loving Bear, you can practically feel her actual consciousness screaming, trapped behind her own eyes, completely powerless to stop her body from catering to Bear's ego. It's a terrifying form of bodily violation because she's essentially a passenger in her own skin.

[00:13:25]>> I'm your sister.

[00:13:28]>> Hel flinched and reached for the door handle. I knew he would not leave this place.

[00:13:34]>> At first, the moment at the party where Wish Nikki reads her Hansel and Gretle type story felt a bit odd and disconnected. Like I knew it was supposed to be the real Nikki trying to say something, but I wasn't quite sure what. But I later deep that it was essentially her stating quite clearly how inescapable this all feels. We know earlier she told the other girl, I can't remember her name right now, but the girl that had a crush on Bear, the real Nikki told her that she saw a bit as a brother. So the Hansel and Gretle imagery was like her expressing how incestuous and wrong this forced relationship felt to the real her. It's just devastating honestly. Like can you even imagine? I think it does a great job of letting us understand how sick this all actually is. Your body is supposed to be the one thing in life you can control. And that human right was just taken away from her because someone she thought was a friend had a crush.

[00:14:30]Oh, BROTHER.

[00:14:31]>> THIS GUY STINKS.

[00:14:32]>> JUST BE NORMAL.

[00:14:35][screaming] >> DAD, I don't want you to be Mickey.

[00:14:37]>> And what makes Bear such a disturbing protagonist is that he actually knows something is wrong. He isn't completely unaware of what's happening. He sees the glitches. He notices the strange pause in Nikki's speech, the way her face contorts into those unnatural force smiles, and the moments where her own emotions seem to break through what the spell is forcing her to do. I mean, if someone was doing all that creepy [ __ ] at my house in the middle of the night, best believe I'm leaving everything behind and starting a fresh somewhere else. No, but seriously, any logical person would realize that's the point that you know what, it's not worth it.

[00:15:14]But instead of undoing the wish to save his friend, mind you, and give her a choice back, he tries to work around it, focusing on managing the glitches and preserving the version of reality he's created. Because undoing the wish would mean facing the terrifying chance that Nikki might actually reject him, which is what he's been avoiding the entire time. It's also where Be's biggest moral failure comes in. He's willing to keep Nikki trapped in a version of herself that only exists to love him because accepting her real feelings would hurt too much. Underneath that decision is the same entitlement that got him here in the first place. We already know he thinks all those years of quiet pining earned him her love. This is the same logic just one step further. Because if he's owed the outcome, then whatever it cost to get there is just the price of something he was already entitled to. He doesn't agonize over keeping the wish running because in his head there was never a real contest between his comfort and her freedom. Of course, his feelings come first. They always have as far as he's concerned. By the time the film reaches this point, it's quietly pulled off a huge shift in how we see the story. At the beginning, we were following the usual romantic questions, asking if Beth finally gets the girl.

[00:16:32]But as the film progressed, our concerns shifted to Nikki's survival, wondering how she would break free, and if she did, how the hell would she be able to return to the life she had before this?

[00:16:44]With that shift, the film officially changed genres. It started out playing as an awkward indie supernatural romance, but it ended up being a straightup captivity horror film. only.

[00:16:55]There are no chains, locked rooms, or basements. The prison was Nikki's own body, and Bear was the person keeping her trapped there.

[00:17:03]>> Did you cook the cat?

[00:17:05]You can't do that.

[00:17:08]I am very upset about that.

[00:17:10]>> Once the film establishes that the real horror comes from Nikki's consent being taken away, it stops needing to explain why the wish goes wrong. We already know how a story like this unfolds, so he spends the second half on why Bear keeps accepting it. Him every other minute going, "Nikki, Nikki, stop. Oh my god, Nikki, Nikki, stop." was pissing me off so much because you know why she's being weird. From our side, the wish is obviously a nightmare, but from his, it's the relationship he's always wanted with a few problems that need to be fixed along the way. We've already established that Ben notices the warning signs. So, the reason he's able to live with himself while watching it happen is because >> denial is a river in Egypt.

[00:17:59]>> And denial here doesn't mean he's missing anything. He has every piece of information he needs and still won't accept it. Bear and the audience are watching the exact same girl unravel on screen. But while we are looking at a human being that's in a state of horrific captivity, Bear sees a product he's bought that's experiencing a few minor glitches. So, he interprets reality in real time to protect his investment.

[00:18:24]>> We going to talk about you and Nikki.

[00:18:30]>> What about it?

[00:18:31]>> Nikki is literally fine.

[00:18:33]>> If he admits Nikki is suffering, [music] he has to admit that he's the monster causing it. and his entire identity is built on being the tragic softspoken nice guy who deserves the girl.

[00:18:45]Ultimately, the answer comes down to the way obsession completely breaks your ability to perceive another person as a human being. In his mind, she's not really a person with her own thoughts and feelings. She's something to fix.

[00:18:59]He's acting out of profound compartmentalization, which allows his mind to justify what's happening. When he sees Nikki's physical reactions or moments of distress, he reframes them as small problems in the relationship that can be worked through.

[00:19:14]She's just adjusting to the wish and eventually everything will be fine.

[00:19:19]Admitting the truth would mean becoming the monster in her story and Bear can't allow that, so he doesn't. Instead, he just tells himself a different story where he's still the hero. It's the same move Joe Goldberg runs for five seasons of you. Joel stalks women, isolates them, [music] kills whoever gets in the way, and the entire time his own head is narrating it back to him as devotion.

[00:19:42][music] And the scariest part of the show was that even after everything, after he was locked up for his crimes, he never once stopped believing he was a romantic lead. Bear doesn't get a literal voice over, but he's running the same script. the practice speech about all the nice things she's done for him.

[00:20:00]The wounded, what would be so bad about being with me. Every scene we've already looked at is Ben narrating his own life as a love story that's owed to him. One where the ending is just unfairly delayed. He's not thinking that he's holding a woman captive. He's holding on to the belief that he's finally going to get the ending he deserves. That's what actually keeps the denial running.

[00:20:23]Nothing that happens on Nikki's side of the wish is enough to pull him out of it because that would mean recasting the whole story. The nice guy narrative is doing the same job Joe's voice over does and it's the reason he keeps going >> to see if there's a way I can alter a wish.

[00:20:41]>> You'd like to cancel your wish?

[00:20:43]>> No.

[00:20:43]>> When the wish starts breaking Nikki down, his first instinct is to modify it. Instead of asking how to undo the spell or to give Nika freedom back, he just wants to know how to make it work better, but only because it's killing the vibe of his fantasy. He treats the wish like a faulty product, almost like he's calling tech support for his customuilt girlfriend, as though she isn't the person that he claims to love.

[00:21:09]His focus is on smoothing out the glitches so he can get a version of her captivity that looks a little bit more convincing.

[00:21:17]>> What? Who >> you want to talk to? [screaming] >> Who is that?

[00:21:23]>> Nikki.

[00:21:23]>> The phone call scene is literally why I can't buy into the propaganda that he's not really a villain because when the customer service person asks if he wants to speak to her and she sounds like she's screaming from the literal depths of hell, someone who genuinely cared about her would be moving hell and earth trying everything possible to get her out of whatever the hell she was.

[00:21:46]Especially as he did it to her in the first place. But like the spineless coward that he is, he just ends the call and goes about his day. Oh, brother.

[00:21:56]THIS GUY STINKS.

[00:21:58]>> Healthy love is an ongoing process of discovery. You're constantly learning who the other person is, accepting their changes and adjusting to the reality. An obsession works completely in reverse.

[00:22:10]It's a created fantasy built in one's head over years of pining that's forced onto a real person.

[00:22:16]Bear's problem is that even though he sees the real Nikki, the version he invented in his head had become more valuable to him than the flesh and blood woman crying out for help right in front of him. He not only took away her choice, he completely replaced her reality with his [music] own. And once a person's brain becomes that thoroughly wrapped up in his own narrative, they can't fully see or should I say comprehend their victim as the victim that they are. All they see is a script they're trying to force the world to follow. Every glitch he manages or every pause he explains away might be the one moment Nikki's actually still in there cuz it tells him something isn't right.

[00:22:58]The film makes that clear to us the same way it's clear to bear, which might be one of the crulest details in the whole section. He's never once had to rule out the possibility that she's still in their presence and suffering. He just never asked.

[00:23:12]>> Is her love real?

[00:23:15]>> Just because you chose this for her doesn't make it less real.

[00:23:19]>> This is the point where the film really begins to zoom out. Up until now, we've been focused on Bear and Nikki, but the ideas the film's exploring reaches much further than the two of them as it taps into a cultural anxiety that feels incredibly relevant right now. If you strip away the supernatural elements, Bear's desire doesn't feel all that unusual. That fantasy of intimacy without the crushing difficulty of dealing with another independent person is a deeply modern human impulse. And the contradiction at the heart of Nik's transformation is that once the wish takes hold, she becomes exactly what a lot of romantic fantasies describe as a perfect partner. But the closer she gets to Be's idea of the perfect partner, the further she moves away from being herself. It's not painful. You just let go of everything you once were.

[00:24:12]>> The idea behind the uncanny valley is that creepy, unsettling feeling you get when something looks almost human, but not quite. A CGI character or humanoid robot might look convincing at first, but something in the eye or the movements always gives it away. I think Obsession takes the idea and applies it to a relationship. Because while wish Nikki is technically Nikki, her behavior operates purely as an empty simulation of intimacy. Her smile is a good example. A real smile comes naturally, is a spontaneous reaction to an emotion, but wish Nikki's smile lasts a few seconds too long, appearing at moments that don't quite make sense, so you immediately recognize it as an empty performance of affection with zero substance. The same thing happens in the way she talks. Real conversations are messy. People hesitate, disagree, interrupt each other, and have thoughts of their own. And wish Nikki can't really do any of that. Everything she says revolves around reassuring Bear because she's no longer really communicating with him.

[00:25:21]>> Want this to work so bad.

[00:25:23]>> No. No. No. We can't. Okay. Okay.

[00:25:26]>> I think the film is also taking a pretty cynical look at the way we talk about romance. Our culture constantly hypes up ideas of finding your perfect match or the person who completes you. But obsession pushes the idea to its extreme, asking what perfect compatibility would actually look like if one person never disagreed with you, never surprised you, or wanted anything different. In real relationships, people argue, they challenge each other, have different interests, and change over time. And as frustrating as that can be, those moments are what remind you that the other person is a separate human being with a life and perspective of their own. Bear guess the relationship he's always imagined. There's no rejection, no conflicts, and no uncertainty. But without any of that friction, there's nothing left to actually connect over. The relationship feels completely empty. It's just bare alone with the fantasy he wanted all along, shouting into an echo chamber.

[00:26:27]This is all I've ever wanted.

[00:26:29]>> Me, too.

[00:26:32][music] >> No, it's not.

[00:26:33]>> Yes, it is.

[00:26:34]>> Interestingly, I think the one wish Willow ends up becoming a really effective metaphor for modern companion AI. Over the last few years, there's been a huge rise in companion AI apps that go way beyond basic productivity chat bots. They are built specifically to stimulate companionship and can be customized to fit a user's preferences, creating relationships that are far more predictable and accommodating than real ones. Part of the appeal of this is that they offer the feeling of connection without a lot of the uncertainty that comes with real relationships. They're always available, supportive, and they're never going to reject you or want something different. That's the same desire the film is exploring through Bear. At the heart of it is a fantasy of relationship where the other person's independence never gets in the way of what you want. Wish Nikki ends up feeling almost like an AI companion in human form, carrying out a version of intimacy that has been shaped entirely around Bear's needs instead of factoring in her own. I think one of the biggest questions the film raises is what we actually expect from intimacy. A simulation can easily recreate the visible signs of love. It can text you good morning, tell you you're beautiful, and say all the right things. But are those things meaningful if they aren't coming from someone's own free will?

[00:27:58]That question starts being abstract in the moment Bear asked the customer service rep if her love is real, as if there was a correct answer he could get from a company instead of from her. He needs it confirmed by anyone except the person is supposed to be coming from. I can't help but think about the film her in this section which is far more sympathetic to the fantasy than obsession is. In that film, Samantha, who is the AI, grows and develops her own interest and eventually leaves. And that departure is what lets Theodore's ending feel hopeful instead of hollow.

[00:28:34][music] But real companion apps don't build in an exit like that. growing away from the user isn't exactly the business model. Psychologists studying AI companion use have flagged something they call deskkilling, which is the risk that constant frictionless validation just make relationships look far worse by comparison.

[00:28:54]I think I have a lot of thoughts about this, but I'm really curious to see what you guys' take on AI relationships and companionships and where you think is taking us in the future are. If you do have any thoughts, please let me know in the comments so we can discuss.

[00:29:09]>> I love you. I'm sorry.

[00:29:16]>> It's not real.

[00:29:17]>> I think one of the reasons obsession feels so relevant right now is because it taps into a desire for control that has always existed in how people think about love. Humans have been imagining love potions, magical wishes, and destined matches for as long as we've been telling stories. What's changed is the way we're able to pursue those fantasies. Technology has created new ways to chase the idea of a perfect connection through things like compatibility algorithms, customizable digital personas, and simulated companionship.

[00:29:50]>> [music] >> The tools may be different, but that desire underneath of wanting intimacy without having to face the uncertainty of another person's independence remains the same. That's what makes the film's warning more interesting than a simple message about technology or artificial love. The deeper question it raises is about what we actually expect from connection. When we imagine the perfect companion, are we imagining another person or are we imagining someone who never challenges us, rejects us, or exists outside the role we created for them?

[00:30:25]>> This is all your fault. Sarah's your fault. You wanted this. You wished for this. Bear spent the entire film treating his devotion like a debt Nikki owed him. Like years of proof stacked up entitling him to a specific outcome.

[00:30:41]That's the exact entitlement. The wish quietly punctures the second it exists in the world because anyone can call on it. The one wish ruler was never something built for him specifically. It doesn't care who's using it or why or whether they've earned it. So whatever Bear thought he earned, the next person gets the same deal. No questions asked.

[00:31:01]This highlights that Bear's wish was always the problem, not the mechanism behind the wish. When he finally hit rock bottom and understood the actual scale of what he's done, he made the only choice left to make. And low key, I saw people getting onto him about not making that choice earlier. And I think that's such an unrealistic expectation.

[00:31:22]Like, was he really going to kill himself or the girl he claimed to love at any point before this? No. Like, let's be so for real. When he finally realized that the only way to put an end to the madness that had become his life was to end his own, [music] it was set up to be his redemption arc. But the film took a more honest route with the character and at the very last second he hesitated. He didn't meet his fate with some heroic sense of acceptance. He panicked and tried to survive. I'd argue that that single moment of hesitation is one of the best character writing in the entire film. Because even after everything, after he destroyed the life of everyone around him, his foundational instinct was still raw, ugly self-preservation.

[00:32:05]The film violently denied him the comfort of becoming a tragic hero. And he died as someone who only made the right choice when there was nothing left to lose, and even then still couldn't follow through. And I don't know, I think that's what makes that moment feel so painfully human. Wish Nikki taking the willow and making her own wish bear was an unexpected turn in the film that I enjoyed. At first, it felt like the kind of moments where the audience is supposed to cheer because there's some sort of poetic justice where Bear finally gets a taste of his own medicine, but I think the film refused to turn it into a simple revenge moment because of what drove Nikki's decision.

[00:32:42]The wish had shaped her entire existence around loving him. So even her attempt to fight back was still being filtered through the control he forced onto her.

[00:32:51]Loving someone more than anyone else in the world is what the original wish demanded of her. And by Bear's logic, that meant going above and beyond to make sure you never lose them. So when she felt him pulling away, her devotion read that as an outcome, she had to prevent whatever it cost. This is what makes it so much worse than payback.

[00:33:09]Because if Nikki were actually choosing this, there'd almost be some sort of relief. It'd mean that some part of her survived the wish intact enough to want something for herself. But unfortunately, that's not what was happening. She was just running with the only definition of love the wish ever gave her. As wish Nikki operated on the same exact idea as Bear's original wish, the idea of love so devoted it can't survive losing the other person, it reached for a guarantee to make sure it never has to. Maybe you should know [music] that I would choose you over everything.

[00:33:44]>> For me, the most emotionally devastating part of the film comes after all the supernatural elements are gone. I loved and also hated that it completely refused to give us the standard comforting resolutions we've been conditioned to expect from horror cinema. A lot of horror stories treat breaking the curse as a moment everything goes back to normal. The spell is lifted, the monster defeated, and the survivor gets to move on. But Obsession straight up refused to give Nikki that kind of ending. Instead, it forced us to literally sit in the bitter, unlamorous reality of accountability, cowardice, and irreversible harm. Like, the credits rolling over Nikki's crying was genuinely heartbreaking. Like, sure, the curse is broken and Nikki gets her freedom back, but that freedom doesn't erase anything that happened to her.

[00:34:33]She's left having to live a life of the aftermath. The vivid intimate memories of actions and affections she never once consented to. The knowledge of people who died while she was trapped and unable to control herself. And just the allaround total destruction of her friendships, her career, and a sense of safety. The film pushes back against the idea that there's always an easy reset button that an apology or sacrifice or fixing the original mistake can make everything whole again. And especially when it comes to like trauma or like domestic violence, that's so real.

[00:35:06]>> So sorry you had to see that, baby, but it is kind of your fault.

[00:35:11]>> When you look at the ending of Obsession as a whole, the thing that stands out is that no one really walks away from it.

[00:35:18]There are no winners. And to be fair, there was never a version of the story where forcing someone to love you could lead to real happiness. The moment love becomes something you take instead of something another person freely gives, everyone involved loses something. Bear lost his life and any chance of redemption. Nikki survived, but she was left carrying the damage done to her on top of everything she already lost.

[00:35:45]Everyone in the orbit was left grieving or dead. The one wish Willow promised better guarantee that he would never be rejected, the thing he wanted most. And all he actually created was a trail of isolation, pain, and trauma with his name on it. And honestly, I think the film was doing that to us, not just to bear. The opening argument I started with was that we've been trained by 100 films to read pure persistence as proof of love. No matter how obsessive it gets, as long as it works out in the end. That's the trap be fell into. It's also the trap we fell into watching him.

[00:36:20]We wanted his death to mean something for wish to feel like justice landing where it's owed or Nikki's freedom to be the moment she got her old life back.

[00:36:29]And we got none of that. Bear didn't get redeemed. Wish but didn't feel like justice once you see boy Nikki did it.

[00:36:36]And Nikki getting free didn't undo anything. The film was just as cold to us as it was to him. And maybe that's the real gut punch of the ending. While we may have wanted a guarantee too, it turns out we were never old one either.

[00:36:50]It's so easy to point at the one wish Willow as the monster. It's a supernatural curse, so it's easy to blame the magic. But the one wish Willow didn't invent Bear's toxic desires. It didn't magically make him selfish. All it did was take away his limitations, giving him the ability to act on what he already wanted without ever having to face the consequences of wanting it.

[00:37:13][music] The problem was that Be's idea of a perfect outcome was inherently predatory from day one. Bear's descent throughout the film works like a road map of how easily the human ego can wrap the desire for total control in the language of romance. It escalated in three stages. At stage one, he wanted Nikki to love him. On the surface, it sounds pretty innocent. It feels like the setup for a normal romance story. By stage two, he wanted Nikki to love him the way he wanted her to. This is where the entitlement creeps in. It's no longer just about being loved, more about shaping what that love looks like.

[00:37:51]And at stage three, he wanted Nikki, even if he had to erase everything that made her who she was to keep her. And by that point, there's not much difference between love and possession. Bear achieved the ultimate romantic fantasy of absolute possession only to realize too late that love requires an other.

[00:38:10]The kind of love he thinks he wants needs a completely independent human being who has a terrifying freedom to look him in the eye and say no. He lost her the exact second he decided that owning her mattered more than letting her be someone other than who he needed her to be. Obsession spends five parts pulling apart one guy's very specific, very personal entitlement. Zoom out far enough, though, and it turns out to be the default setting of an entire genre.

[00:38:40]Every romcom convention this film runs on has been sold to us as romantic for decades. Obsession is just honest enough to ask what all that wanting was supposed to earn him. And it's not just asking that about Bear. The Wish having a customer service line is the most honest detail in the whole film because he admits right up front something Bear could never admit to himself. Underneath everything he called love, he was placing an order. The wish is just what happens when the order gets filled. And somewhere out there right now, you can place a similar order without needing any magic at all. Bear needed a curse to get what he wanted. Most people just need an app. But yeah, that's all for today's video. Let me know what you guys thought of the film in the comments below. Don't forget to leave a like if you enjoyed this video and subscribe for more. Also, don't forget to hit the notification bell so you're notified when I release a new video. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.

[00:39:46]>> [music]