OBSESSION WAS PHENOMENAL

This movie was INSANELY good. Like, good enough for me to write another blog post after who knows how long.

There's been so much discourse around it that a lot of my opinions are gonna seem redundant, but I loved it so much that I feel the need to add a drop to the bucket.

Before I get to the actual characters, I want to comment on Inde Navarette's OUTSTANDING performance 

A lot of people have already been pretty vocal about her amazing acting, and for good reason. The way she perfectly embodied Nikki fighting with wish!Nikki (which i will abbreviate as Wikki for short lol) was honestly chilling and her facial expressions were spot on, give my girl her FLOOOWWWEEERSSS!!!!

The visuals were also really good and intentional. I don't usually notice stuff like this in movies, but the framing of certain scenes added so much tension. I especially like how dim the lighting was whenever Nikki was the focal point, her face being obscured added so much to the creepiness of it all. Eyes are the windows to the soul, after all. I also really liked the unsettling makeup they put on her in the bedroom scene, it was a small touch that ended up adding a lot.

Sandy's death at the beginning of the movie ended up foreshadowing Bear's character really well. The fact that he never acknowledged how him leaving his meds out indirectly caused it perfectly shows how incapable he is of taking accountability for his actions. While he was clearly torn up about it, the fact that he immediately threw Sandy out without proper burial and jumped on the opportunity to spend time with Nikki felt so strange.

I really like the way Bear was portrayed overall because he's the kind of villain who's extremely prevalent in real life, but doesn't get shown as often in media. He comes off as a meek, harmless character at first. The movie is skewed to his perspective so we end up relating a lot to him, which makes it so much more awful when the gravity of his disgusting actions finally dawns on you. 

It's easy to blame moustache-twirling cartoon villains when trying to pinpoint evil, but the capability for evil lurks within us all, we just don't recognize it because of our own perception of good and bad. When someone overtly irredeemable acts accordingly and does something irredeemable, it's easy to disconnect yourself from their actions. They're bad and I'm good. I'm right, they're wrong. I would never do something like that. When we demonize bad people like this, we absolve ourselves of our responsibility to be good people and avoid making the same mistakes as them.

Bear acts as a warning. Him breaking the willow at the beginning of the movie, although acting as the catalyst for Nikki's suffering, is, at they very least, forgivable. He wasn't aware it would actually work.

It's everything he does afterwards that shows what a deplorable, cowardly, selfish creep he is.

The scene where he calls the service line was the breaking point for me. The way he worded his request showed how careless he was: he wants to alter the wish, not cancel it. At this point, he should understand the horrific implications of his wish. And yet, he still wanted to enjoy the benefits of "dating" Nikki without dealing with all the baggage it carried as a result of her freaking out and trying to regain some semblance of her old autonomy.

It's easy and justified to point fingers at Bear, but what makes it even more tragic is how utterly devoid of proper friends Nikki was.

During the party scene Wikki was clearly going through a mental breakdown and yet NOBODY tried to actually approach her and understand what she was going through. They were all clearly concerned and uncomfortable, but not enough to do something.

When Wikki read the Hansel and Gretel poem, I interpreted it as Nikki trying to make a cry for help. It's hinted at multiple times in the movie that Nikki's feelings towards Bear are platonic and that she sees him as a brother figure. Her poem was pointing out how this forced relationship between the two of them felt incestuous to her since she didn't reciprocate Bear's romantic feelings.

Even sadder than that was when Sarah took Nikki harming herself and needing medical attention as an opportunity to make an advance on Bear. AND THE FACT THAT HE ACCEPTED HER ADVANCE. 

Ian was probably the person who cared the most about Nikki, even pointing out that she seemed off and that Bear was taking advantage of her. He's still not a good friend to her, though. Instead of trying to get to the root of Nikki's strange behavior by actually TALKING TO HER, he instead weakly brings it up to Bear and decides to avoid Nikki, as if she's a pest he wants to sweep under the rug.

Something else I found interesting was how shallow Bear's supposed infatuation towards Nikki was throughout the movie. He romanticizes simple aspects of her that he likes, like her giving money to the homeless, but doesn't make a real effort to take her feelings into account. Wikki's obsession with Bear is just a reflection of his obsession with Nikki. When she feeds him Sandy, it's a way of showing how she doesn't understand him either. She has the basic ideas that he liked Sandy and he considers himself a food critic, and mashes those concepts together in a way she thinks will please him. She can only work off that surface level knowledge, because that's all Bear possesses of Nikki.

I thought I'd be remiss to neglect mentioning this, but the scene that made me feel genuinely ill was when Bear r@ped Nikki. The fact that she makes exaggerated moaning noises throughout it with a blank face is so heartbreaking. Bear is vile.

There's a lot to be said about this film and I'd love to hear what you guys have to say too :)