Obsession is a terrifying movie. Long ago when I was a tiny sheltered Christian boy I used to be unable to watch a horror movie through without leaving the room. I would hide in the couch when my sister played Doom on Xbox. I grew up, I got used to it, and I haven't been fazed by a movie like that for a decade. Obsession brought it all back for me. I had to leave the theater 3 separate times. I shared my popcorn with another girl I found cowering behind the wall at the theater exit. We shared a silent understanding. For a certain kind of person, this movie hits *very hard*.
The sound design sticks out to me as carrying so much weight. The movie for the most part does not have traditional “jump scares” but the sudden shifts in music and audio creates a sort of emotional whiplash. It helps to establish a tension of how everything can turn on a dime; you never know what might happen. Nothing feels safe. The art direction takes some very bold stylistic decisions, especially around the characters themselves, and it really pays off. I've come to love this about the genre as a whole. Horror has always been the avant garde. It demands the unknown, demands fresh and experimental approaches. Obsession delivers on this.
Obsession does an excellent job of walking the line between the lore and the mystery. You get just enough to ask questions, to form theories of what is happening, but never enough to know for sure. This is vital to good horror. It preserves the mystery. I think obsession is particularly strong with this. People will demand a sequel to this one, but I think it's strongest as a stand alone feature. Any more info and the mystery will start to collapse.
There are two common elements to scary movies: Horror and Terror. Obsession handles them both with skill. Beyond the creepy imagery, the violence, and the fear of the unknown that terrified me, I found myself repeatedly horrified by the circumstance of what I did understand. The rape scene made me genuinely uncomfortable, and the moment on the customer service line when he puts “real Nikki” on the phone blew me away. All at once a layer of the mystery was revealed to a genuinely sickening reality.
My personal theory is that the “entity” in Nikki is nothing but a reflection of Bear's own psyche. His own “obsession”. From the first moment of the wish Nikki is confused what is her own experience and what is Bear's. Her approach to love is what Bear always felt underneath. An overwhelming anxious physical attachment. A need for the signifiers of love with none of the understanding or care for the other person. Bear hardly knows Nikki as a person. He's more wrapped up in his own ego than anything, and when this is reflected in Nikki and magnified it comes out as clingy jealous insecurity. Fake Nikki is hardly a person in her own right. She takes no care of her own needs, takes no interest in her own life.
On his return visit to the shop, we get half the scene seen through the mirror, reflecting Bear back at himself. Nikki reads backwards and upside down, walks in reverse, her eyes reflect the light. She is nothing but a mirror of Bear's own psyche. As Bear continues to escalate and deny the situation, Nikki's behavior grows similarly in the opposite way. The more he pushes away, the more she pulls in. In the penultimate scene where real Nikki begs for death, Bear rejects her for his own ego. His rejection of murder is what pushes the entity to escalate to murder in the reverse. The story is Karmic. Everything that happened to him he did to himself.