Obsession is disturbing because it’s familiar. For too long, when it comes to romance we have been fed a set of rules of what is the norm and what is not, who are the heroes and who are the villains, and what is acceptable behavior and what is creepy. Obsession in a way takes off those rose colored glasses and makes it clear that there’s a difference between a romance and a love story. And Bear and Nikki are smack dab in the middle of it all.
What we see in Obsession is a love story from the perspective of the “hero” that refuses to accept that he’s the villain and the heroine he destroys for selfish desires. Because when this movie starts, Bear is hitting on a lot of romance tropes. He’s the quirky best friend who has a crush on his best friend Nikki. And he reenacts scenarios on how he’ll tell her about his feelings and acts as the “good guy.” That all changes when he makes the wish.
MORE: This isn’t the first time an insecure man destroyed a woman’s life. Read our review for Companion.
WARNING: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!!!
Romance Meets Horror in Obsession
In a romance or rom-com, the wish that Bear made would be played off as something funny because the lengths that someone is willing to go for love is often romanticized no matter how creepy it is. Nikki would be devoted to Bear and treat him with sweet kisses, a cute lunch, and would be perfectly dolled up for their dates cuz reasons. In Obsession, they take all of this and turn it on its head. The sweet kisses are tangled in obsessive jealousy. The cute lunch is actually made from the cat that he just lost. And her being dolled up is actually her brutalizing herself by changing her hair and adding tattoos to herself because that’s what Bear likes.
And all the while, Bear refuses to see that he’s the villain of this story. Because he thinks he’s lovable and that the consequences are worth it if Nikki loves him. But this isn’t love. This is possession. Or some might say: obsession. He treats her like she’s something that he needs to possess, without thinking of the implications of what it means to love someone. It’s all about Bear and what Nikki can provide for him. And she pays with her body, not caring one bit when the real Nikki begs him to kill her.
The clearest lesson that Obsession makes is that Bear never thought of Nikki as his friend.
He thought of her as a romantic possibility from day one. And his friendship was conditional, the pursuit always on his mind. When he got a little bit of pushback from her in the beginning when he called her Freaky Nikki, he immediately made that wish because it was easier than actually being an adult and asking her out. Also, because he’s self-centered and never saw her as an individual with hopes, dreams, and fears of her own. And then when Bear got what he asked for, he panicked, not liking the consequences of his actions but being too chicken sh*t to do what needed to be done to stop Nikki’s pain.
Going back to the romance of it at all and how Obsession takes off our rose colored glasses as to what is romantic or not in movies but also in our real world. I enjoy romances and rom-coms. But I will be the first person to admit that they are often creepy. Think about The Notebook. Noah literally dangled off a ferris wheel and threatened to let go if she didn’t go on a date with him. That’s not romantic. That’s creepy. Then there’s Edward in Twilight watching Bella sleep? That’s creepy. 50 First Dates where he used intimate knowledge of her to make her fall in love with him all over again? Creepy. While You Were Sleeping with a woman pretending to be a man’s fiance? Creepy. The lengths that Annie is willing to go to meet Sam in Sleepless in Seattle? CREEPY.
Bear is the Villain of This Love Story
If anything, Obsession’s Bear reminds me a lot of Joe from Netflix’s You. He did a lot of things that romances or rom-coms tell you are okay and are often used in real life to “get a girl.” Joe stalked women to generate “random” meet cutes, learned about their interests to mold himself to what they wanted, and didn’t take no for an answer. And by the end of the series, he still wasn’t able to see that he wasn’t the hero. He was the villain in all of these romances in his life.
Bear is the villain of Obsession.
He’s a coward who victimized his best friend and then tried to act like she was the one terrorizing him. And this is another reason why Obsession works so well. It flips the script and takes that romantic thing done to “get the girl” and shows you that “the girl” is actually a person and not something to possess. And the “hero,” well he’s a coward who needs to take accountability.
Obsession also makes you look beyond the tropes and see the real dangers that come with thinking of love in this self-centered way. Because it wasn’t Nikki that was obsessed. It was Bear that was obsessed. Nikki was just living her life. Bear was the one who went to extreme lengths to acquire her like she was a collectible. And he paid for it at the end in the most delicious way, ultimately freeing Nikki to disastrous consequences.
MORE: 10 Horror Short Films To Watch About Unleashing Women’s Rage
Inde Navarrette’s Oscar Worthy Performance
We can’t finish this review for Obsession without talking about the actress who plays Nikki, Inde Navarrette. Her greatest power is that she essentially played three different characters in this movie. She played the sweet yet kind of lost best friend Nikki on the cusp of a new life. She played the Freaky Nikki version of herself who had a twisted obsession sparked by Bear. And then she played the version of Nikki that was screaming in pain and desperate to be free from the prison that Bear put her in.
Navarrette’s ability to transform into these three distinct versions of herself is due to the fact that she understands emoting and body language. Because at the drop of a dime she changed her face, voice, and body language to absolutely unnerve and terrify you or act as the perfect girlfriend who’s just there to take care of you. It was jarring for Bear to witness the switch up and the same thing applies to the audience watching her.
Conclusion
Overall, Obsession is the movie that you need to watch in 2026. Because it’s not just a horror movie. It’s an examination of possession, obsession, and how that “good” person is actually a self-centered piece of work that doesn’t care about love. It’s a story about choice and who controls women’s bodies. And it’s about how we’ve built this version of love that isn’t held to the bounds of film. It’s a reality for many people. And it’s nothing but poison.
Obsession is now in theaters.
