“One Wish Willow” is the innocuous and whimsical name of the magical device that serves as the catalyst of Curry Barker’s Obsession. And if you’ve seen the film’s massive marketing campaign, you know the object is anything but harmless.
It’s not the only misleading moniker in the movie; our protagonist Bear (Michael Johnston) has absolutely none of the bite that his name implies. He’s delicately good-looking, soft spoken, and non-imposing in his social and personal life – and potentially overmedicated, so much so that the movie opens with him accidentally overdosing his cat. (To save you a trip to doesthedogdie.com, as a cat lover I was devastated, but it is relevant to the story and, if this is any consolation, meant to help you understand some of Bear’s more pathetic choices.)
The object of Bear’s overbearing affection is his friend and music store coworker Nikki (Inde Navarrette). Thanks to a noisy SMS text campaign meant to simulate the sudden shift in her, erm, love language within the film, many readers are already too familiar with Nikki’s eventual cinematic self. Forget what you’ve seen on socials: OG Nikki, before she gets OWW (One Wish Willowed), is a charismatic popular girl who does not reciprocate Bear’s intense pining. Classic story: Bear loves Nikki, Nikki isn’t really into love right now, their friend Sarah (Megan Lawless) loves Bear, and a fourth friend, Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) does his darndest to add to the mess in as many ways as possible. All four work at the same music store and spend entirely too much time in each other’s presence in and out of work.
In a slurry of mostly harmless crushes and flirtations experienced by typical 20-somethings, Bear’s feelings are — at least how he sees it — special. He believes all the pains in his life would be alleviated if Nikki just stopped resisting his awkward, borderline creepy devotion and loved him back. Sure, it’s immature, but we’ve all had that friend. It’s always harmless puppy love… until it’s not. He visits a new age shop in search of a gift for Nikki, armed with good intentions and a strangling internalization of the “male loneliness epidemic.” He leaves the shop with a shiny trinket for her and that tiny Toblerone-shaped package plastered all over social media that reads One Wish Willow. It’s a movie, a person is making a wish, and you know it’s going to end badly. Really, Really badly.
“I wish Nikki would love me more than anyone in the fucking world,” Bear declares before snapping the tiny stick inside the packaging. From that point on, Nikki is constantly at Bear’s side and when she’s not, it means things are about to get worse. Obsession has some of the most effective jump scares in recent years and that’s because, even when you can sense them coming, they’re still effective. Nikki is terrifying, and yet somehow slightly relatable. My largest concern with the film is the small percentage of people (men) who will not understand this film is not a swipe at women just because they relate to “nice guy” Bear and his dangerously naive hope to deprive the object of his affection of her autonomy. Generally, this is the same fear the overbearing SMS marketing campaign left me with: painting Nikki’s character as an unprovoked, independent psychopath before audiences even meet her will have a negative impact that hasn’t been quantified yet. In the film, her journey is much more satisfying — and horrifying.
The tension carried by this very small cast is the strength of the movie and plays out like a game of “who can make the worst choices” (it’s almost always Bear). With as few spoilers as possible, the movie is a violent, gag-inducing metaphor for codependency and the unrealistic relationship expectations an unwell person experiences in limerence. From a young age people are convinced that there is a correlation between love and pain — that idea mostly comes from centuries of posthumously famous writers who died in despair, often by their own hand. As painful as it may be, this could be the ideal movie to watch when you’re in the throes of unrequited love because, if you at any moment look at Nikki and think “AM I LIKE THIS?”, no, you are not alone and yes, it is a warning cry for an incredibly unhealthy relationship.
If you combined the throughlines of Misery and It Follows, the world of Obsession exists somewhere in between as their occult love story. There are moments of comic relief in the film through banter and an unexpected customer service bit, but just like Bear’s hopes for a perfect love story, they are brutally smashed, disturbed, and pissed on. But when the credits roll, it’s not all bleak and dark: If Nikki’s visceral onscreen transformations are any indicator of what’s to come, this is the start of a beautiful relationship for Inde Navarette and the horror genre.
