There is a particular kind of harm that leaves no marks and not spoken much. It accumulates quietly, in choices the other person made before you even knew you were part of the equation. By the time you feel the walls or the bars, you have already been inside them for a long time. Its hard to break or come out of the cage.
Obsession gives this a supernatural frame and a psychological horror. A wish, a piece of willow wood, a transfer of will is the centre theme. It might sound as supernatural or something only on the screens. But this one reminds us about the pattern that runs through ordinary relationships unnoticed.
Disclaimer: Spoiler Alerts! Do watch it!
The real victim
Nikki, independent girl, with a dream of becoming writer or in avengers (lol). She likes someone else yet she asks him directly and he said as friend. Through the scenes, the poem, we come to know that she think Bear as brother. She created a space for him to open up yet then, he used the wish to take what he wants.
We are inside Bear’s longing for most of the narrative or maybe more explicitly stated. Hope, more people get that. Nikki exists, largely, as its object or even as psycho. But she is the one whose will gets overwritten gradually, then completely. In reality she did not choose.
Nikki snaps in and out of herself. Moments where she seems aware something is wrong, and moments where she cannot. Those scenes were really good actually. This is not dramatic. It makes you unreliable to yourself. You lose the thread back to your own self which was clearly brought out through acting.
Her victimhood is not loud. It does not look like suffering from the outside. It looks, for a long stretch, like toxic love who suffocates the Bear
The portrayed victim
Bear is also a victim, but of a self-authored kind. His cowardice is not a flaw that exists. It is mechanism of self or a just defected piece. He wanted the outcome without the risk of being told no. He looks calm, approachable and never violent you know yet quite dangerous. It is something the film handles with more precision.
Bear never tells anyone about the willow until things gets heated up for real. He watches people around him get hurt. He watches Nikki become someone she is not. Yet he still wants her to love him. That forceful wanting (not stated tho), in the face of everything it costs, is not love or romantic. It is how manipulation works. An inability to prioritize another person’s reality or wish over one’s own desire. Even Nikki did ask him to kill her once.
Most people who do this do not think of themselves as manipulators actually. They think of themselves as victim who love deeply and are not loved back enough. They influence, and then feel wronged by their own influence. They create the dynamic, and then experience themselves as its victim. Classic.
What the cat already knew
There is a quieter detail the film plants early. Bear has a cat. The cat dies through carelessness because of the tablets left within reach. Bear cannot be responsible for the things he loves. Not because he is cruel, but because he is unable to hold the weight of other’s needs alongside his own. The cat is the first proof. Nikki is the continuation of that proof. Or is she the cat? I am not sure.
Some reviewers have noted that Nikki and the cat are linked. Both independent, both drawn into his orbit, both ultimately hurt by him. Negligence disguised as love and care.
And then the ending. When Bear tries to end things himself, he reaches for tablets over guns. Even in his final act, he cannot fully own it. He hesitates. He still wants her to love him more than he wants to take responsibility for what he has done. Even when friends ask questions and Sara dies and the world narrows around him, keeps returning to the same refrain and ego or even validation. What’s wrong with wanting her, why won’t she just stay with him?
The honest conclusion
At the end, it is the aware part of Nikki (the part still herself) that makes the final wish. Nikki making the wish is, in a way, him getting exactly what he always wanted. Someone else to make the hard choice for him. Most readings will call this a twist, or justice. But structurally, it is the only exit available to the story That is obviously not revenge.
Bear, in his final moments, is afraid. He did not want to die for it. He never thought that the wish would actually cost. This is the magical thinking at the center of manipulation. What’s even more surprising is that, there are Bears in real life and only very few Nikki’s can crawl out.
What the story doesn’t stay for
The film ends when Bear’s arc ends. What happens to Nikki after? The grief, the disorientation of coming back to yourself after being someone else. The story does not stay for that. Maybe, that absence is itself a statement.
The movie did leave me two questions!
if you wished for something like genuinely, with no intent to override anyone and it arrived exactly as you imagined, would you still want it?
And if the answer changes, does that mean the wish was wrong? Or just that you are no longer the same person who made it?
Maybe wishing, like loving, carries within it the obligation to keep asking. Not once. Continuously.
Obviously, this movie is open for n of observations and interpretations. Btw how did nikki get connected over the call while he was asking for cancellation?
Cheers
PS: Why he was named Bear. The Bears are for yes chefs you know.
Check out the previous post: The Devil wears Prada: would Tamil Cinema? & Movie Reviews
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