Obsession

Wow.  In a scene, Nikki tells Bear to kill her. He defiantly tells her: “What’s so bad about being with me?” I love horror movies. I think I love this genre in particular because it exposes parts of our society that we don’t like to talk about, and presents reality without filter. Reality terrifies us, but seeing something like the silent objectification of women recognized in such a unique way feels refreshing to say the least. There’s been a lot of discourse around it and despite having been spoiled on some things it genuinely didn’t matter. The premise was interesting, the horror was effectively subversive, and the layers of the film manage to say something really interesting about artificial relationships.  Firstly, the horror is incredible. Nikki’s actress does some of the best acting I’ve seen in a horror movie. I don’t know how the fuck she does that with her face but it’s just incredible. Her wailing at the end was horrifying. The way her eyes change and contort are Oscar worthy at the very least. From the scene of her in the dark, the anticipation when Sarah and Bear were in the car, so many individual scenes in this movie are excellent. However, the true horror is more subtle, lying in Bear’s disregard that the Nikki he is in a relationship with is a fake “idealized”version of her. He pretends to care on the surface level, telling her to be normal repeatedly, yet he takes no action in actually managing the curse’s behavior until it directly negatively impacted him.  It’s really interesting how Barker made such a normal, Charlie Kirk-looking guy so evil and malicious. In his objectification of Nikki he shows that an average man can silently commit atrocious acts to a woman with little consequence. The sex scene, though it was around seven seconds long, was so unsettling that it felt like it lasted several minutes. It’s also clear that Bear cannot love and be in a loving relationship, he instead is focused on chasing the high of romance, of pursuing an unattainable manic pixie dream girl instead of actually putting in work for a relationship to improve.  Side note because I don’t know where else to put it: the foreshadowing with Bear’s cat dying from a pill overdose is CRAZY.  Now, I think the main relationship in this movie is a critique of AI. In the scene where “Nikki” says she can be more like Nikki, the dialogue feels very similar to Bear speaking to a chat bot who doesn’t understand human emotion, instead always agreeing because that’s supposedly good in relationships. Nikki’s curse isn’t human, and it has a very shallow understanding of relationships—at the start she always agrees with Bear and accommodates him, just like AI, and lonely men like Bear will continue to abuse those relationships until they ruin themselves. When Bear seems to flip on her, she goes completely off the walls and rightfully mistrusts him, which is a cautionary tale about the dangers of AI. She’s completely enamored with an algorithmic perception of Bear and everyone else is irrelevant or a threat. See Roko’s Basilisk. I think this rating might be a little high. I was debating between 9/10 and 10/10 until Forever by The Little Dippers came on as the credits song. I watched this in the dark, and looking up from the screen after it finished instilled a primal feeling of fear inside my heart. The ending is just so perfect. So many parts of this movie are just perfect. The music, the pacing, the horror, the commentary, are all phenomenal. I am SO glad this movie is as successful and acclaimed as it is. If more movies like this come out in the future and are as successful, it gives me much more hope about my own creative endeavors in film.