What is Obsession actually saying about relationships?
- Arm Jeungsmarn
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
(Spoilers ahead!!!)
Recently, I came across an article [1] classifying Curry Baker’s 2026 instant horror classic Obsession as “heteropessimist horror”. What that means is Obsession reflects a trend of pessimistic feeling towards relationship, particularly straight, traditional relationship.
If you’ve seen Obsession - I encourage everyone to - you might be struck with a similar feeling of despair towards straight dating. From conversation with friends I have noticed that this immediate reaction is more common among straight women, who sees in the behavior of the male protagonist (read villain) Bear/Baron a far too common form domineering sexism disguised as performative nice-guyism.
But if the toxicity that generates the horror of Obsession lies in Bear’s character (few attentive viewers would argue otherwise) - as a specific manifestation of the broader patriarchal social structure - then can the notion of relationships as a whole be brought into question?
(Credit: Medium)
I don’t think the right response to Obsession is a wholesale rejection of relationships. In fact, a sense of pessimism towards relationship as a whole would absolve the unequal gender relationships and men like Bear from accountability. In an interview with director Curry Baker [2], he points out that the “one-wish willow” - the film’s central wish-giving plot device - is not itself cursed. A lot of people can use the “one-wish willow” well, if they make thoughtful wishes. It is Bear’s wish for Nikki to love him “more than anything in the world” that is cursed. It is a wish of possession.
This need of possession is core feature of the kind of toxic relationship that has been there throughout history. In the past and in many places nowadays, men’s possession of women were and are institutionalized. In nominally progressive societies, the law proclaims equality for all. But since patriarchy hasn’t withered away, this need for possession re-manifests itself in internalized wishes.
These wishes animate the actions of not only incel men, but any toxic partner of any gender. It is an insecurity in oneself coupled with the inability to imagine the other as a complex being. It is a fear that one cannot control the other that leads one to seek absolute control over the other.
(Credit: The Wrap)
Many people have spoken of the pivotal car scene when Bear missed the chance to express his true feelings for Nikki. It is not only a lack of courage but a refusal to accept Nikki’s refusal. In deciding not to express his feeling while holding on to that desire for romance, Bear has already created a version of Nikki that never refuses his version of “what they could be”. A version of Nikki that has no bearing on what the real Nikki wants. Bear’s fear, his insecurity, his desire for control, leaves no place for understanding, no place for empathy.
If Edith Stein calls empathy the experience of “living in the other”, [3] then the rise of heteropessimism accompanies the decline of empathy in society. I can recall no other recent film than Obsession that better reflects this worrying phenomenon, while reminding us that change was always possible.
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