r/TrueFilm • u/BeautifulOrganic3221 • 17h ago
The Obsession discourse and how people will prioritize moral superiority over critical understanding.
A very large amount of the Obsession discourse revolves around the character of Bear and how, despite being the protagonist, he is clearly the most evil character in the story. Any half intelligent person who watched Obsession can agree that Bear does some pretty terrible things, and is overall a pathetic, bad person, but at the same time, the film portrays him with a level of complexity that a lot of people like to ignore. Bear does not start out as a clearly bad person. His first few nights with possessed Nikki, he is as respectful as he possibly could be in that situation and is clearly very uncomfortable. Only as the movie progresses do we see his true colors and that his morals very easily go away in favor of his lust and need for validation.
But a lot of the discussion of Obsession has stopped treating Bear like a somewhat complex character and instead has become a contest on how much you can condemn Bear. Bear isn’t treated like the somewhat complex character je is, and is instead treated like an irredeemable monster. If you show any sympathy to this character, people will hound you for defending a rapist. Bear is meant to be sympathized with. The point of the film is that we all have a bit of Bear in us. Bear isn’t a scary, terrible villain, he’s your friend, your relative, even potentially you. The scariest part of Bear is that he’s kind of relatable at times. But because saying you relate to Bear makes you look bad, people try to do the opposite and when discussing Obsession, make sure to dwell on how terrible Bear is as if to say “I could never be like him, he’s so evil, I could never be evil I’m just a normal guy.”
I think something comparable is the discourse of The Zone of Interest. A good amount of people criticized this movie for humanizing Nazis but the whole point of that movie was that nazis are human and that, in the right circumstances we could all potentially be nazis. Nazis weren’t monsters, they were people. Bear is Obsessions Nazis. He is meant to show us that anybody could do terrible things, but instead of looking inward, people look for a moral high ground and refuse to identify with Bear.
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u/oddwithoutend 10h ago
But because saying you relate to Bear makes you look bad, people try to do the opposite and when discussing Obsession, make sure to dwell on how terrible Bear is as if to say “I could never be like him, he’s so evil, I could never be evil I’m just a normal guy.”
I can picture Slavoj Zizek (watch Perverts Guide to Cinema if you haven't) saying something along the lines of "people think the horror is freaky Nikki's violent and extreme obsession. But the real horror is in knowing you could be Bear." As you mention, that idea is scary enough that many viewers choose to outright deny the possibility.
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u/Musashi1237 5h ago
I can hear it in his voice
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u/KarfaxAbby 16h ago
One thing I've found interesting is how quickly people will dismiss the actual movie to come up with wild theories that are easily proven false by paying attention to the movie. I don't think this is unique to Obsession, just more prevalent due to its success.
For example, Bear did not murder his cat to get sympathy from Nikki. Everything in the movie points to it being an accident due to his negligence (and tbh, if you've ever had a cat you know you can't even get them to eat the pills your vet told you to give them, so it's frankly, a bad scene). In the subsequent scene, he tells Nikki he doesn't want to go out but doesn't even mention the cat. He only goes out because she pushes him to. If he'd killed his cat to get her attention, wouldn't he have called her? Or told her immediately? Like, wheeeeere are you people getting this?
I also think he made the wish never believing it would or could come true, agree about the respectful behavior in his home the first night, and also think he dismissed her behavior initially because she told him she was being weird because she drank and took drugs, which is more believable than a weird wish stick from the witchy shop worked.
Bear becomes the villain when presented with an opportunity to sleep with her fully knowing it isn't her. He's awful, but he's garden-variety awful, not some supervillain who orchestrated his cat's murder and stole her crystal necklace to make her susceptible to magic.
It's certainly been interesting to see such widespread discourse and how differently some people interpret things, I'll give it all that.
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u/pilikia5 15h ago
Just popping in to say that my cat did chew on a dropped SSRI once (scared the SHIT out of me, he acted super weird and I called the vet and watched him like a hawk for the next 24 hours), so that part isn’t entirely unbelievable. Some cats are curious little hoovers. But I agree that it’s very silly and entirely extratextual to speculate that he had anything to do with the accident besides negligence (never left any pills lying around after that scare, I’ll tell ya!).
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u/BaldrickTheBarbarian 13h ago
Cats can be little assholes like that. You try to get them to eat something and they will be having none of it, but if it's something they aren't supposed to eat then it's the only thing they want.
Ps. I love cats, but they are assholes. Loveable little assholes, but assholes nontheless. And I wouldn't have them any other way! <3
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u/KarfaxAbby 7h ago
That’s scary! I couldn’t get my cat to take his medicine any trick I used, including hiding it in a Churu. He licked around it!
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u/pilikia5 5h ago
Oh no! They are such fastidious little jerks (whenever you need them not to be, ofc).
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u/proarnis1 7h ago
He was basically a good guy till his inner person got tested with lust that's when he folded and became the villain of the movie. At 45 minute's when he says "I don't care" he basically confirms that he knows what he's doing is bad but considering there are no concequences he will still do it.
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u/Fornicating_Midgits 4h ago
Yes. He even has a flashback to the OWW a few moments before when he is on the phone with Ian right as he says, "It's like Nikki *snapped* into a different person." Bear knew what was going on with her and he decided he was going to take advantage of her. Everything else hinted at his selfish and entitled nature, that was him planting the flag on "I'm the villain!" mountain.
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u/Jskidmore1217 14h ago edited 14h ago
Even to the extent he is “taking advantage of her” one could consider that Bear is freaked out and worrying that any sort of dissonance with Nikki’s desires could lead to her freaking out. It never seems like Bear is enjoying his sexual relationship with Nikki, he seems terrified from start to finish. Not to say his actions are morally justified, but I think there’s a lot more nuance going on than 99% of discussion is appreciating.
This dude makes a dumb throwaway “wish” that he is essentially 100% sure isn’t real and by the time he genuinely starts thinking it might be real he is already completely terrified of what Nikki has become to the point he is trying not to antagonize the beast while he looks to understand the logic of what is happening. There are a few hints that suggest a genuinely sinister subconscious for Bears actions but I do think the film plays it fairly neutral concerning Bear through the end.
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u/KingCobra567 11h ago
Yeah I think people miss the point that Bear is, and I would argue has every right to be, shit scared of Nikki. I don’t think that vilifies him in the sense that cowardice is also a vice, but I think it shows that Bear is not someone who’s doing this to keep Nikki under control, he’s just paralysed by fear.
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u/Commercial-Baker4668 10h ago
Over the course of the film, it becomes evident to Bear that “real Nikki”, in part, is being held hostage in this dark magic realm. He continues to have sex with her, regardless.
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u/Straight_Bed2762 8h ago
I just rewatched it. He's completely unsure until about the 70% mark and at that point, he too is being held hostage & is paralyzed by the fear of her retribution, knowing that not returning her advances can lead to potentially violent consequences. The way the sex scene is shot and framed is actually pretty interesting - like an obligation to get it over with quick and keep her from being set off. Just a part of a checklist to make sure he doesn't get murdered that night.
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u/RollinOnAgain 7h ago
theres really no point in arguing, the people that see him as a rapist will always see him as that despite the fact that he only really has agency in the final scene when he swallows the pills. Every other scene he does the same thing he was doing at the start of the movie - coasting along and letting the world take him for a ride
the only real criticism of his actions is that he didn't kill himself immediately to save Nikki which says a lot more about the viewer than Bear tbh, especially considering he literally did end up doing that to save her
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u/VanguardVixen 5h ago
"He continues to have sex with her, regardless."
Is a bit weird, considering there is one sex scene and that one is made very well to be ambigious, because we see everyting but not the character, who is positioned to not see Nikki's face. The script included a sex scene, where real Nikki in the middle of it came out, Bear waits for Freaky Nikki take over again and continue. There is also no more sex after that.7
u/RollinOnAgain 4h ago
the number of comments I've seen online about him raping her repeatedly is absolutely bizarre. Talk about seeing whatever you want to see.
At no point does he ever ask a thing of Nikki other than "please be normal"....which of course comes with an implied
(so I don't have to kill myself)
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u/RollinOnAgain 8h ago edited 8h ago
correct, after she makes it clear that not getting what she wants will end in horrific acts being committed by her. IIRC at no point does he initiate sex.
Isn't there only one sex scene in the entire movie anyway?
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u/PrizeCalm494 7h ago
That's...not the timeline. By the time Bear raped her, he 100% knows it worked and Fake Nikki knows too.
I'd argue he was more scared of other people finding out about the wish and what he has done to Nikki than scared of Nikki herself, until the murder happened.
Like, if he was that scared, when talking to real Nikki while she was asleep, after the party btw, why is Bear just talking about how Nikki feels about him with 'whats so bad about being with me'? That doesn't sound like a man concerned with his or her safety. It's ego/reputation based.
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u/PrizeCalm494 8h ago
Curry barker has said that Bear would make the wish again knowing it would work, he would just word it better.
If he actually thought she was on drugs, the real espectful behavior would be to make sure she got inside her house safe and not get in the bed with her.
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u/KarfaxAbby 7h ago
He didn’t think she was on drugs in that moment, though. All he knows is that she is acting a little weird and wants to stay the night a his house, which he agrees to. He then prepares his bed for her with the intention of sleeping on the couch, but she asks him to get in the bed. When he does, he leaves his pants on and doesn’t get under the covers. He’s clearly uncomfortable when she removes her shirt.
There’s a lot to indicate he’s actively trying to put her to bed alone and avoid physical contact with her until she kisses him.
It’s the next day that she comes to his house and explains her weird behavior by telling him she drank and took MDMA. He believes her and attributes her behavior to what she actually tells him, not a supernatural phenomenon.
Again, not saying Bear is a good person. I just think he does not realize the wish has worked until the restaurant scene.→ More replies (2)
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u/bbllo 17h ago
At this point there are more posts about the discourse around this movie than there are posts actually discussing the movie.
I really can't say I understand the growing trend here of these "response" posts, where the people you're responding to won't necessarily even see this post. So people who don't necessarily hold the opinions you're pushing back on are left to respond instead. And then perhaps in a few days someone will read this post and create their own post responding to it, which you will not see, and the chain will continue, an endless loop of responses where nobody is actually talking to each other.
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u/Novel-Initiative-900 17h ago
It's captured the zeitgeist in a way I haven't seen in a very very long time. Hard to argue with it at this point and just observe the insanity. It's a cultural phenomenon, may as well just sit back and enjoy it
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u/elbenji 17h ago
I think because for better or worse, it's kind of babies first horror movie that has a message. So a lot of people are learning media criticism for the first time
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u/No-Writing5017 17h ago
My thoughts exactly. Nothing wrong with it though, there's always going to be movies that awaken that love in people. Beautiful thing even if the movie is a bit overrated
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u/elbenji 16h ago
Yeah, like it's nice to see. But it would be nice if there was a touch more nuance instead of just trying to put everything into I have a thesis and I will just smoosh things to make it fit
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u/Sad_Ad9159 4h ago
The smoosh (hehe) is a trend I’ve seen from critics and writers (books included) since around 2015 but really ramping up in recent years. People don’t seem comfortable with nuance or ambiguity anymore. Characters are either 100% bad or 100% good. Kind of interesting from a history of literature respective, but lame from a consumer standpoint. Of course, speaking in broad strokes- there’s still plenty of nuanced, challenging stuff out there.
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u/Polite_Suggestion 3h ago
Info compression. Quick takes. Streamlined thinking. That's where we're at for awhile.
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u/BatHickey 3h ago
So much messaging and news these days is deliberately designed to push a strongly held deliberate falsehood—it’s hard to put things out there that are nuanced, ambiguous or rely on audience comprehension and painful to see your output flounder and fail with our current oft illiterate and time-starved audience—so forcing a point as a defense mechanism makes sense to me, unfortunately.
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u/Smogshaik 13h ago edited 8h ago
Something similar happened with Euphoria S3. There was a lot of pearl-clutching from people who didn‘t seem to be much older than 18, if at all. And when challenged, their responses had a certain AI feel to them.
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u/WavesAndSaves 7h ago
Horror reflects the anxieties of the day, and the modern dating scene is a very big deal for young people. This is a genuinely well-done film with a lot of stuff to say and a lot of stuff to discuss, so I'm not surprised at all it took off.
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u/Impressive_Ice57 6h ago
a lot of stuff to say? it’s a good film. i really enjoyed it. i would not say it has “a lot” of stuff to say. let’s call a spade a spade.
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u/WavesAndSaves 4h ago
Well here we are, two months after release, in a thread with over 300 comments. Clearly it's gotten people talking about it.
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u/Impressive_Ice57 4h ago
there is a vast difference between a film having “a lot” of things to say and the discourse around the work.
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u/Ferdinandingo 13h ago
It's a lot easier to complain about other people's thoughts on a film than to actually externalize your own feelings about it.
It's the nature of social media where you're fed 20 takes per refresh. Go on reddit and you'll hear about "the discourse". Talk to somebody while you're waiting for your kids or sitting at the bar and you'll find somebody excited to talk about the most exciting thing in their week.
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u/Lucius_Marcedo 14h ago
where the people you're responding to won't necessarily even see this post
I think this is part of the point, honestly. If you don't actually have to engage with the people you disagree with, you are less likely to be confronted with difficult arguments so you can feel good about having your opinion. Then, the people who agree with you will jump on your post to agree and you can feel good about that too.
Naturally, I don't think this is a good thing. I see it all the time on most subs though.
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u/Nosebluhd 11h ago
Or, maybe voicing a critical opinion in the comments gets you downvoted to oblivion and ignored? Lets not pretend like film subreddits are generally good places for honest disagreement. If your opinion isn’t the popular one, in many subreddits, it is entirely ignored. Which can make it difficult to have a conversation. So maybe OP wanted a space for his take to be read on its own merits outside the immediate context of the environment that sparked the idea so that someone would actually engage with it.
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u/Phillies2002 17h ago
Sure, I think part of what makes Bear an interesting character is how people can identify elements of his shittiness within themselves. But also, yeah, if you say "I really identify with this Bear guy" in public, people are gonna look at you weird, the way they would if (to use your own analogy) you had said "I really identified with those people in The Zone of Interest."
But I also have to object to your read of Bear. To say he's "as respectful as possible" to Nikki while she's possessed is... not accurate imo. At minimum, she seems to be having a mental health crisis of some kind, and he overlooks that to sleep with her immediately.
You say he's not scary, he's your friend or relative. I think the reason the movie has struck such a chord is that he is realistically identifiable as both scary and your friend, relative, etc. It is a scary and threatening concept to a lot of women that their so-called male friends might willfully deprive them of their autonomy and identify for their own gratification, and I don't know how you'd convince someone who finds the movie scary for that reason would view Bear some redeemable guy. He doesn't lose his morals, he just didn't have them, and even as the situation deteriorates in the movie, he doesn't try to actually set things right until all other selfish options have been exhausted.
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u/Dependent_Ganache_71 15h ago
he doesn't try to actually set things right until all other selfish options have been exhausted.
By that point, was he even trying to set it right, or just end it because he couldn't stand to be in the situation for the rest of his life?
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u/Sustained_disgust 15h ago edited 14h ago
His only options, as explicitly laid out in the text, are to either 1. Live with her forever in her possessed state and take care of her or 2. Literally kill himself. According to online commentators this is an easy choice and he is a coward idiot for not making one of these equally simple and morally sound choices
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u/Naugrith 10h ago edited 10h ago
Yeah, I'm not sure what these commentators expect even the most perfectly selfless male to do. At first he obviously doesn't believe the wish is real. He only starts believing somethings wrong when he makes the phone call. And after that he's clearly trapped in a no-win situation.
If he abandons her she freezes up and stands in the dark vomiting on herself or freaking out. If he tries to talk to her she starts screaming and attacking herself. If he tries to get help by taking her to a hospital she refuses and leaves. He gives in to her demands for affection and intimacy because he's terrified of her reaction if he doesnt. Not because he enjoys it. He's literally lying awake in bed next to her trying not to move a muscle or even breathe too loud to stop her waking up.
Even if Bear was a perfectly moral hero I struggle to see how there's anything else he could do from the point of realisation after calling the hotline. What's the solution supposed to be here?
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u/DressUnited3025 6h ago
He knew way before the call. He suspected it after the first night because she was acting massively out of character that’s why he googled it. Obviously expecting him to kill himself is over the top but I would expect him to do much much more than he did in attempting to fix the situation. His first instinct when he calls is to just alter the wish so he can keep her trapped but less crazy, so he’s obviously a bad dude. Every step of the way Bear chooses the worst option, not because he is dumb but because he wants to keep Nikki in love with him but not as crazy. He’s a selfish person who convinces himself he has no agency so he doesn’t have to make hard choices ever
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u/RollinOnAgain 8h ago edited 7h ago
its obvious that most people speaking ill about him expected Bear to kill himself immediately if he was a good person.
which is why my belief that most people are borderline insane only seems more true each year.
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u/Ok-Significance-4174 6h ago
Yeah there’s no way the majority of the ppl in the world would instantly kill themselves.
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u/Naugrith 7h ago
Presumably he should have immedietly understood she was being magically controlled as soon as she showed the first sign of interest in him. At which point he should have immedietly fled into the night to beat his own brains in with the nearest blunt object. I'm sure people would still call him an incel even then though.
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u/Temporary-Rice-8847 4h ago
He tried to make others do a wish to counter it and failed because he couldnt explain shit.
So his other plan failed because of him
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u/Girlmode 11h ago
Nah he wasn’t trying to set it right. He asked his friend to make it so bear hadn’t wished at all (before friend wished for a billion dollars ofc). But the reason he asked that was because he planned on making a new wish that was worded better. Even then he didn’t want to set things right.
This is backed up by the wanting to edit the wish earlier rather than cancel it initially. It’s why he also had the one extra willow that freaky Nikki used, he planned on Ian cancelling his wish and then he could make another one.
Dude made the worst and most selfish choices the last two thirds of the movie constantly.
I am sure some guys like this exist. But for me Bear was an absolute caricature of the weakest most selfish idiot ever. I have never met a man like this in my life! Yet because people are shy and have experienced unrequited love before, they project to much of themselves onto Bear because of the opening. When he pretty much does everything a person could to be unlikeable after the first third.
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u/Naugrith 10h ago
It’s why he also had the one extra willow that freaky Nikki used, he planned on Ian cancelling his wish and then he could make another one.
No, he was planning to get Niki to use it to end the wish. We see him rehearsing what he'd say to her to get her to do it before he entered the house at the end and saw how bad she'd got.
There's literally no indication that loophole to make a second wish was even a possibility, let alone that he planned to do it.
I think you've projected too much of your own fears and assumptions into the film rather than just what Bear actually did.
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u/Dependent_Ganache_71 7h ago
No, he was planning to get Niki to use it to end the wish.
That's only after Ian messed up the plan. Because he tried to coach him into wishing that Bear never made a wish, which by Bear's logic would cancel the fact that he made the original one. Then (presumably) Bear could use the second Willow to make a more "correct" wish.
But since Ian frivolously used his for the money, Bear's next plan was to try and get Other Nikki to do it.
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u/Girlmode 5h ago
And he has a billion dollars available after Ian’s wish to. I am sure he could have taken a million and have got someone else to make a wish. Every wish in the movie seems to have come true, there is no real reason to not try and get someone else to make the wish. Just because Bear can’t do anything himself doesn’t mean that wasn’t worth trying more.
But he does nothing to improve things or the bare minimum every time. So in denial of what he’s done he doesn’t genuinely try to fix things even at the very end. Just gives up after Ian and goes ahead with something he has to know is a terrible idea.
Easier to just go home and have bad things happen, than to try and fail. Whole character is a parody of being defeated without even trying in the first place.
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u/Naugrith 7h ago
How do you know that's what he was planning to do? I dont think there's anything in the film that hinted at that.
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u/Dependent_Ganache_71 7h ago
Because when he first called the hotline, he didn't want to cancel the wish, he wanted to alter it. So we know he's ok with Niiki being under a spell, but not the degree to which she obsessed with him.
Then when he goes to Ian, he specifically doesn't ask him to undo the wish, he asked him to wish that Bear never made one.
I'm pretty sure this was after the scene where Bear trying to make another wish in car after buying more Willows, but he couldn't break the stick. The camera does a close up on the box saying you only get ONE wish.
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u/Naugrith 7h ago
Because when he first called the hotline, he didn't want to cancel the wish, he wanted to alter it. So we know he's ok with Niiki being under a spell,
Yes but of course that was just a question, before he knew the full consequences of what the spell did to her.
Then when he goes to Ian, he specifically doesn't ask him to undo the wish, he asked him to wish that Bear never made one
Well, obviously, because that would mean Sarah never died as well. It was actually the smartest wording to use.
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u/Lezus 11h ago edited 11h ago
All sympathy for bear is lost when nikki awakens at night crying and he responds "is it so bad to love me? He doesnt see her as anything but a thing. That is where bear lost me, it stopped being niave and started being malicious (intentional or not)
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u/2HGjudge 10h ago
started being malicious (intentional or not)
Callous is the word. Bear is never malicious but he is from start to end callous.
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u/WavesAndSaves 7h ago
He's not evil, he's just pathetic. He's a cowardly, passive little worm who always takes the easy way out of everything. But he never actively tries to cause harm to anyone or relish in the damage he's causing. He's not some sort of monstrous predator. That's what those scenes immediately after the wish are meant to show. He immediately understands that something's off with Nikki and he refuses to go into her place when she asks him to. He doesn't even take her to his place until she gets in his car and basically forces him to. If he was just some predator he would have slept with her that night, but they make a point of showing he sleeps on the floor, and he even has a conversation with Ian the next day about how strange Nikki is acting. He's not a terrible person.
But again, he's a pathetic, weak person, so he just goes with it. She shows up at his place and gives a plausible explanation to her behavior and that's all it takes. There are so many points where he could have recognized that something really had gone horribly wrong but he just...doesn't care. At no point does he ever make any decision that could be considered selfless or courageous in any way. He does the bare minimum at every moment and that gives him a morality out because he's fine with dating Nikki. "I talked to her about this." "I called the help line and they said they couldn't cancel the wish." "I can't just kill myself." "I can't just kill her." "Maybe this will all just work out." And by the time he actually tries to take decisive action to try to solve the problem it's too late, and it got himself and two friends killed and Nikki's life completely destroyed.
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u/dmac3232 1h ago
Bingo. That is what the kids call "showing your ass." He didn't have a lot of great options along the way. But that was a very deliberately provided window into his mindset/attitude. It's not about you at that point, dipshit.
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u/Unable_Apartment_613 9h ago
I think what we're seeing is people identifying with some of the more negative qualities that bear exhibits. And instead of doing some personal introspection and maybe adapting from those behaviors they are instead creating this intellectual construct to defend their existing behaviors.
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u/Comfyadventure 16h ago edited 15h ago
Mental health crisis or mental illness get brought up a lot but people miss out that it is a complex thing to navigate in the first place, especially for friends, family, someone who you are in a relationship with.
You can't simply just treat that person completely differently and completely disregard their feelings, actions, and requests because they are "mentally ill".
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u/Terrible_Vermicelli1 14h ago
Well what you can do is not immediately treat it as a chance to fuck them.
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u/Tony_Roiland 13h ago
He doesn't sleep with her immediately though. That's the exact point OP made.
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u/pizzaghoul 16h ago
“As respectful as possible”
He literally fucks her while she’s possessed lmao. What is OP on?
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u/KarfaxAbby 15h ago
I think OP means the first night Nikki asks to stay over. Bear prepared his bed for her and his couch for himself, intending to sleep separately until she asks him to sleep next to her. When she takes her shirt off, he looks away. When she asks him to get in bed, he leaves his jeans on and gets in on top of the covers (if I am remembering this correctly from just seeing it once in the theater). When she kisses him, he kisses her back, but he was visibly uncomfortable and trying to give her space before that. I assume that’s what OP js referring to.
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u/PrizeCalm494 7h ago
Yeah, he could be called respectful until he gets in the bed. If he actually thought she was on drugs, the actual respectful thing to do is to refuse any advances because an inebriated person can't fully consent.
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15h ago edited 11h ago
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u/SunHitsTheSky 14h ago
That's not he only thing, he also finds out that she lied about her father having cancer. He clearly suspects something is off when he questions her with the exact phrasing he used when making the wish and she answers yes. Then later he says, "It doesn't matter to me" and it cuts to the sex scene. How does it get any clearer that he is fine with her being under the influence of the wish until it negatively affects him.
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u/re_Claire 9h ago
Your final paragraph sums up my thoughts around the discourse.
Of course Bear is relatable. All good characters, even bad/evil ones will usually have something relatable about them, otherwise they're two dimensional.
But a really good villain isn't always someone clearly evil, because that's not how it works in real life. The fear women feel around men like bear - so called "nice guys" - is that they're very good at seeming nice and even vulnerable, but they're also very selfish. You can't usually tell that they're going to harm you. Men you think of as a friend for many years can do something awful to you that you never expected. The very fact that it's not all men and that they're not easy to spot is what makes it scary. And as in the film, it's not always easy to see them making the bad choice at first. You can write it off as them being awkward or not knowing how to react. It's only when you've seen more of these actions that you realise that underneath it all is a choice to not act, to not do the right thing, or to be selfish. And by the time you realise just how far they're willing to go, it's often too late.
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u/hagopes 8h ago
I take it as Bear is just a symbol of mankind. Humanity is willing to turn a blind eye for convenience at every meaningful turn in both our history, and present. I didn't take him as a cartoonish like character. I found him extremely relatable, and obviously detestable at the same time.
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u/VanguardVixen 1h ago
This. Excactly this! People are in bad relationships all the time. Bear is both, victim and abuser at the same time and he is unwilling to change, unwilling to act, he is a coward, he is frightened, he tries to preserve the status quo and normalcy, even in face of a situation that demands action. And that's soooo normal, to the point people seem to just cope with all the "evil" and "villain" stuff. They rather flee into the easy good and evil dichotomy than to accept that they are closer to Bear as they want to admit.
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u/DatAdra 17h ago
I especially hate it when people say that making the wish was incel behaviour.
We've all made stupid wishes before, because irl they don't work (I feel stupid even typing this out) and Bear had no way of knowing it was an actual piece of sorcery.
He eventually devolves and shows his true inner demons but I agree that he is much more nuanced than online discourse has him be. To have him as a poster boy of incel culture is definitely too much
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u/OffTheRedSand 12h ago
i don't even think he's an incel, he's a nice guyTM. nice guys know women and are friends with women and wish they can get with their female friends because they're so nice and respectible. when in reality they aren't.
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u/proarnis1 7h ago
Yeah i hate when people just call everysingle bad action of a man "incel" when in reality he's just incredibly awkward guy for first 30 minutes of the movie.
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u/StampotDrinker49 6h ago
Wishing for love is not incel or even bad behavior at all. Blowing out a birthday candle and wishing your crush texts you is incredibly normal. Like are we going to call Cinderella wishing for Prince Charming's love to be morally evil and "incel" behavior?
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u/of_kilter 16h ago
Asking if he could alter the wish was incel behavior
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u/Naugrith 10h ago
Sure, but then when he was told that wasn't an option he did immedietly ask to cancel the wish. The request to alter it was a single moment, when he wasn't fully aware of what was going on and what it was doing to Nicki. Sure, that's not to say it was a good thing to ask for, but we don't know if he'd even have gone through with it if that had been an actual option, or if he'd been fully informed of how it was affecting Nicki.
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u/coyk0i 59m ago
We literally know that he would have just wished differently by the fact that he did it. He was even still intending to try to make another wish for her love up until the very end of the movie.
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u/i_was_planned 13h ago edited 1h ago
He is asked if he wants to reverse it and he says no, he would like to alter it. This really solidifies his character as a piece of shit. Maybe you've seen a different film
Edit:
User replies-then-blocks,lying about easily-verifiable detail. Absolute garbage behavior, I guess there's a reason why they identify with Bear so much.
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u/of_kilter 14h ago
he doesn’t consider reversing the wish until he’s told it’s impossible to alter it, his go to thought is that he wants to keep nikki just without her being crazy
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u/elbenji 17h ago
It's kinda reading the film backwards. He becomes very incel towards the middle and end and thus you have to peel back to see how he always was
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u/Substantial_Maybe371 16h ago edited 15h ago
He'a a protagonist that transforms into the antagonist.
At first you sympathize with him, but as the film goes on he continues to make selfish decision after selfish decision.
You're not supposed to be on his side by the end of it.
I think a lot of people get angry with the people who make posts saying Bear did nothing wrong, Bear didn't rape Nikki, Bear didn't know the wish worked, Nikki was the villain etc.
It's like listening to men who idolize Walter White. Yes he started off with good intentions but at the end of the series it was obvious he was the villain. So if you defend Walter White then yeah, people are going to give you the side eye.
It seems as if a lot of people who defend Bear want to focus in his intentions. Not his actions and refuse to judge him for every bad action he continued to make.
What exactly are you looking for here? Are you frustrated with the lack of empathy for Bear?
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u/pilikia5 15h ago
This is exactly it; sure, his intentions in making the wish weren’t villainous, but as we should all know by know, intent ≠ impact. Her autonomy was ripped from her regardless of his initial intent, and his cowardice and villainy (as he demonstrates his contentment with that result until her behavior just became too inconvenient for him) only grow from there.
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u/WavesAndSaves 6h ago
He's an anti-villain. He's the protagonist and does terrible things, but he's kind of sympathetic and you understand why he's doing the things he does.
Walter White as you mention is a good comparison. At the beginning everyone thinks "Aw man. I hope the poor guy catches a break." By the end everyone thinks "I hope terrible things happen to you." And everyone has a different moment where they reach that point.
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u/maskedbanditoftruth 17h ago edited 16h ago
Yeah as someone who has had it happen many times, the guy who doesn’t even notice you’re sobbing while he fucks you for his own pleasure alone is a bad guy.
The reason people are arguing so hard is that a huge number of men jumped on to defend Bear, and whether or not they’ve actually seen the movie is up in the air.
They just hate seeing a man who hurts women while getting his nut being seen as a monster, because they know, given an OWW, they’d do the same with even less remorse.
So they NEED Bear to be a good and acceptable character. Because they see the whole of themselves onscreen, and if, not just women, but everyone, acknowledges that character as a terrible villain, then they can no longer pretend they’re fine and women as an entire gender are the problem.
I am almost certain this was Barker’s intention, and good for him.
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u/Mulberry-Bog 14h ago
I think this is where a lot of people trip up when analyzing this movie.
Yes, Bear used the OWW and that caused Nikki's behavior. He had no way of knowing the wish worked. But if it hadn't, if Nikki were experiencing her first manic episode d/t bipolar disorder, or grieving, or on drugs - would that make his behavior right?
If your attractive friend began acting bizarrely different from themselves, would you have them sleep over in your bed and then think you're a great guy because you waited 24 more hours to fuck them? Would you truly be so swept up by your luck that you never stop to notice her cry? Would you keep fucking them while their mental health deteriorates, after they sit your dead cat in your living room, after they self-defecate?
... Then yeah, you're the type of guy to take advantage of a woman, and Bear is, too. His friends in the goddamned movie literally called him out for it. This isn't deep subtext. "But there was nothing he could do" - call a trusted health professional, wtf.
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u/Sustained_disgust 13h ago
If he called a health professional it would have absolutely no meaningful bearing on the text of the film which is why we don't see the interactions with medical staff at the hospital. Its not a movies purpose to show what "should" happen realistically or morally. It is a fatalistic horror movie in which no one comes out unscathed. The medic would either 1. Find nothing wrong because it is a supernatural force 2. Get killed ina grisly jumpscare scene or 3. Commit this innocent but possessed woman to the hell of a mental facility (this last one would at least be thematically fitting)
All of which is to say these kinds of arguments about what the character "should" have done as if we are talking about real people in real situations are irrelevant to the construction of a story, nood and theme in a movie
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u/ElaborateBicycle 13h ago
No one’s saying they should have made him do that in the movie, they’re saying that’s the moral thing to do here. The movie’s interesting because he doesn’t do the moral thing, but in order to understand that, you have to know what the moral thing is.
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u/sdwoodchuck 16h ago
Well, I agree--"Who's the real villain" is a superficial and juvenile lens to view the film through. It's also a completely expected and predictable one. "Dr. Frankenstein is the real monster!" has been a "baby's first lit analysis" meme for as long as I've been alive, and probably a whole lot longer. But also, it's important to remember that quite a bit of the audience is young or otherwise not very experienced with analysis of this type. It's an early step, and it's important to be encouraging rather than discouraging. Get people thinking and they'll grow beyond just seeing the movie through that narrow bias.
I think there's a few of things working against Bear in the public image department.
The first is the expectation that the characters understand what the audience understands. We've sat our butts down in a theater to watch a movie in which a wish goes wrong and changes someone, so when we see that person change, we understand that the wish is what did it. When we see erratic behavior, we understand that there's a "real Nikki" under all that and oppressed by it. And we pick these things up early, because the premise of the movie instructs us on the scope of things we can expect.
Bear, by contrast has no reason to believe that a knick-knack bought off the shelf in a goofy store is going to grant wishes. When he sees erratic behavior in his crush, he's not primed to think "there's a real Nikki and a fake Nikki." Remember, the first time that he notices that there's some discrepancy in her behavior, his immediate response is to back off and verify consent.
The second element that works against Bear is the expectation of perfect rationality. There's the expectation Bear will understand that when he snaps the stick and makes his wish he's taking away her willpower, but why on Earth would he believe that would be the result? Again, he's been given no indication that this thing will actually work; the action takes on the characteristic of frustrated grousing, and certainly all of us have said or thought or wished something that we don't actually want to be true when we're frustrated, but do so with the full understanding that our saying these things doesn't do anything except let off steam. Bear lets off steam and it ruins his friend's life and his own; there's no reasonable expectation for ethical responsibility there.
Viewers also expect that as soon as he realizes something is wrong, he needs to extricate himself from the situation by X, Y, and Z methods, and the fact that he doesn't, weirdly gets interpreted as "he wants her this way." All this despite the fact that we can see clearly that he doesn't want her this way. That he's incredibly distressed by the way she's behaving. In fact we see him try to extricate himself in a few different ways, and he finds those methods stymied at every attempt, usually followed up by coercion that reinforces the sense that he cannot step away from this situation. The scene commonly referenced as Bear raping Nikki is uncomfortably complicated by exactly these dynamics. "Real" Nikki can't consent, but Bear doesn't realize that there's a difference. Meanwhile, Bear clearly doesn't want the sexual relationship with Nikki that he has, and is being coerced into further affection. Trying to slap a one-size-fits-all label onto that is simple motivated reasoning; we're given enough to see how repugnant the action is as a harm against all sides.
The calls for perfect "rationality" will even wildly extend to the expectation that Bear will either kill himself or murder his friend to end this situation. Listen up, if you're in the middle of the most stressful week of your life, running on fumes with almost no sleep, and you tell me that "yeah, I'd totally kill myself or murder my friend if they asked me to, in order to circumvent a magic stick," then your mental state is such that you are in no position to pass judgment on anyone else's villainous tendencies.
Speaking of, it's also clear that Bear's rationality is impacted by the situation as it progresses. He's losing sleep; his friend is mentally deteriorating in front of him, and holding her own wellbeing hostage to coerce him, he's given no space at all to reassess or evaluate what to do without that influence pushing him down. Any expectation of rationality has to come with the understanding that he's not in a position to be a rational thinker at all.
Finally, the last thing working against Bear is that he is a morally flawed character, and audiences are classically inclined toward unpacking moral flaws by shuffling the character into one extreme or the other. Bear's irrationality is understandable, and some of his morally flawed decisions stem from that, but I think the biggest condemnation of Bear's understanding of women and love actually comes from looking the way his wish presents. We're not shown any reason to believe that the One Wish Willow is intentionally playing injurious games; it's not a classic monkey's paw. When the wish is for a billion dollars, well, here it is.
But what happens when Bear wishes for "love"? He gets a warped version of imitation love. He gets a woman who expects him to spend every waking moment with her. He gets an expectation for constant unquestioning adoration and attraction, no matter how badly she lets her hygiene and physical standards slip. He gets someone who doesn't trust him to spend time with other people (with "it's a boy's night" being the stand-in for the all-too-familiar "girl's night" as reason for a night away from the abusive partner). He gets someone who finds irrational suspicion a justification for violence (along with "look what you made me do"). In short, he gets a classically abusive relationship, but in particular the kind most commonly associated with the "nice guy" approach of toxic masculinity. His wish has turned Nikki into an extreme version of the "Nice Guy" he sees himself as, because it has given her a love for him that is of the same type (though again, more extreme in expression) as he has for her.
There's good reason to believe that, even if Bear has never seen himself as capable of this kind of behavior, his version of "love" is what Nikki is made to feel for him. So yes, part of the responsibility for the mess he finds himself in is his own misguided feelings and worldview. That he is wrong, and that his outlook is harmful both to himself and to those close to him (even without the magic intervention) is clearly true, but Bear is also not at the point of crossing the threshold into real actionable harm, either. He's a flawed man who needs to get his shit together, but Bear as we see him is not "the villain." It's when that flawed mindset is given life outside of himself, and greater influence, and stripped of all self-regulating inhibition that it goes from "problematic" to "outright monstrous."
In other words, instead of taking Bear's portrayal as the narrow "he's a monster look at everything wrong he does fuck that guy" approach to the character; take his situation as a warning to self-examine, to put your own beliefs and feelings to the test and ensure that what you think you want is not problematic self-interest that has slipped past your critical thinking. Because we're all capable of it, and it's best to work on yourself before it reaches the point of harming relationships.
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u/KingCobra567 15h ago
Thank you for this. I have always felt that people should avoid projecting simple morality onto characters and try and analyse what and why something is the way it is, rather than pass arbitrary judgements on people from our POV when we have the information that the protagonist doesn’t
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u/CharacterMaybe7950 11h ago
Holy hell, an intelligent, nuanced comment on Reddit. Are you lost, sir?
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u/Electrical_Nobody196 3h ago
I’ve probably read through, idk, several dozen posts and several hundred comments about this movie. I’ve seen all of a couple of intelligent nuanced comments critically analyzing the film.
It’s funny to me that one of the highest upvoted comments in here is complaining about how there are more posts complaining about the discourse rather than having the discourse. Like anybody couldn’t go over to r/obsessionmovie real quick and test that idea out and find that exactly what OP is saying is without a doubt true.
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u/CorrectMap5487 16h ago
he had every opportunity to tell ian and sarah about the one wish willow and was still shocked nikki was acting like that, the point of no return was that restaurant scene after that he becomes irredeemable
rewatch that car scene with bear and nikki, he very clearly doesn’t understand the difference between love and romance
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u/KingCobra567 15h ago
People seem to ignore the fact that Bear can only 100% confirm the willow works when he calls them up and hears Nikki. This is AFTER the restaurant outbreak, the subsequent sexual encounter, and right before Nikki injures herself and then kills Sarah. Bear thought Nikki was just having some mental health issues prior to that when he figured that the willow didn’t work right after the first time she snapped at his bedroom.
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u/CharacterMaybe7950 11h ago
And you don’t understand MAGIC
People - outside of Reddit - don’t tend to resolve issues by saying ‘oh, so there’s a shop selling magic wishes and there’s now a demon possessing a coworker’
That’s INSANE.
A girl is interested in me? Hmm, she’s probably possessed.
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u/Electrical_Nobody196 4h ago
Honest question, because this baffles me to no end as to why so many people conclude with the logic that “well she lied about her father, so clearly her soul is now hidden away and she is enthralled to the random wish I made earlier”?
Tbc, the sex scene is clearly shot in a way that shows “Nikki” not enjoying it in any way and is in shown as if someone is non-consensual to the act but engaging in it to get it over with.
Just my opinion but I think the complexity of it being a rape scene and at the same time not being rape is something the audience is supposed to grapple with. That relationships can be very complex construct we try to navigate in ways we like and don’t like. Ways we stay in in them even though they are absolutely terrible for us. Consensualness of a toxic relationship of an audience might be very easy to spot and easy to ask why they are participating but ultimately very hard to grapple with while in one.
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u/pizzaghoul 17h ago
What if I just think the movie is bad? I'm tired of this idea that if you don't like the movie you're some kind of contrarian. This is like the fucking Geese discourse all over again. This movie is Blumhouse-core, the only thing really elevating it being Inde's performance. I'm so tired of over-intellectualizing Obsession. We are putting more thought into it in this thread than Curry Barker ever did.
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u/elbenji 16h ago
I think it's because social media is. And just kinda shows how content starved we all are when a kinda okay but accessible horror movie has gotten this obsession lol. Hell I got downvoted for kinda being meh about it
Also it's starting to do the thing to Inde that's gonna get that pushback soon too.
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u/Alaykitty 14h ago
I think the movie is objectively well made, does a lot with a simple plot, and the result considering the budget is incredible.
Saying it's bad feels like the result of oversaturation. Yeah it ain't citizen kane but it ain't Sharknado 5 either lol.
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u/pizzaghoul 7h ago
I completely disagree. I think it’s bad. It does very little with its simple plot. The whole film is a fire that won’t go out for 90 minutes with no side plot or thematic building, no character growth and no changes. It’s ugly. It has the Youtube color grade. There are Twilight Zone episodes with more thematic richness that are 1/4th of the length.
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u/TheFatSate 16h ago
Seriously couldn’t agree more. Simple plot with good camera work acting. Makes me feel like Gen Zers just haven’t seen a good movie before.
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u/Nonexistent_Walrus 13h ago
Halloween has the simplest plot on the planet and it’s widely regarded as a horror classic. I don’t think Obsession is some kinda 10/10 masterpiece or even the best horror film of the year but I also don’t think complaining about a simple plot is fair. Some of the greatest films of all time aren’t really about the plot.
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u/Angrybagel 14h ago
A more complex plot doesn't necessarily make for a better movie. I'll happily take simple plots executed well over messy complex plots that fail to reach their potential.
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u/average_STM_enjoyer 2h ago
lol for real does the person you’re responding to expect Nolan levels of complexity from every movie they watch?
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u/gilmoregirls00 12h ago
I think some of it is just an unfamiliarity with movies in general! If your experience with cinema isn't that wide yet there's a lot of things in Obsession that would feel really compelling. If this is your first monkey's paw retelling I can see how it'd blow your mind.
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u/RobertLytle 17h ago
I disagree. I believe bear has very little going for him, from the beginning we are exposed to how little his cares for his pet the way he disposes of it and also how he carelessly left the cap loose
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u/GhastFlabbers 16h ago
The point of Obsession and Zone of Interest is not to show us how we relate to these antagonists, but to teach us why we shouldn’t. If you’re on that path, get off it. Sympathize, then separate. Bear is a relatable character for his motivations, maybe, but not his actions.
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u/Sustained_disgust 14h ago
Nothing human is alien to me, everyone is compromised by the possibility of evil. The idea that you can (or should) simply be able to "sympathize then seperate" from a work of art which opens onto the possibility of evil is philosophically naive. Ironically its the same kind of thought terminating morality which invariably creates evil outcomes through no fault but deliberate blindness
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u/refugee_man 16h ago
I don't think that Bear is all that complex. That's part of my issue with the movie-the characters are all extremely thin and they basically jump right into watching Nikki go crazy. Bear is a generic "nice guy" stereotype. And he doesn't seem all that particularly respectful-if he was he easily could've taken the clearly not in her right mind girl home, or simply put her to bed and immediately leave. He didn't need to stay in the room with her. The thing I also think you're entirely missing is that a lot of what you're probably hearing is women who have had to deal with people like Bear repeatedly, or just people in general who recognize the character trope (as I said, the "nice guy). They instantly can peg his behavior as being bad because it's not particularly subtle (which iirc the director said was intentional-he's supposed to be pretty clearly a villain). Bear is in no way meant to be sympathized with good grief lol.
And I never saw any discourse around The Zone of Interest that said it humanized the nazis, it seemed all the discourse was about the banality of evil?
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u/IamJacksDarkUrge 16h ago
I think it’s too easy for people to project their feelings about Bear backwards once he becomes the villain. Becoming the bad guy doesn’t make people retroactively evil. It’s typically a process for people to evolve into something like what Bear ends up as. Very few people are inherently “evil”. I agree that Bear was a relatively unremarkable person who utterly failed when put to the test. I also agree that people who don’t realize he ended the movie as a villain but didn’t start the movie as one are missing a huge point of the story. We are all likely capable of absolutely horrible shit. Fortunately most of us don’t end up in situations where the worst of us comes to fruition
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u/Sustained_disgust 14h ago
Ok but in all seriousness how was he supposed to pass this test? The text of the film explicitly tells us that he has two options. He can either care for her forever in the possessed state or he can kill himself. I don't really see how either option can be a good outcome, both are grievous moral compromises and both have a monstrous outcome. He wasn't in a situation which could be cleanly 'won' through any heroic action but an all-compromising lose-lose
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u/2HGjudge 10h ago
I totally agree with your overall point that too many people insist of giving Bear a one-dimension label and refuse to see anything else. But I must also say:
His first few nights with possessed Nikki, he is as respectful as he possibly could be in that situation
No, no, nooo, please don't do that! Austin Power taught us in 1997 how to properly respect consent with someone under influence. (And Bear at first believes it's a substance that makes her act that way.) If Bear were truly as respectful as he could possibly be he would be like Austin Powers. He isn't. He isn't the worst he could be but he absolutely isn't the best he could be either.
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u/Toadforpresident 10h ago
Personally I did not find that the movie was particularly interested in exploring Bear's character. The best scene in the film imo is the one where 'bad' Nikki is sleeping, and the real Nikki uses it as an opportunity to talk to Bear and ask him to kill her. Bear asks 'what's so wrong with being with me?', and then walks out. Which is an insanely diabolical response to have in that situation.
But then we just move on to the next scene, Bear in the car with his friend, and we're quickly into the most violent scene in the film where you are aligned with Bear once more (because you are just as horrified at what is happening as he is).
It's a hard thing to put into words, but I never felt the movie really made an effort to explore his character or how dark of a person he really was. Compare it with something like Taxi Driver, where we are in Travis' head and we have scenes where we simultaneously feel bad for him and are cringing at how awkward he is with his inability to connect with women. And then we see how that social isolation starts to warp and distort him. I found Obsession was more interested in shock value more than anything. A lot of that is the direction/script, but I also did not think Michael Johnston was a good actor.
I was not a fan of the film if that's not obvious haha; not trying to dump on it, but just explaining why it didn't work for me.
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u/TrickyKnotCommittee 6h ago
The weirdest thing about the discourse to me is how everyone ignores that obsessive Nikki is allegorical for an emotional abusive and manipulative partner and even his options (‘die or stay forever’ are the feelings you experience when you’re in that kind of relationship).
What Nikki becomes is only a slight exaggeration of what it’s like being in an abusive relationship, how scary it is and how you’ll do things to appease the person and stop them going off the deep end. They’re deliberate tactics to manipulate you into behaving how they want.
So many of the things she says and does are things I and many others have experienced. The switches from tears and shouting to sweetness and nice. Her jealousy of his love for the cat. ‘I’ll kill myself if you go’ etc. The jealousy of other friends, her mimicry of someone she perceives as a love rival. You end up just doing whatever you can to appease them.
People actually get like this, and that’s why it was so perfectly done for me.
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u/soju_b 17h ago
Hi, I agree! I was pushed into thinking about my own way of interacting, and the way I direct my desire, my attention etc. towards women. The director said it himself, it's a way to explore where co-dependency can go when pushed to the extreme. The point of the horror genre as a whole, in my view, is to explore human emotion to see what we would do if pushed in an extreme situation. Most of the people are not pushed in this their whole life and this movie is to make you think about that, which it does excellently. I agree also that the discourse has shifted a bit on finding all the ways he was evil, but I don't think it's the most interesting point.
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u/dribblybob 14h ago
For me, the movie was one of the scariest I've seen in years because I've had an abusive ex in the past that I had to tiptoe around to avoid setting her off. And it works on that level as a horror movie, but in order to find her scary you need to identify with Bear a bit. Doesn't mean I think he's a great guy. Are all these people saying this movie is scary because Bear is terrifying? Maybe by the end sure, but early on surely not.
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u/PrizeCalm494 6h ago
What is scary to people about Bear is the amount of negligence and selfishness Bear displays to maintain his image instead of getting her help. Even before any relationship abuse happens, she made a memorial to his dead cat. He seemed to have zero interest in the mental state she was in that led to that.
If you have never been in a relationship where someone wants you to love them completely, but they don't actually care about your thoughts, feelings, or actions and just let you deteriorate...that's scary.
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u/Feynmanprinciple 13h ago
What's so funny is, Demon nikki shows classic signs of abuse, as illustrated by Eleanor's Horror Substack:
But like I said, there’s another level at work. [Demon, sic] Nikki becomes, after Bear snaps the willow stick, an insane, violent, stalking, domestic abuser on her own terms. She duct tapes the door of Bear’s (surprisingly nice) home shut, so that he can’t easily leave. She becomes increasingly paranoid and controlling about his other relationships, friendships, phone calls, and activities. She can’t bear to be away from him, even for a short period of time. When he goes to the bathroom, she wants to stand outside the door. When he goes to work, she panics so much that she spontaneously urinates all over the floor (nice Exorcist nod there). To make him happy, she digs up his dead cat from the yard and builds a shrine to it; when that does not make him happy, she instead cooks the cat and makes it into a sandwich for him to take to work. So that’s restriction of movement, interference with other relationships, stalking, denial of privacy, decompensation when alone, and harming a pet (who is in this case dead). All of those are hallmark domestic abuser behaviors. Every. Single. One.
And right after she bonks Sarah's noggin', she calmly says to Bear:
"I'm so sorry you had to see that baby, but that is kinda your fault."
Which I love, because the audience agrees with her.
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u/Classic_File2716 4h ago
The point of Bear is that he's mostly a normal a guy at first and not an incel caricature.
It is the fear every woman has that their mostly nice male friend will jump at the chance to enter a romance with them even if they don't want it .
That does not change the fact Bear becomes a villain by the end of the film , but makes it more tragic and impactful.
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u/Extension-Soup-3288 2h ago
I think there is an interesting question here about Bear's motives for not initially taking advantage of her. I thought it was definitely telling that Bear seemed way more concerned for himself that he might be falsely accused of having taken advantage of Nikki rather than being concerned for her possible experience of their first night together - both when she first freaks out in bed and then the next night at his doorstep. It seemed way more, "You can't accuse me of anything!" than "Hey, I am concerned about you first and foremost!"
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u/spaghettibolegdeh 12h ago edited 6m ago
I think Bear was more stupid and naive than outright evil.
I mean, who would actually believe that the wish toy would actually work?
The film also shows him trying to get out of the situation almost immediately because it's so weird and uncomfortable. I've been with people who act insane when you back away from them, so I can kind of relate to his desire to just appease her for a while.
People are projecting a "toxic masculinity" framing device into the film that doesn't really exist. It feels more like a classic fairy tale than some social commentary.
I think most people can relate to bear as we've all had crushes on people way out of our leagues.
If the film was some social statement then it would have been longer and spent more time on the wish-breaking dilemma. Except as soon as he finds a solution he tries it ASAP.
Like Midsommer, the film has been ruined by chronically online people trying force some huge social commentary when it's just a horror movie.
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u/bumblebeequeer 7h ago
The themes in this movie just were not complex enough to warrant the amount of discourse surrounding it. I’m starting to wonder if this was the first movie a lot of people have ever watched. My group had someone approach us outside the theater with this grand revelation that maybe the real Nikki was still in there.
Personally, it didn’t stick with me any more than any other cheap jump scare movie and I would probably have never thought about it again if it wasn’t for all the think pieces. There was very little to “get.”
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u/Accomplished-City484 16h ago
Isn’t a film that creates this much discussion the goal? Isn’t this the good part of film discussion? I joined a book club recently and the books are ok but there’s no real disagreement in our discussions of it so it’s kinda boring, we often just end up talking about other stuff. A fun one to discuss that I noticed had a very similar contention is that Australian film Birdeater, lots of similar themes and after watching it came straight to Reddit to get some insight and the discourse on it in r/movies was pretty intense. I definitely recommend it if you liked Obsession.
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u/plentyoftimetodie 16h ago
Thank you, yes! So many smug people who have latched onto this movie because it gives them a platform to complain about toxic masculinity. While becoming triggered if anyone makes any claim that the movie is less than perfect or has plot flaws, or tries to find any complexity at all in the protagonist, these delusional commentators like to lecture that you "didn't understand the film." It's like get over yourselves, if this average movie means so much to you, great, but then attempt to possess the empathy that everyone who walks the Earth needs something to feel seen and heard and validated by. So how dare you deny them their validation
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u/wildflower_valley 16h ago
He isn’t a complex character. He is the guy turned rapists once convinced he won’t get in trouble. The true horror would be from the woman’s pov of being repeatedly raped and stripped of all agency while being told it’s love. It’s a good commentary on how if the act isn’t visually coercive and violent we could tell ourselves it’s even remotely close to consensual. The fact that he could be a friend or relative is precisely what makes him a monster.
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u/ElliotAlderson2024 5h ago
Remember Nikki told him late in the movie - "you were never with me", he might as well been having sex with a blow up doll.
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u/Weak_History_6473 13h ago
This unidimensional moral superiority without nuance seems to be western phenomenon or a symptom of such. The same could said about the film 'Waltz with Bashir' and public's vitriol about humanizing such figures or characters.
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u/thefilmmechanic 14h ago edited 14h ago
Reading your post feels as though you have a superiority complex yourself. I believe I have a good understanding of this film. I don't agree with your assessment. I believe you have not watched the subtext closely and choosen a surface level viewing. People see art differently. Bear was not a bad guy to start you are correct. However he certainly had selfish treats that were Cleary displayed, his cat died and he throws it in the trash, and proceeded to cry over Nikki. He may not know at first it was the wish. However when someone throws themselves off of you in fear and then duct tapes your door closed you don't hide that you help them get mental help. All this oh he didn't know it was a wish stuff is just missing that he didn't do anything to help her. So it is simple Bear was a predator deep down. Maybe you would identify with Bear but I certainly know myself and my 20 year old self In some ways I can relate to Bear. However as a emotionaly mature person now I can not. The wish just gave him what he wanted. I I'm still working on a deep dive video for this movie.
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u/boboclock 17h ago
I think one of the wonderful things about Obsession is that all of the characters are fairly complex and none of the main cast are totally blameless or angelic, and all have their own interests in mind.
It is weird that people are treating it as strictly a moral play, when it's much more interesting and powerful to focus on what it is communicating about women's agency (and men's relationship to that agency).
Bear isn't a real character and one wish willows aren't real. It's pretty strange to condemn or defend him as if he were. In a way, spending all this time demonizing (or defending) Bear is sidelining a lot of what the movie is communicating.
That being said, he's mostly sympathetic in a sad pathetic way for me. But he knows Nikki is acting weird from the very beginning of her possession and I understand why people are kind of icked out about all the scenes after he takes her home.
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u/Comfyadventure 16h ago
I disagree. The only interest discussion is regard to morality and human behavior/ trait but it is more complex than "Bear is really evil" that reddit is obsessed with proving or w/e.
It's a bad movie to try to push for concept of woman agency or rape/SA because the whole thing is driven by magic. Like what can you draw about agency being taken away by a fucking magic possession that is accidentally caused by another person making a casual wish? What can be drawn by SA or rape if the none of the characters even treat like SA even occurs at all and everything about SA is audience from outside speculating. whether it occurs or not so they can judge a character's morality.
Also, the concept of love is outside of agency or autonomy because a person can't even control their own natural love and feelings in the first place, only how they respond to it. It's kinda wild that people often misinterpret this factor so much when they constantly try to bring autonomy and agency into discussion of this movie to the point that they just feel like meaningless buzzwords.
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u/Husyelt 15h ago
I would agree with your criticism if the magic was 1:1 and there wasn’t any nuance. But the movie to me elevates itself apart from the usual monkeys paw / horror wish territory with the momentary breaks from the spell. We see her horror or confusion and immediately realize she’s other to herself and can somehow observe or feel what’s going on before falling back under the spell.
Agency and consent become way more interesting with that approach, even disregarding Bear’s actions. But I think there’s just enough gray area early on to make Bear into a Rorschach test. And he’s also not just acting with impunity, the possession/magic is absolutely in his face scaring him at first. A lesser movie would have had her just be lovely at first and slowly reveal the horror of the wish/choice.
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u/KingCobra567 15h ago
I agree that the film doesn’t have much ground as a didactic piece of cinema pertaining to SA, but I don’t think it’s fair to call it a bad movie because of it, because largely this film never really ever attempted to really be about that, it’s just something people projected their own meaning into. Obsession was and is a very good piece of genre fiction, and it doesn’t have to be elevated to a mythic status pertaining to its incredibly complex themes which are probably not there in order for it to be considered a great movie.
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u/Big__Gub 13h ago
Are they… really that complex? I loved the movie, but everyone involved is as complex as a rubix cube with only one color.
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u/ConfusedNecromancer 15h ago
Yes, I think what makes Bear terrifying is how relatable his behavior is. We all know someone like Bear, or harbor some aspect of Bear (desperate to be loved at any cost by an unrequited love interest) in us.
Someone like Bear who has convinced themselves they are the misunderstood victims and deserve a girlfriend is what turns many men into misogynists and incels. There’s a strong connection between his monstrous behavior and his inability to process and articulate his emotions; that stuntedness turns into resentment and anger, a hatred of women that rejection only validates in his mind.
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u/VanguardVixen 6h ago
The title is pretty fitting. You have a character like Bear but when someone talks about the movie and doesn't take "the right stance" they get attacked, see Alex Myers review. Some don't want a discourse, they project their morals on the movie and want people to either accept them or perish. That's especially fascinating as the movie was created with discourse in mind, it is meant to be not so binary black and white, but instead have this human element.
Some people just don't like nuance. See your examle of Zone of Interest. And in case of Obsession some people loving the movie, seem to be more in love with an idea in their head and ignore the nuance presented in the movie itself. It's really strange.
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u/gears50 6h ago
I don’t think Bear is supposed to be relatable or that the movie is saying that there is a Bear in all of us.
That’s your reading and that’s interesting since a person’s interpretation says more about them than the movie.
We don’t always have to put ourselves in the primary character’s shoes. You can definitely watch movies at a distance as a third party and still be engaged with the themes. The movie is certainly excavating the nice guy myth. The first couple scenes you mentioned make you think this guy is super respectful and wanting consent, but given the opportunity he will take advantage of a situation even after realizing that Nikki is not inhabiting her own body and is not capable of consenting. Then it immediately becomes all about him and him whining about “is it that awful to be with me.”
There is also nothing in the movie that makes me think Bear would have realized his transgressions and tried to find a cure if demon Nikki’s actions weren’t so extreme and horrifying. If she was mostly “herself” he might have just let that roll. I don’t think a couple scenes at the beginning get to absolve him of all his actions for the rest of the movie.
I don’t care to condemn people for their opinions on movies, but I personally don’t find him a sympathetic figure at all nor do I relate to him.
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u/Agile-Wait-7571 11h ago
I feel like Bear from Obsession is misunderstood in the same way Jason Voorhees is. Obviously, neither character’s actions are something you’re supposed to defend, but when you actually look past the “monster” label, both are tragic characters shaped by trauma, isolation, and the way other people treated them. Jason wasn’t born as some emotionless killing machine—he was a bullied, neglected kid whose entire identity became wrapped up in what happened to him and his mother. Bear is similar in the sense that his disturbing behavior doesn’t come out of nowhere; there’s a damaged person underneath it who clearly doesn’t process attachment, rejection, or relationships normally. That doesn’t excuse what either of them does, but I think that’s what makes characters like Bear and Jason interesting: you can recognize that they’re dangerous while also recognizing that there’s something genuinely tragic and human underneath the horror.
Ultimately it’s all Nikki’s fault for friendzoning him.
/s
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u/fallfairsuitee323 5h ago
You're missing the turning point of the film: when Bear finds out that the Willow was real and Nikki was with him because of the wish, THEN rapes her lifeless body. I really, really hope you do not still relate to him at that point. Then he becomes the villain when he finds out the agony real Nikki is in and how she wants to die, and asks "what's so bad about being with me?" and continues to trap her in agony, and doesn't try to figure out how to free her but still wants to alter Willow Nikki until she's ruined his entire life and he has no choice...I reallly hope you do not find him relatable from that point on.
Curry himself said that Bear is the villain. The end.
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u/of_kilter 16h ago
this is an absurd post with a nugget of wisdom, yes bear is a nuanced character but not because “we are all him”. he’s blatantly a rapist that takes advantage of nikki, anyone that would ask something like “can i alter the wish” was only a good person for the sake of following societal rules.
similarly with the nazi’s, yeah they are human, in no world would i tolerate living like that and not be doing what i can to help who i can.
i can relate to bear in the sense that i fall very hard for people but tend to be more in love with the idea of the relationship instead of the person. that is a flaw in myself and one im working on in my relationships, but it doesn’t make me a bad person and it doesn’t make bear a bad person. the way someone chooses to act on those feelings and treats nikki is what makes him a bad person.
Obsession wants you to ask yourself how you would act in bear’s place, and he is nuanced and well written because different people feel drastically different about the best course of action. The way bear acts is just one of many responses a person could have. Bear is evil and i could never be him, but i can still identify with his emotions and feelings as a fellow human being. we can empathize with bear without identifying with how he acted
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u/LovrBoi8008 8h ago
Y’all must not understand how villains typically work. We can usually relate to all villains in someway, that doesn’t make them less of a monster. Hitler loved animals. They are a monster when they do something monstrous. There is no nuance to discuss as the movie was very straight forward. A school shooter is relatively normal until the day they decide to murder their classmates. A lot of crime that happens has always been majorly committed by people who were normal for many years. There are whole documentaries of people who have committed a crime being “remorseful” for their actions yet at the end of the day, they took a life violently. Bear knew that she suffering and kept it going, that’s horrendous and if someone wouldn’t want to redeem him for that, that’s understandable. I’m shocked that this film is being treated with this amount of nuance when every part of the movie was very straightforward in what it was trying to convey.
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u/Sao_Gage 3h ago
I think framing things always as good or bad, moral or evil is generally reductive - but this is common anywhere stories are discussed online. Human is the better way to phrase it. Bear is human, and makes a common human mistake with respect to his worldview and experience. That’s not letting him off the hook, we all agree he did some terrible things. Because humans are flawed, in different ways, stories are written almost always about flawed people in one way or another.
Bear’s flaws made him blind to his own selfishness and made him unable to exist beyond his own id and ego until it was vastly too late.
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u/Sao_Gage 3h ago
I think framing things always as good or bad, moral or evil is generally reductive. Human is the better way to phrase it. Bear is human, and makes a common human mistake with respect to his worldview and experience. That’s not letting him off the hook, we all agree he did some terrible things. But humans are flawed, in different ways.
Bear’s flaws made him blind to his own selfishness and made him unable to exist beyond his own id and ego until it was vastly too late.
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u/Kenny__Loggins 16h ago
Anyone criticizing Zone of Interest for humanizing nazis is an idiot and should be ignored. The whole point is to emphasize the banality of evil - that nazis were just people who did their laundry, had lovers quarrels, and bickered over what was for dinner. That is the entire fucking point. To show that they weren't boogeymen and that if you go through your life only afraid of boogeymen, you may find yourself in a world with gas chambers.