Spoilers for Obsession to follow, you have been warned.
Since I watched Backrooms, of course I had to watch the other horror movie that’s making waves at the moment: Obsession. While Backrooms is very existential horror, Obsession deals with themes a little closer to home, that of the human heart and the immorality that surrounds the idea of love/desire.
When we first meet Bear (Michael Johnston), he’s practicing his love confession to Nikki, but not to Nikki herself. A random waitress is the stand-in for Nikki, while his friend Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) coaches him from the side. This is a significant image, because the movie deals with the difference between love and obsession. Bear is obsessed with Nikki and desires to possess her, but not for who she is. He covets her for the idealised image he has of her in his head, and for individuals like Bear, the person and their agency matters very little.
This is why, despite every opportunity, Bear does not tell Nikki about his feelings. Even when Nikki asks him outright, he still chooses to deny rather than admit how he feels about her. The easier thing is to continue suffering under this pretense of love. Bear’s wish is not wholly intentional (he doesn’t know his wish would actually be granted), yet his wording in the wish highlights how selfish and obsessive he is. He doesn’t merely want her to love him, but to love him more than anything in the entire world. It’s a wish that goes against the laws of nature; it violates Nikki’s agency, so much so that an inhuman entity has to possess her in order to enact the commands of the wish.
The vacillation between real and fake Nikki is horrifying. It becomes clear that real Nikki does not want this and is terrified that this is happening to her, yet this matters very little to Bear. When Nikki uses the dad dying of cancer excuse, Bear does have an inkling that she’s lying, since Nikki’s feelings about her dad are common knowledge (both Ian and Sarah tell him as much). This doesn’t stop him from allowing her to persuade him to take her to his home. After they become a couple, Bear doesn’t really stop to think about why Nikki is suddenly so into him when she showed no signs of this before. Even when he confronts her about the lying during their date at the restaurant (where the infamous “No no no, don’t do that!” makes an appearance), despite her unhinged behaviour he brings her home and sleeps with her.
For me, that is the most horrifying moment of the movie. No, it isn’t the bit when she’s slamming Sarah’s (Megan Lawless) head into a brick, or moving unnaturally amidst the shadowy spaces of the room (an outstanding performance from Inde Navarrette). That hard cut to this man ‘making love’ to a woman who clearly feels no pleasure – she’s lying there and barely participating – this is the horror, where a man who claims to love a woman can violate her so entirely against her will and still look at himself as the good guy. Even when the real Nikki reaches out to him, asking him to kill her so she can be freed of this torment, his response is pity for himself, not her. The only time he tries to do the right thing is when the situation becomes dangerous for him.
Initially, Nikki’s harm was only to herself, but now with her murder of Sarah, Bear is fearful that she may turn on him. He went to Ian to try to get him to undo his wish, not to free or help Nikki, but for self-benefit. At the end, his attempt to end his own life is once again for himself – so that he would be able to escape a situation that he created. Yet he couldn’t go through with it, as we see him try to purge the pills before fake Nikki’s wish takes hold.
Bear’s lack of accountability was telegraphed earlier in the film with the death of his cat, which happened due to his neglect. He left the bottle out and open – a cat can’t open a medicine bottle on its own – but he pushes the responsibility to the cat. Bear’s fatal flaw is his cowardice, and for him to redeem himself he would have needed to at least make one brave choice. But he never does. If only he cared more about the real Nikki beyond the pedestal he placed her on – though this wouldn’t be an effective horror movie if Bear had a redemptive arc.
This isn’t a Monkey’s Paw situation, where the wish is good but the Universe/wish-granter corrupts it, because the wish itself is rooted in obsessive, malicious intent. I would argue that fake Nikki’s obsessive turn is a mere reflection of the ugliness of Bear’s so-called love for her. It isn’t love, but a deeply selfish act of control that desecrates her life. She doesn’t get a chance to rebuild, to walk away – she is failed by a man who claimed to love her.
And that my dear friends, is the true horror.
