(Please take care of yourselves while reading this article. I discuss topics like rape and consent. Thank you.)
It seems like everyone is obsessed with Obsession. Written, directed, and edited by Curry Barker, I am not the only person who has been left deeply upset by the film. After my friends and I went our separate ways after our screening, I sat alone on the bus, listening to Britney Spears’ 2007 album Blackout. As Britney sang about a man being on her radar, I stared out of the window, with a pit forming in my stomach. I was thinking about Nikki Freeman. No amount of fun pop music could brighten my mood, unfortunately.
Obsession has been on my radar (ha), since it was announced that Inde Navarrette would be starring in it as Nikki Freeman. The actress starred in Superman & Lois, a show that I started and never stopped watching, despite my eventual lack of interest in superhero media. Okay, fine! I continued watching it for her! Imagine my chagrin when she was reduced from series regular to cameo appearances in the show’s final season... I digress. I first heard about Obsession through a post on Navarrette’s Instagram about her casting and have been excited for it ever since. Unfortunately, I was unable to watch the film during its TIFF premiere, but the rave reviews, particularly about Navarrette’s performance, made it one of my most anticipated films in recent memory.
The film follows Baron “Bear” Bailey (played by Michael Johnston), a music store employee who uses a novelty toy called One Wish Willow to get his friend, Nikki Freeman, to fall in love with him. Obviously, things go horribly! The film is one that made me feel sick at times, not necessarily because of how gory or gross it gets, although this didn’t help. What made me most uncomfortable was thinking about Nikki’s lack of autonomy.
When Bear uses his wish, Nikki immediately falls in love with him but starts acting off-putting and violent. The Nikki audiences see at the beginning of the film – the charming, generous, and funny one – is trapped inside her own body, which is what terrified me. The Nikki that takes over is a version of her that is being used to fulfill Bear’s wish. Nikki is no longer her own person who can consent; she exists only as a vessel to serve Bear’s wants and desires, something that devastated me throughout my viewing experience. Women know men like Bear too well... The ones who think of us as mere vessels for pleasure or simply physical beings. Nikki’s aspirations to quit her job and be a writer are crushed as soon as the wish goes into effect because she NEEDS to fulfill the wish, only living (if we can even call it that) to love Bear.
Unwillingly living in service of a man and becoming someone else in the process is a reality for MILLIONS of women. Yuck. I cannot imagine living like this because it feels directly ripped out of a horror movie. Hence, Barker’s ability to showcase the horrors of this sort of dynamic is chilling. I especially felt this during the sex scene in the film. Tying this scene to Nikki’s lack of autonomy, there is something that can be said about rape and taking advantage of someone throughout the film. Of course, this scene is a bit more on the nose when it comes to conversations about rape that the film can (and should) create. However, the entire wish fulfilment leaves the “real” Nikki as non-consenting. I would go so far as to say the entire situation IS a form of rape. Of course, Bear doesn’t know that the wish would work when he made it. However, what exactly does he do to help Nikki when he clearly sees that the wish has impacted her behaviour? Nothing, really. He continues to use her – sexually, romantically, and more – so that he can have her like he always wanted. At the end of the day, it is all about access to her body.
Men like Bear think they are entitled to sexual and romantic relationships with the women they like, even if these women do not reciprocate these feelings. Women always suffer when it comes to the “friendzone,” a disgusting term that I’ve hated ever since I learned what it meant. They then get angry with and start terrorizing these women. It’s a juvenile way of thinking that grown men practice all the time because they cannot fathom a woman saying no. Bear ruins Nikki’s life for a relationship that is not real. He refuses to acknowledge that the Nikki he is with is not really Nikki. If he gets what he wants from her, why the fuck would he care?
The scene where Nikki begs Bear to kill her while her alter-ego is asleep has not stopped eating away at me. Offended that Nikki (WHO IS LITERALLY TRAPPED IN HER OWN BODY WATCHING THIS HAPPEN TO HER!!!!) would rather die than be in a relationship with him, Bear asks, “What’s so bad about being with me?,” before leaving her alone. It was a moment that made me say, “Oh, brother...” out loud in the theatre. Bear is the classic “Nice Guy” who is not nice at all. I know Navarrette’s performance is rightfully getting a lot of buzz, but shoutout to Johnston for playing this kind of loser so well! Bear was given multiple opportunities to tell Nikki how he felt about her, instead choosing to lie and avoid telling the truth because he was *checks notes* scared??? GROW UP! Imagine the pain, violence, and murder that could have been avoided if he just grew up and told her how he felt. From the moment Bear made the wish, I was never with him. However, not killing Nikki when she asked him to was truly it for me. The one wish Nikki had goes against everything Bear wanted, so of course, he cannot fulfill it. He is a selfish coward, representing the male entitlement and ego that leaves women traumatized, hurt, or even dead.
When Bear calls the One Wish Willow customer service, he explains that he doesn’t want to reverse or cancel the wish but only alter it. To say this made me angry would be too simple. It infuriated me. It made my blood boil. It made my hands form fists. You get it. After everything that has happened, he refuses to release Nikki. He refuses to let her be her own person again because he would lose the control he has over her. This is the first action he takes to try to change what is happening to Nikki, but he doesn’t want to fully stop what is happening to her, especially since this would mean he had to die. He only wants to make it easier for himself, not Nikki.
At dinner with my friends after the screening, I posed the question, “Would you have killed yourself if you were Bear?” We all agreed that we would, however, we would probably kill Nikki first... At this point, it would be an act of mercy, especially since Nikki asked Bear to kill her. This way, Nikki would not have to deal with the trauma that is no doubt going to come from killing her friends, holding Bear’s dead body, mutilating herself, etc. We spoke about how much Nikki suffered and how heartbreaking her character is. Even though Nikki snaps out of the wish at the end of the film due to Bear’s death, she is surrounded by carnage and must live with the disturbing acts the other Nikki committed while in her body. I don’t think this is a life worth living. Hearing her wail at the end of the film is all the confirmation I need that men’s entitlement always effects women the most.
I have listened to a lot of Britney these last few days to distract myself. Folks, it’s not working! I have tried to stop thinking about Obsession and Nikki and Navarrette’s performance, but no film has left me this unsettled in quite some time. In a film that features a grotesque death scene involving a brick, a cat sandwich, and a broken bottle to the face repeatedly, I am most disturbed by Bear taking away Nikki’s ability to consent. It is HIS obsession with power and controlling Nikki that proves access is what men like him desire most. How pathetic.
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