Taking the world by a chokehold, Obsession (2026) is the pride of movie theaters everywhere.
Obsession is a horror movie about a man, Bear, who makes a wish that his crush, Nikki, would love him more than anyone else in the world.
This wish comes true in the literal sense, and almost immediately, Nikki becomes obsessed with him; hence the title of the movie.
This movie, which came out earlier this month, contains many noteworthy elements spanning from its scenes and symbolism to the cast and directors.
In the opening scene, the audience indirectly finds out how deeply Bear is infatuated with Nikki. He is trying to perfect his monologue about his feelings by receiving advice from his close friend.
After, he goes home and discovers his cat in the middle of the living room floor, dead from an overdose of a medication.
This cat is significant in more ways than one, but the most obvious to the average person was that it foreshadowed Bear’s death at the end of the movie, caused by the same pills.
Cats themselves are animals that demand attention; exactly how Bear behaved with Nikki by making his wish in the first place, but then how Nikki needed Bear to love her back after being suppressed by the fake version of Nikki.
His specific cat was a tabby, and the product he used to make his wish was produced by a company named “Tabi Cat Curiosities.” This is an allusion to the famous saying: “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”
Because his cat was curious about the pills, it accidentally consumed them, and it turned out to be a fatal mistake. The “satisfaction” part doesn’t apply to his actual cat, but it can be applied to Bear and Nikki.
Bear was fatally obsessed with Nikki, but when he was finally “satisfied,” more accurately overwhelmed, by Nikki’s love for him, he decided to kill himself, which brought the real Nikki back to reality.
This cat can also be seen as Bear’s ability to care for vulnerable animals. Just as he could not protect his helpless cat, he made Nikki helpless by trapping her in her own body and then dying, not having to deal with the repercussions of his and her actions. Nikki came back to a world, having turned into a killer with no actual explanations provided to her.
Noelani Gonzalez, reflected, “I really enjoyed the ending scene because it tied the whole movie together and gave it memorable but horrifying ending. It made my jaw drop and left me speechless for like 15 minutes after I saw it for the first time.”
Even his name, Bear, is part of the metaphor. It is a reference to “Man vs. Bear” – the question of whether a woman would rather be alone in the woods with a man or a bear.
While throughout the movie, the majority believes Bear is seen as the victim, it can be argued that he is not the “nice guy” that he wants to be seen as, and Nikki is his victim – not vice versa.
Halfway through the movie, when Bear is feeling desperate for Nikki to stop acting “crazy,” he calls the customer service number on the back of the “One Wish Willow” box. The guy on the other end of the line explains to him that even though Bear chose this for her, the love is still real.
The guy asks if he would like to cancel his wish, and instead of rushing to reverse the situation, he asks if he could alter his plea. This shows how controlling he wants to be over her; ironically, she affects his decisions more than he does hers.
There were moments when the real Nikki reveals herself and tries to communicate with Bear and the other people around her about her situation.
Noelani Gonzalez, ’26, commented on one of these scenes, “When Nikki asked for help and asked him to kill her, his response [What’s so bad about being with me?] was actually so awful; it made me so mad.”
Another more indirect way Nikki tried to speak out was when Bear’s close friend threw a boy’s party; however, she wanted to go because she was paranoid about him leaving her.
While playing a modified version of Jenga, she read a poem out loud:
The air was changed by the distant call of the neighbor.
His face was obscured, but I knew he was looking at my chest.
Each side stretching, recently matured to different sizes.
“And so, come lie with me like the old woman taught us when we were children,“ I said.
He closed the door and leaned against it.
“You’re not my wife, Gretel,” he said.
“I am more than your wife. I’m your sister.”
Hansel flinched and reached for the door handle.
I knew he would not leave this place.
She would relent and choose to be inside me like he had many nights before.
“If not, I would fillet his meaty forearm, bone it like a stick of licorice, and stuff the flesh between my legs.
Hansel is my soul.
Love only the branch of a willow tree could conjure.
Brother, you will be inside of me tonight.
This poem, while it might seemingly be out of place, was Nikki’s way of disclosing how the real her felt about the whole situation. She saw Bear as a brother to her, and after he forced her to be with him, she felt like she was having relations with her brother.
This foreshadowed a scene later when they were acting intimate; however, Nikki’s face in the scene is displaying only signs of anguish. This scene can be interpreted as an act of sexual abuse since it was against the real Nikki’s desires.
Bear is debatably the villain in this movie, and if the symbolism is to be believed, then it can be tied back to the cat. Cats in Jungian philosophy represent “shadow selves,” representing all the dark and suppressed desires that human beings contain within themselves.
Fazio stated, “I believe Bear was most at fault due to his weak-minded nature and inability to take accountability for his actions.”
While the audience knows that Bear’s cat is meant to mimic him, when his cat dies, his suppressed desires are released into real life in the form of Nikki’s obsession.
Towards the beginning of Nikki’s obsession with Bear, she packs him lunch one day, including two pictures: one of him and one of them. She writes on the pictures of him, “You,” and on the picture of them, “Not me.”
She is trying to relay to Bear that while he is acting in accordance with his own feelings and thoughts, she is not herself. As he starts eating his sandwich she made him, he finds a note she wrote on the bottom of the container: “What’s the verdict, cat?”
As he examines the sandwich, he realizes that she used his cat’s meat in the sandwich. This could be Nikki’s way of lashing out and trying her hardest to fight against the wish.
Also, in compliance with the Jungian philosophy, if the cat represents all his dark emotions, then he consumes all of his dark thoughts, which turns him into an immoral person.
Little details such as this are what make this movie so intuitive.
Even a seemingly unnoticeable detail that some might miss makes a creative difference.
In a trivia bar scene early on, while Bear and his friends are talking, the announcer is heard in the background asking: What is the rule that Genie says prohibits him from making someone fall in love with another person? Alluding to Disney’s well-known Aladdin (1992).
These little allusions allow this movie to disguise much more symbolism than what meets the eye.
This symbolism would mean significantly less if the direction and acting of the movie weren’t half as good as they turned out to be.
The director of Obsession, Curry Baker, had his debut with the movie Milk & Serial (2024), another horror movie.
Milk & Serial used a budget of $800, and profited $100 off of the camera used to produce the movie post production. The rest of the profit came from posting the full movie on YouTube, not solely for monetary purposes, but also to make his name known.
Posting the movie on YouTube turned out to be a success because his next piece of directional work was Obsession. He was able to use a bigger budget this time around, with $750,000 to make his vision come true; consequently, he made a bigger profit.
There are already rumors circulating that Baker is in talks to direct Marvel Studios’ next Blade film due to the success of Obsession.
For a movie that used a budget of less than a million dollars, it is very impressive that they profited more than $150 million.
Not only did they make an astounding amount of money, but the actors in the movie also received well-deserved praise.
The main characters, Bear, played by Michael Johnston, and Nikki, played by Inde Navarrette, really mastered how to convey feelings of amazement and unease simultaneously.
Along with their talent, they used many techniques to further enhance their skills on the screen.
For example, instead of using CGI, they experimented with exaggerated makeup looks on Nikki to make her appear more eerie.
To make her movements more “robotic,” they filmed her doing an action backwards and just reversed it while editing to make it seem like she did it so disturbingly naturally.
Baker has already teased a sequel and spin-offs of the main story.
He confirmed more movies in this universe, with the next one already in the planning process: Anything But Ghosts.
This new story follows two ghost hunters, Baker himself and his partner Cooper Tomlinson, who have to figure out what to do when their sham ghost hunting business turns out to be real.
The release date has not been confirmed, but it is scheduled for around 2027.
Obsession demands respect in all aspects of filming: storytelling, directors, actors/actresses, and more success.
It is a film that clearly has something to say about abuse and puts that message at the forefront of its story. It’s uncomfortable to watch someone trapped in a relationship they feel stuck in, and that’s the point.