Bear Bailey buys a cheap novelty that promises to make one wish come true. Turns out, it does—but it also goes very, very bad. The R-rated horror film Obsession is a skilled piece of work, but it’s bloody, tawdry and deeply unsettling. If your kids see this movie, you’ll wish they hadn’t.
“Crack open!” reads. “Amaze your friends!”
So reads the box of One Wish Willow, available at the local New Age store for the low, low price of $6.99. It adds the caution, “You only get ONE WISH.”
That’s OK with Bear Bailey. He only wants one wish anyway: For Nikki Freeman to fall in love him. He’s been pining over her for years now—but he’s too shy to share his feelings and too scared of rejection.
But as he’s shopping for a gift for Nikki—a crystal necklace to match one she lost—he stumbles across the One Wish Willow stand. And he decides to buy one. A gift for Nikki, he tells himself.
The store’s disinterested clerk mentions, in passing, that some people have come back to complain about One Wish Willow. Because it didn’t work? Bear asks. Or because it did?
“Or they die,” the clerk says. “Or wish they did.”
But Bear buys a One Wish Willow anyway, initially planning to give it to Nikki. Just a silly little gag gift, he thinks. But as Bear drives Nikki home that night—a night when he almost confesses his true feelings—he holds back the gift. And he decides to use the wish himself.
“I wish Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone in the entire f—ing world,” he says, breaking the willow stick to release the wish.
Yep, Bear probably should’ve listened more closely to the cashier: The One Wish Willow won’t be the only thing to break. Indeed, the breaking’s only beginning.
Bear and Nikki form half of a tight-knit friend group who have bonded over local bar-based trivia nights. They, along with fellow 20-somethings Ian and Sarah, seem to support each other effectively, pre-wish. Ian tries to coach Bear on how to confess his love to Nikki. And when Bear’s cat dies, Sarah offers sincere condolences. Nikki does, too. She also gives money to a local vagrant, establishing her as a charitable soul. (Sure, she uses someone else’s money for that act of naïve kindness, but still.)
And we should note that Obsession could be framed as one long, grotesque morality fable: The wishes that One Wish Willow hands out are poisoned presents, offering the worst sort of answers for the wishers’ most desperate longings. Better to be honest and genuine, the film tells us. And hey, maybe trying to supernaturally brainwash someone into loving you isn’t the best way to find connection.
The store where Bear finds the One Wish Willow is filled with a bunch of occultic tchotchkes, from crystal necklaces to small, mass-produced voodoo dolls. A cashier for the store sniffs at a roll of incense and tells a visitor to take his vibe-killing attitude out the door if he can’t behave.
The film suggests it’s all a bunch of hokum—the type of store that young, theologically unmoored folks would visit to bolster their Insta status as open-minded, and budget-minded, spiritual seekers. At first blush, the One Wish Willow would seem to fit that vibe, the equivalent of an “authentic” Cherokee tomahawk made in Taiwan.
But as Bear and Nikki come to realize, the One Wish Willow does indeed tap into powerful, and evil, supernatural forces. Bear’s wish isn’t the only one granted during Obsession: We see that the One Wish Willow has the power to do some pretty outlandish things. But there are limits. When Bear calls the helpline printed on the box to try to revoke his wish, the bored-sounding guy on the other end tells him that “they” don’t really do that. The only way to revoke the wish would be to die: If the wish forces Nikki to love Bear more than anything but Bear’s no longer around, then the wish can’t be fulfilled, and Nikki would revert to herself again.
And Nikki is definitely not herself. While still on the helpline, the bored-sounding guy on the line offers to let Bear talk to the real Nikki—suggesting that somehow, Nikki’s soul and substance have been replaced with something else. Bear later has a conversation with that “real” Nikki while the entity controlling her body is asleep. “Please kill me,” the real Nikki begs.
Fake Nikki sometimes creates makeshift, candle-bedecked shrines to commemorate her love for Bear, with the centerpiece of those shrines often the corpse of an animal or person.
The pre-wish Nikki is in the process of writing a book, which Bear makes the mistake of calling a romance.
“Not, it’s not a romance,” Nikki corrects. “It’s a love story.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?” Bear asks.
A romance is not necessarily the same thing as a true love story. And what we see in Obsession has precious little to do with love, either.
As you know by now, Bear’s wish technically works. The very night he makes the wish, he and Nikki technically spend the night together. It’s without sex, though Nikki takes off her shirt (revealing her bra) and sensually kisses him, pushing for more. Bear, weirded out by Nikki’s strange behavior, leaves the bed and sleeps on the floor instead. But soon enough the two fall into a relationship. And for a while, that relationship comes with all the hallmarks of a 21st-century romance—including cohabitation and sex.
We see one explicitly sexual scene, complete with movements and Bear’s bare backside. Later that night, Nikki wears Bear’s cardigan sweater open, revealing that she’s not wearing anything underneath. She and other women wear short skirts and cleavage-baring tops. Nikki often kisses Bear sensually.
Bear and another woman lightly flirt. We learn that, pre-wish, someone had been sleeping with Nikki occasionally—just for fun. Several people play a party game that includes kissing other players. Someone makes a ribald reference to how a local bar’s trivia night makes him feel.
We see the corpse of a fully nude woman. Post-wish, Nikki reads a part of her book to some horrified listeners. The passage details a sister and brother in a sexual relationship: Framed as a quasi-fairy tale, the brother in the story doesn’t realize that his lover is his sister at first. But when the truth is revealed …
… the sister in Nikki’s story threatens him. Should he decide to leave, she’ll “filet” his forearm and stick the skin between her legs as a way to keep her brother present and intimate.
Horrifying? Yes, but at least we only hear the threat of intended mutilation. The film itself has much gorier plans in store.
As a character sits in a car, Nikki grabs the character’s head and smashes it against the steering wheel upwards of 20 times. The victim is obviously dead and mangled after the attack: The face is a mass of blood and gore, and we see one eye threatening to tumble out of the socket. The body later makes a grotesque reappearance.
A man gets shot and killed. Someone dies by their own hand. A couple of characters threaten suicide via gun, and one begs for someone else to kill her. Nikki smashes her own head repeatedly with a bottle, drawing a great deal of blood. Someone slams what may be a brick or book against her own face.
Bear’s cat dies, apparently after getting into some of Bear’s own medication. We see Bear dispose of the body and clean up the mess, but a post-wish Nikki apparently retrieves the cat, places it on the kitchen floor and sets candles around it—apparently hoping to impress Bear. It does not. Nor does the fact that Nikki makes a sandwich from the cat’s meat.
About 100 f-words and more than 20 s-words. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “p-ssy” and “p-ssed.” God’s name is misused about 15 times, once with the word “d–n.” Jesus’ name is abused twice.
After Bear makes his wish, Nikki’s thrown into a deeply uneven state of mind: One moment she’s passionate, the next she’s weeping uncontrollably, the next she acts just like the old Nikki would. The next day, she apologizes for her behavior, saying that she had taken MDMA (aka “molly”). Ian asks if she’s using it “again,” indicating that Nikki has used drugs in the past.
Characters drink beer and tequila shots. At a bar, a pre-wish Nikki gently mocks Bear for ordering a piña colada. (“I don’t like the taste of alcohol,” Bear protests.) We see bottles of liquor in a well-appointed study. Bear and Nikki’s friend group seem to frequent bars a lot, and the four argue as to whether to go to a karaoke bar or just head home. (Two go onto the bar, the other two go home.)
Bear’s medicine cabinet is filled with loads of prescription pill bottles.
Bear and Nikki both work at a music store, but they’re not always scheduled for the same shifts. Sometime after Bear makes his wish, he’s scheduled to go to work without Nikki. In an effort to force Bear to stay home, Nikki smothers the front door in duct tape—hoping he won’t be able to open the door. He manages to make his way out, pretending everything is normal, and leaves Nikki standing in the middle of the living room, smiling. She remains there, smiling, and begins to urinate on the carpet. When Bear comes home, Nikki is waiting for him at that same spot disheveled, her face and the floor covered in vomit. (She explains that she may have tried to eat a bug.)
Bear vomits too, into a trashcan. (We don’t see anything, but we do hear it.)
The post-wish Nikki is unsettling, terrifying and deadly. She also lies about the health of one of her family members in the hope of currying favor with Bear. But the film comes with an important question: Who is the real villain here?
Several people note that the post-wish Nikki is not acting quite like herself, which they interpret as the woman going through a very tumultuous time in her life. Some suggest that it looks as though Bear is taking advantage of Nikki—leveraging that personal turmoil for his own romantic and sexual satisfaction. In a nod to the film’s writing, that’s both true and false, with Bear serving as the movie’s most put-upon victim while also being its biggest antagonist. Even as Nikki’s obsession/possession moves toward its climax, Bear still seems to cling to aspects of this ludicrously dysfunctional relationship.
Be careful what you wish for.
The proverb goes all the way back to Aesop’s Fables circa 600 B.C. And more than 2,500 years of literary experience since tells us to be wary of wishes. For every Disney-fied “Wish Upon a Star” moment, you have a Monkey’s Paw or a Midas touch.
As such, Obsession offers a strong moral with its morbidity—one that rings true even in Christian circles. God’s gifts are generous and real, but they’re not always easy to unlock. God means for us to live lives filled with honest work and sincere relationship—both of which can be frustratingly difficult. But to short-circuit that design is asking for trouble.
That said, going to this movie is begging its own sort of trouble.
Obsession is messed up. Up-and-coming writer and director Curry Barker knows his craft, obviously, but he’s used his considerable talents to tell a truly horrific, off-putting story that will be difficult to shake. It unfurls with the grace of a sledgehammer and just keeps pounding.
I realize that, for many horror aficionados, all that is a selling point. But if I had a wish in my back pocket that wouldn’t ultimately lead to terror and death, I might wish that this movie had never been made. Or, at least, that I didn’t have to review it.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
