Obsession (2025)

Show Opener

SPEAKER_01 0:04

My friends, this was not the bear if we chose.

Movie Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:12

After years of war filmmakers using short films, festival bugs, and online proof of concept as calling cards, Craig Parker has made the jump from YouTube sketches and micro budget projects to a major theatrical lead. And this film in particular fits neatly into one of the genre's newest pathways. His earlier work helped him build an audience outside of the studio system, and this feature actually pushed that momentum into a wider release through focus features and blum house. The movie also arrived with the kind of numbers that Four really loves to talk about right now: a reported budget under a million dollars, and box office returns that quickly turned it into a breakout story. In fact, its second week at the box office was stronger than its first week. It has seen unrelenting and tremendous success, despite the premise itself being pretty straightforward. Small object, a simple desire, and the awful distance between wanting love and trying to control it. When he eventually finds a novelty toy that supposedly grants one wish, he uses it to make her love him more than anyone else. At first, that wish seems to work, but affection begins to curdle into something more rotten, possessive, unstable, and harder to undo than he ever imagined. This week we're talking about obsession.

Greetings & Salutations

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Greetings and salutations, and welcome to Hacker Slash. If you're joining us again, welcome back. If this is your first time listening, welcome to the party. We are a horror movie review podcast dedicated to telling you whether a movie is a hack.

Sean 1:52

A total joke, a waste of time. Or

Spoiler-free Discussion

Sean 1:55

a slash. Totally killer, pun intended.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

My name is Chris. I'm your friendly neighborhood slasher enthusiast. This week I'm joined by the classic horror connoisseur, Sean.

Sean 2:04

Just because you chose this for doesn't make it any less real. And yeah, you're tuning in to Obsession. And if you support the show, you'll also get to check out our B-side at the end of this episode where we get into what we would wish for with our very own one-wish willow.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Now, Sean, obviously this movie has gotten a lot of buzz. I think one of the biggest things that you have to consider when a movie is doing this well financially, the box office, and even among the community, there's got to be some high expectations that you walk into this with. So what were you expecting?

Sean 2:36

Yeah, it was one of those things where the high expectations just started to build almost like right as its release happened or right after its release. So it makes a lot of sense that you said like it made more on its second week than it did on its first week. Because I gotta be honest, when I first heard about this movie, even from watching the trailer that we got in theaters multiple times over however many months, I wasn't really expecting a whole lot from this movie, to be honest with you. I was watching the trailers and I was like, hmm, okay, it seems okay. Like it could be good, could be bad. I don't know. I hadn't heard much about the director, and it seemed like it was gonna kind of just be another be careful what you wish for, sort of like monkeys paw, very cookie-cutter type of horror movie. And so that was my initial reaction when I started watching trailers and whatnot. But once this movie came out and people started watching it and people started talking about it, I literally had people telling me things like, I have not felt this way leaving a movie, it made me so uncomfortable, all these different things. So, yeah, the expectations like really built as this movie came out, just a lot of praise for this movie. So I was just full of expectations. Some were low, some were high.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

I was so nervous about that, Sean, because you're talking about this, and obviously, be careful what you wish for is a tale as old as time. We've seen so many different properties, not only in film but in literature at large. And when I think about the level of praise this movie is getting, I really go straight back to hereditary and how I had to put off seeing hereditary for so long because it created such an impossible expectation for me. And I felt like once I got into it, aside from even this more shocking points being spoiled, I thought there's no way this movie's gonna live up to that. But the more I heard about this movie, I was initially concerned because I thought, are you talking about this because everybody prays together? And together was like this take on codependency. And codependency is what in horror is not something that I'm really into, nor was I really interested in. But what really pushed me over the edge was Indy Neveretti. She's getting so much praise for her performance as Nikki in this film. And I really enjoyed her when I was obsessed with Superman and Lois, and I thought she did a great job at that show. She ended up not returning as a main character in I believe season four, just due to budget constraints. But I remember thinking, oh man, I didn't clock that she was the one in this, so I I took a chance on it really for her. And when you go into this expectation with, okay, we know it's be careful what you wish for, we know that it's horror, we know that it's dark relationship horror. And I thought maybe with a magical object, maybe there's gonna be a little bit more camp to it as well. But man, no matter how high my expectations were, I'm actually surprised to say that this movie delivered and it delivered in spades. It delivered shock, it delivered awe, it delivered cringe.

Sean 5:40

Yeah, that is so true. I feel like this everything that I was worried about watching this movie or going into this movie completely went out the window with this movie because this one just goes with this classic trope and takes it so much further than I expected it to. It was definitely a a very delightful surprise, you would say. A very uncomfortable, uneasy, really wild ride of a surprise. And I think this is one of those movies that is it's so uncomfortable at times that you have to laugh out loud because you literally, you literally don't know how else to handle the intensity of the moment that you're sitting in.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

You know, I heard that I heard that there's a lot of laughing in this movie, and Paris actually reached out to me because she said her and her theater had a great time with this. And I'm not here to say that this movie isn't funny, they know what they're doing. There's a lot of comedy in this, but this movie is way less funny than I expected it to be. And I think it's because obviously I mentioned magical object, okay, camp. Maybe there's gonna be something there. It has like this really cool, supernatural hook. But what I found is this movie uses the wish to expose something super ugly. And I think I was so caught up in that and my own personal experiences with things that are similar to this in the periphery of this, that even when I did for sure laugh at some moments, I overwhelmingly was deeply uncomfortable and it felt deeply personal. There's like this insidious danger of romantic entitlement, especially from someone who sees themselves as the quiet, wounded, nice guy. And like, okay, you walk into this or introduce to someone who were this a rom-com, this would be our leading man. This is he is the hero in his own story. So I expected sure some obsession horror, but I do not think I there's any world in which I expected to the movie to be as overt as it is with its characters, and I bought so hard into this that maybe there was less levity for me than there was for other people.

Sean 7:54

Yeah, and I think you know, there are moments of I guess you could say comedy, dark, really, really dark comedy, campiness for sure. I felt a couple of those moments. When I'm talking about laugh out loud, uncomfortable, I'm talking about you shouldn't be laughing, but you don't know any other reaction because you just don't feel comfortable enough in those moments. And so, like, maybe not everyone responds that way, but I'm definitely one that if something is like really uncomfortable, I may like chuckle a little bit. Even Ari next to me in the theater was like, Why are you laughing? And I'm like, it's just not right. You know what I mean? Like, it's just there's something about it. I just don't feel good in this moment.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

I think this is such a great way to break this down, Sean, because as I was considering this, and you look at even just like discourse about this movie, there are the people, there's like three camps of people, right? The people that this is about, yeah, the people that this is for, and the people who are somewhere in the middle and they laughed uncomfortably because they're like, oh my god, it's like The Simpsons meme. I'm in danger. Yeah, that's what it feels like.

Sean 8:58

Yeah, for sure. I it's a little bit of that for sure. But you're right. This movie plays with some really fucking dark shit. Like this movie really, it like it goes back and forth, it oscillates your feelings on like who is being abused in this one. The abuser feels like it could be Bear at times, it but then it reminds you that it may also be Nikki. Like, we're gonna get into it. It's really hard to talk about this movie without trying to really jump in and give you a lot of spoilers, but we're gonna do our very best, right? I think it's just uh this movie just goes back and forth on your feelings of just like really some dark things that it's exploring in this like emotional story, this emotional roller coaster of like what's happening with this, you know, with this wish that comes to fruition. And this movie does this incredible job at just building tension throughout the movie, this unease and this overwhelming sense of just being super uncomfortable in almost every moment. And it's just things that just like oh man, I don't even know words to describe it. You're just watching all kinds of things go down that are just not they're just not cool, you know. And there's a lot of moments where you're just like, nope, nope, you know.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

You know what, Sean? The two words that I could use to describe that are feels bad. Yeah, feels bad all around. This is the movie that they should probably give. And I'll save a little bit of this for the spoiler zone. But when I was in the Navy, we had a prevention training, and it was basically telling you look out for your friends and not just keep your friends safe, but look out for your idiot friends who do not realize what they're doing and are absolutely predators. This feels like it should be in that line of programming. And man, this movie is fucking brutal. It's not just brutal emotionally and also like physically with gore, but what I love is that it's very direct with this question of if you for what if you force someone to love you? Yeah, and then you actually had to live with the horror of what that means. Damn, when you consider just the ramifications of that, I was so damn invested. But what I love is that it also takes loneliness and entitlement and then wish fulfillments and pushes them to their worst possible scenario. And I am so cognizant, folks, that this is a movie that's getting a lot of buzz right now. So odds are if you're listening to this episode and you've never listened to another podcast of ours before, then you might not know how this works. We're gonna do spoiler-free discussion and talk about just our response to the film and is it worth going to see in theaters? And then after the break, we're gonna go into full spoilers, go through a ton of stuff in this movie. But man, let me tell you, brace yourself. Because if you have not seen this and you're considering, I need you to consider if you're the kind of person who's gonna suffer from second-hand embarrassment or cringe, because that is a very real element here.

Sean 12:04

Oof, it is for sure a definitely a real element, 100%. I think, yeah, this is just one of those what works for this film, and I think what makes this very, very effective, is that they play with so many different elements that are just, you know, they just are when you really sit down and think about them. I I'm just looking back on this movie, and as I was watching it, as I'm reflecting right now, as I was watching this movie in real time in theaters, yes, there was a lot of feelings that this movie evokes from you as you're watching it. There's a lot of reactions to the movie for sure, and in those moments, but then the longer that you let the movie settle in, the more you think and reflect on the movie after you've watched it, even, and even as the movie progresses, but definitely after you watch the movie and you think about it, you're talking about it with people, the deeper messages and the things that are really shining through in the story, it's very well written, I will say, from a writer-director standpoint, amazing, amazing job. But it's like an aging wine, right? It just keeps getting better as you think about it, which makes me really excited to watch this again. But I think one of the things that works really well is as I'm reflecting on this movie, is that they play with this, you can call it a split personality thing, which we'll dive in into a lot more in the second half when when we can really get into spoilers. But it plays with this kind of, for lack of a better way to put it right now, this split personality thing in a very, very dark way throughout the movie. And it starts, you know, very early on. So when we see this for the first time, I knew at that moment I was like, damn, this is gonna be way more than I thought it was. This is gonna be good. I'm in for quite a ride.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Yeah, man. There's and I know that you shared right now, for lack of a better way to put it right now, before we can like fully unpack the intricacies of this. Because when you get into this movie, that's not what this is at all.

Sean 14:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

But there are folks who have different theories on what that is. And I'm like, man, again, this is where he goes back to the people this is about, the people this is for, and the people who are like, oh wow, that's crazy, and I'm stuck in the middle. The people that this is about have some specific theories about this movie where I'm like, guys, you're really, you're really missing the point here. But for sure, Sean, what works about this movie is how incredibly well it's written because it is relatable in a lot of ways. There is something in this movie that you can probably latch on to, whether it's obsession, limerence, being maybe on the outside of the situation, and maybe you're the friend who's trying to call something out. Maybe you're the bystander at a party seeing this unfold. But what I appreciated about this, and again, uncomfortable, this reminded me of some very real relationships and what I believed at the time to be friendships that reminded me of a lot of the behavior that you see in this movie. And I'm not talking about the wild horror movie exaggerations, but the small little microaggressions and the everyday gestures that can seem so small and so easily missed, unless you're really reflecting on it and your own attachment style, etc. But the way that this movie brings that together, the way that Indy Neveretti delivers that in her performance as Nikki is disturbing, tragic, and really recognizably human. She carries a lot of the weight in this movie, and that's not to discredit anyone else involved or any other aspects of it, but my gosh, she's just such a shining star in this and delivers one hell of a performance that even enjoying her in Superman and Lewis, I didn't know she was wholly capable of. So the craftsmanship of this film is just absolutely phenomenal. Now, what I will say is that despite how strong it is, what I think might be a thing for this movie, and this is not again to discredit it, but this is something that I would almost like caution you to consider who you're watching it with or what you're exposing them to, because I think there's stuff in here that this movie has some mass appeal and mass intrigue, but you don't know that you're walking into Terrifier too. You know what I mean? And while this movie doesn't have a ton of that, there is some of that. There is some of the intense score and some of that intense brutality. And so I think there is a layer of unintended consequence even within that, where people might walk in exposing themselves to something that they're not quite ready for.

Sean 16:35

Yeah, I can see that for sure. This is gonna be a movie that evokes different things for a lot of different people. I think that if you just aren't comfortable in movies that are constantly making you feel uncomfortable, then this is probably not gonna feel great for you. Maybe if you're, you know, maybe if you are with somebody that you're really comfortable with, right? Maybe relationship or not, maybe that's a good choice to go into this movie. I don't know. It's hard to tell who is and isn't gonna like this movie. I've talked to a lot of people about this movie, and a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds and different tastes of music that are movies that aren't just horror lovers really enjoyed this movie, which I think is really interesting. And I think it's just there's a lot of when you really look at it, there's a lot of things that this movie really explores. I think from just the way that it's acted, the way that it's written, the way that it's executed and delivered, there's a lot of really great stuff here. I think that, you know, they don't even, you know, we know in essence, without spoilers, that this movie is, you know, what we get it even in the trailer is just about a relationship, a wish, something like that gone wrong, right? And I think they don't even really elaborate throughout the movie on whether the wish that this is the uh against the person that this is for, even like, was there anything there beforehand or not? You know what I mean? Like it doesn't necessarily even give you much of that. And so you're even throughout the movie thinking like, oh my God, it just added a lot of vibes to this film. And I think it it felt a lot more original than I thought it ever could be when you're thinking of just this kind of classic, be careful what you wish for story, because we've seen this in essence so many times over the years, but this one just felt different.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Man, it did. And as you're talking about that, I'm reminded of a couple different things. We have romanticized obsession, we have romanticized wishing for things. In a Disney movie, you could take the one wish willow and it's gonna turn into a happy ending. And I was actually just thinking, especially when I was like sitting in the theater waiting for this movie to start, Sean. There is a song by a band named Aventura, it's called Obsession, Obsession. The whole thing is like this guy saying, you know, it's five in the morning, I can't sleep because all I can think about is you and your beauty, and I know you're with someone else, but fuck that guy basically. It and it's this guy obsessing over this girl, and she's saying, No, you don't love me. That's not love, that's obsession, and I'm not into it. But when I tell you the grip, the vice, the chokehold that that song had all of us millennials at in middle school and high school, my god, we thought it was the most romantic thing ever. This movie is the product of a generation that was built on that, and that's just multiple generations, obviously. Sure, sure. Her people, her people, her people raise even more hurt people. But I'm just thinking about this again because what you describe is what this movie does and feeling original, it's again so connected to where we are as a society, and it really shines this light on people who think of themselves as like wounded romantic people who deserve things versus people who are not taking ownership and accountability for where they are, where they stand in the dynamic of their own relationships.

Sean 20:04

Yeah, it can be a lot deeper than you think when you're watching this movie in real time. And then the more you think about it, the more you can pull from this movie, and that's what makes it really special. But even just like the simplest aesthetics of this movie, even down to just the look of this toy, in essence, this you know, this vintage toy, this one wish willow, like everything about it, just all the little details that went into this movie, I think, just makes this movie feel really, really cool. And it's, I don't know, it's just uh it's a wild time for sure. I had a lot of I have a still have a lot to say. I have a lot, you could tell just the way I'm talking. Like I want to keep saying more things, but I keep stumbling because I don't want to give anything away. It's a tough one to talk about without giving spoilers away. I'll tell you that.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

We're for sure about to get into the spoilers in just a moment, but I want to give you one last recommendation here. If you have a friend who is deeply codependent, go see this movie and be prepared to support them through that. But on the flip side, if you have a friend who avoids being honest with themselves, centers themselves, wants intimacy without the risk of rejection, wants romance without vulnerability, I need you to take this friend to go see this movie. You owe it as a debt to society, I think, because the tone that this movie sets and the way that it addresses those specific behaviors, it's a cautionary tale that I think more people need to expose themselves to. But obviously, we have a lot of spoilers to get to, so we're gonna start making our way towards our ratings before we get there, though.

The Gore Score

SPEAKER_01 21:41

Sean, how about that gore score?

Sean 21:43

Yeah, well, this is not a movie that is full of nonstop gore, but there are moments of gore that hit really, really hard. And there is one specific moment that is so uncomfortably brutal that it really makes the gore hit even much even that much harder than it would have. Otherwise, and I think part of it is how it lingers in these sudden bursts of gore for just long enough to really, really feel it, and it's very impactful. And for that, this one is earning a very solid high gore score.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Which is wild because you think about like the per capita, and it's not that high, but go

The Animal Report

SPEAKER_01 22:19

off. What about the animal report?

Sean 22:21

Well, let's just say that curiosity killed the cat in this one, both literally and figuratively. It's pretty bad.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

But you know what? The rest of that phrase is curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought

Scoring

SPEAKER_01 22:36

them back. We're gonna go ahead and get into our ratings. And we have the question in front of us obsession. Was it a hack or a slash? And I think you can guess where this is gonna go, but I want to knock mine out first, real quick, Sean. There was a very prominent social media thought experiment in the last few years where women were asked if they would rather be trapped in the woods with an unknown man or a wild bear. Do you remember this, Sean?

Sean 23:00

I think I remember this, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Yeah, as it turns out, women overwhelmingly chose bear.

Sean 23:05

Of course.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

But my friends, this was not the bear we chose. This movie works completely because it understands the ugliness that's lurking in its own premise. A lesser version of this story would treat the setup like a cursed romantic misunderstanding or a fairy tale Disney happy ending. But what obsession does is treat it like the violation that it is, because we have a character, name bear, who wants the feeling of being chosen but cheats the actual choosing, wants love, but does not want the vulnerability associated with that, wants intimacy without the risk of rejection, wants the reward of romance without respecting another person's agency. And that squarely places some villainy on the table. And this movie does a beautiful job exploring that, but not in a way that beats you over the head with it, but really makes you reckon with it. The movie's core idea is simple, it's elegant, and it is brutal. You cannot make someone love you. And that is a lesson that I think so many of us go through in our teens and early 20s, maybe even in our 30s, maybe, but the reality is that you cannot center your own loneliness so completely that another person's choice stops mattering. And when you stop choosing people who don't choose you, your life gets a hell of a lot better. You can think of yourself as the hero. But if you spend time looking and choosing people who do not choose you and trying to trick them out of their autonomy and lurk in the shadows trying to make someone love you, then you are the villain in someone else's story. Indy Neverady's performance is what pushes this movie from strong concept to 100% fucking success. She makes the horror emotionally legible, she makes tragedy land, she gives this movie some gumption, she gives this movie a human cost. And it turns it from this very relatable lesson that we learned to wow, you need to look at something to really grapple with what is the reality of what you're trying to do. And on top of all that, this movie is gross. It's gross, it's uncomfortable. It is built around a protagonist whose self-pity becomes dangerous. But as a mean, tragic, supernatural, cautionary tale about nice guy entitlement, this movie fucking rocks, and it is one hell of a slash.

Sean 25:50

That's a hard one to follow up, but listen, I think Obsession is the kind of horror movie that crawls under your skin and literally just stays there. That's the best way that I could describe this movie. What starts as like almost this slow-burning psychological spiral eventually creeps its way into something genuinely and deeply unsettling in literally the best way possible. This film creates tension and unease so effectively that when the violence does actually erupt, it feels less like it's trying to get you at jump scares and more like this kind of emotional blunt force trauma. And what really makes this movie work isn't just the gore, even though some of the stuff we get is absolutely brutal. It's how intimate and uncomfortable everything feels all of the time. And if you have the chance, if you're listening now and you've gotten this far, if you have the chance to catch this one in theaters, I highly recommend it. It was literally one of the best theater experiences I've had in a long time. The audience was reacting. There was uncomfortable laughing, screaming, noping, and all kinds of shit like that. It was such a good time to be in a theater with a bunch of people reacting to a bunch of uncomfortable shit. And the camera lingers for just long enough to make you want to look away. It makes you want to look away, but you can't. And the performances, like you said, Chris, we get, especially with India's Nikki, are so good, they sell every single moment in this film. And there is this constant sense of dread hanging over the entire movie. Like you know, something horrible is coming, but you still aren't prepared for it when it does happen. And that's what makes obsession so effective. It understands that true horror isn't just about blood, it's about vulnerability, fixation, and literally the terrifying things that people convince themselves they're doing for love. And by the end, this film leaves you feeling emotionally drained, disturbed, and actually just super impressed that it managed to get under my skin so deeply. I'm literally obsessed with obsession. So you might say it's an obslashing. Okay, yeah, that was really bad. But it is an absolute slash. It is an absolute slash.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

You know, Sean, well, first off, upslashing is actually not as bad as you may have like soaked it up to me, but I think, and I'm reflecting on this as you're giving your rating. I think I finally understand the line from that meatloaf song. I'd do anything for love, but I won't do that. I think I finally get it.

Sean 28:36

This is what he was talking about the entire time. We unlocked it.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

Yeah, and we're gonna have some bullet points on what you should not do for love at the end of this. Maybe we'll have to put a post up on our subreddit or on our blog, all the things that you should not do for love. But between now and then, obsession has unsurprisingly earned a universal slash, and now we are heading straight for that spoiler zone. So when we come back, we're gonna get into this one-wish willow mythology. We're gonna explore the line between love and control and unpack just how far this story is willing to push the consequences of getting exactly what you asked for. Some might say, fuck around and find out. We'll see you in a bit.

A Word From Our Sponsor

Sean 29:25

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Welcome to the Spoiler Zone

Sean 30:49

Let's get into the sleigh by sleigh because we don't get a ton of kills in this movie. We literally only get three actual deaths in this movie, but damn it, they weren't fucking wild. They were absolutely wild. And the first one that we get is so wild that I don't know. We've got to talk about this because let's get into it. I'll what did you think with Sarah's death?

SPEAKER_01 31:15

Oh shit. No, I wasn't even there for Sarah. I was thinking about Sandy. Well, yeah.

Sean 31:21

We could talk about Sandy. If we're talking about, okay, we can add a fourth honorable mention for Sandy the cat. The thing is, is that we never even see this cat alive this whole movie. This cat is like a huge plot point, but never alive at all. Not even one second, not even one frame of this movie.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

You know, if you listen to some people, they might tell you that Sandy was alive through Nikki. Okay, we'll talk about that more later. Sandy, man, immediate dead cat. So sad, getting into Bear Med Bears meds, already upsetting. But Bears handling of it makes it even worse. Because one, he immediately puts the blame on her. How did you get into this? Which seems innocent enough, right? We've all had these moments where, like, god damn it, the dog got into the trash, right? But then you recognize that his pill bottle is it's supposed to be his medicine cabinet, it doesn't close all the way, so there's some net level of negligence there. Ultimately, his medication being accessible to his cat might be his responsibility. But what it does do very nicely is show just how he is on Nikki. We go from this whole preparatory uh speech of how he's gonna plan his confession for her, in which he talks about having lost his grandma and how Nikki was the one who checked in on him. That shows him that his love is not for who Nikki is and what Nikki wants from her life, but how she makes him feel and like really centers that but damn, then to have Sandy dying, and then he's laying in bed after cleaning all that up, and as soon as Nikki calls, he's like, Oh, I'm good.

Sean 33:00

Yeah. I mean, for the most part, yeah, he's like, Okay, I'm all better now. I mean, he's obsessed.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

Yeah, but that is the thing, another one of those traits where you can look at this and romanticize it because you're like, oh, but it's so great that she just has this effect on him. And listen, have I had people in my life that no matter how bad my day is, damn, just hearing their voice makes me feel a lot better. Absolutely. I have someone in my life now who I feel like she resets my nervous system when I talk to her, but I'm not like hiding and masking the things that are

The Slay by Slay

SPEAKER_01 33:36

troubling me and then saying, Oh, I'm not gonna tell you about my whole pet that died. No, what? This guy is relentless in his obsession.

Sean 33:44

You're not wrong. The signs are there, the red flags are there. The more you think about it as you think about this movie, and maybe you caught on to it right away. Maybe some people will think about it after, maybe they'll grab it on a second watch. But the movie does this really interesting thing where, yeah, you kind of like see some of these signs along the way, which is why I think the rewatch would be very valuable. But it what this movie does is very interesting because it technically opens up, and we'll get back to the kills in just a second, but it opens up with this, you know, this whole scene of what you were saying with Bear essentially professing his love to Nikki, but to what we later find out, like moments after that it's not actually Nikki. He's just kind of like reciting or rehearsing what he would say to Nikki at this diner, and you get that moment, and you're kind of like in that exact moment, you're kind of like uh, you know, empathizing or sympathizing for Bear. You're like, oh man, that's so sweet. He really cares about this girl. He's like so nervous or whatever, and he wants to kind of get it right. Okay, that's great. And then you get like the cat scene, and initially with Sandy dying, and he's you know, he is actually crying over it, right? And he has that moment, you also kind of empathize in that moment. You feel bad for Bear as a character in that moment. But you're right, like it the movie does these things to kind of give you that feeling, but it also slips in these little tidbits that you know, if you're paying attention, or maybe you grab it more on a rewatch, where it does tell you like he does kind of put the blame on other things or other people, or you know, he does kind of flip the switch and he becomes he's so obsessed with Nikki that like he he kind of snaps out of it pretty quickly, you know what I mean, and is just ready to jump at his opportunity to talk or be with Nikki.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

And I just want to point out that Sandy dying this early in the movie opens up a vacancy for him to have another pet.

Sean 35:34

Oh man, okay, we're going there.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

Sorry, it just bear is fucking problematic again. This is not the bear literally anybody chose, but we had grandma's off-screen death, we had Sandy's carcass. I'm so sorry, Sandy, R.I.P. And then we can shift back to the Slay by Slay with Sarah. Holy shit! I knew it was coming, yeah. We knew it was coming, of course, because this movie, and we're gonna talk about it when we get into like the craftsmanship of the film, but this movie does this thing where it tries to trick you into thinking, no, you're back in a rom-com, you're back in indie romance. And so anytime you hear this like build up of like really fun, exciting music where it's like young love is blossoming, there's something here, you know that that's gonna go absolutely fucking nowhere. And even then, even knowing that this moment is coming, this can still shock the hell out of you because of how beautifully it's done. And I say beautifully, that's so generous. It is ugly, but it is executed really well because it's still like ah kind of got me knowing that it was coming. And then I saw a lot of people in my theater really jump.

Sean 36:48

Yeah, oh, for sure. Because you have to know that something is coming. You know, you're win, you're trying to figure out like where is it gonna come from, how is it gonna happen, and it's beautifully grotesque, is I think how you can describe that, but it's just wild. You just you're waiting, you're waiting, and it doesn't make it any less effective. You just see this glimpse of literally Nikki just running towards the window, like so fast that you barely have time to process it, and she just busts through that fucking car windshield with a brick like ready to go, and bashes Sarah's face into the brick that in front of the steering wheel so many times, repeatedly into a pulp, like so fucking brutal. And you know what? Apparently, they actually had to cut this down by like six or seven or so smashes to try to keep this from an NC17 rating, probably because if you kept going, shit was gonna start flying off of her face or something. There was gonna be pieces of flesh flying everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

The actress who played Sarah actually recorded her gurgling sounds. Oh, yeah, super gross. And this movie sounds so squishy. Well, again, we'll talk about it, but that death in particular, it's interesting because my only reaction to that was like, Fuck, man, Sarah, no. Even when it happened, knowing that something was gonna happen to disrupt this, I did not think we're gonna get to the extent to what we got because that was some art the clown shit.

Sean 38:17

That was some art the clown shit.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

The corpse later on in the house naked, because 100%. Yeah, it was so much, it was so much. But with the brutality of that, I thought that for sure they're gonna get interrupted, Sarah's gonna get hurt, maybe Sarah dies, maybe not. But when her life is just extinguished so much, I thought, fuck, there isn't a single woman in this movie who's gonna win. Not a single one. And you cannot be a woman who crosses paths with Bear and come out the other side unscathed because this girl had her whole life ahead of her. She got to this point where she got accepted into the school that she wanted. She's acknowledging that she has a little something for bear. Just terrible, just terrible. I had that reaction, but then the actress was sharing that when she went into a theater, the whole fucking theater was cheering and they were just all so excited for Sarah to die. I think maybe because of like the theatrics and how fucking cool it was.

Sean 39:13

Yeah, 100%. I can see it. I mean, it is one of the moments that gets like a really large reaction, and when you get large reactions, the audience has a little bit of fun, even though it's a really brutal and serious moment. It is just one of the moments where I was like, damn, that is wild. It did happen fast, it was super brutal. I honestly thought it was gonna happen at the party, but we'll get into that later for sure. I literally thought it would happen at the party, to be honest with you.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

Yeah, I I mean, instead of what we got at the party was Nikki fighting back against herself.

Sean 39:43

Uh-huh. 100% for sure. But then we get we also get the second kill in this movie with Ian getting shot in the head by Nikki so bluntly, but you know, I guess we kind of knew that was gonna happen, right?

SPEAKER_01 39:59

I didn't know about shooting him in the head so bluntly. I mean, eventually, I mean I was glad that he went. I was worried that he wouldn't go. I could I mean, okay, Ian did a lot of things right in this movie. I want to be clear. Ian and Sarah both were like, listen, this shit that you got going on, super weird. If your shit is healthy, you can spend some time apart. He did a lot of things right. What I don't love is a lot of other details of Ian and just who he was. I also don't love that he knows that Bear has a crush on this girl and he's sleeping with her. Again, that's like a loyalty thing because also she doesn't belong to Bear. But I think Ian could have been honest to that Bear could have moved on a long time ago.

Sean 40:42

There's just some 100%.

SPEAKER_01 40:44

There's some things there that I don't love. And I think there are some aspects of Ian that although he did a lot of things right in this movie, I was like, okay, good, bad the body count. I don't care about you the way I cared about Sarah, who had hopes and dreams and everything in front of her.

unknown 40:59

Yeah.

Sean 40:59

Yeah, it was an interesting character, Ian. Like he, you're right, he did do some things well, he did have some good advice, but he also had some really bad advice, and he was also himself a little bit selfish, right? We don't really know what his motives are. Is it because he was kind of jealous that this was happening out of nowhere and that was kind of his kind of side hustle, you might want to say, or something like that that was happening? You can see little snippets of that too. Like the moment that they're at trivia or whatever at the bar, and he's doing everything he possibly can to stop him from talking to Nikki about this because he doesn't want it to interfere with their night and their ritual of doing trivia night at the bar together.

SPEAKER_01 41:41

Yeah. I mean, it colors it differently when you know that he also had a vested interest in sleeping with Nikki. So I want to think that he because I get it. Why fucking shit were you sleep? I get it.

Sean 41:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

Why take a thing that's like great for the group is a sacred ritual for all of them? Why make it weird with your personal agenda? And in this case, I think everybody else had the vibe that Nikki was not fucking into Bear. So everybody can see it from the outside looking in, but he could have been so much more honest with Bear so long ago, and maybe Bear would have grown up a little differently had Ian had the balls to actually be honest with his friend because he has a different level of honesty where he thinks he can give him the tough love, but he's not being intellectually or emotionally honest, he's just being a dick about it and a bro about it.

Sean 42:36

Yeah, for sure. He definitely had the opportunity to help squash this thing a long time ago. If he had just, like you said, you know, like I don't think Nikki is into you because you know she's kind of into me, you know, and we're doing this thing, and it is what it is. And he maybe he would have found maybe this connection with Sarah that he had all this time because he was so blind with the fact that he was so obsessed with Nikki that he couldn't even see what was right in front of him, which was a better match overall based on how they kind of like play off of each other and they're you know that kind of bond that they had. So it just is unfortunate for sure that that all played out the way that it did. The third and final kill that we get in this movie, which is you know hard to really dive into, with again, like not getting into the actual end of this movie and like the effectiveness of that scene as well. And maybe we'll get into it, I don't know. But bear dying, overdosing on pills. What did you think about it?

SPEAKER_01 43:33

Wow, what a coward is what I would say. There are so many things about Bear where he is confronted with some options and he wants to take the coward's way out every step of the way. You even want to think, okay, you can do this and do this so that you can restore some balance in Nikki's life. But we know that that's not why he's actually doing it. He changes his mind at the last minute, tries to stop himself, and then Nikki has already done the one wish Willow to make him fall in love with her, which could have been way worse. I mean, the reality is his death becomes another act of just stolen agency. And I don't see a moment where it could have ended any differently. So I get it. But even at the point where he finally does choose to do this, it doesn't feel like he's doing it for Nikki and to truly right or wrong. It feels like he's doing it to escape a consequence for himself.

Sean 44:31

Yeah. 100% he's trying to, yeah, he's not doing it for anybody. He's trying to escape the reality that he's living in and the choices that he made that he can't no he can no longer deal with because you see him, you know, you see him go on this roller coaster of like, you know, not really sure what he did, understanding what he did, but kind of being like, okay, I think I can deal with this, and then like going back and forth on that vibe of like you could tell like he's either not into it or he is kind of into it, or can he live with it, can he not, all the way till the very end. And you could tell that this was definitely a selfish way out for sure.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

It's yeah, and again, it's one of those things where it's not just because Sarah died, because he can't undo any of that, but it's also because he's reckoning with the consequences and realizing just how far this is all gone. My friend, you could have recognized what direction this was going a long time ago. Like you put a lot of hurt on Nikki so early on, and then you centered yourself and said, Oh, was it is it really so bad being with me? Is it really so bad being with me? And that's where it be it becomes one of those things where it's just out of his control. Everything up until then, he could leave behind closed and duct taped doors. But once Sarah got hurt, once Nikki went to this party and got all wild, once all those things started happening, that's when he's like, Oh wow, this is actually more than I could chew. I bit off more than I can chew.

Sean 46:08

For sure. There's a lot, even the subtle things that you just said in there that I think we're gonna dive into when we get into some of these scenes too, and a little bit more, but I gotta give it up. One

Spoiler Zone

Sean 46:18

of the things that made this movie so effective, I gotta give it up for really the complimentary, the complementary like mix between the sound design and the atmosphere together, because it was all engineered to really just add to you being so uncomfortable. The film uses like silence and ambient noise with those industrial hums and those sharp audio cues. It really like keeps you on edge even when nothing is happening, like it keeps you on edge even when very little is even happening on screen, and there is this suffocating texture surrounding this movie that and it uses that atmosphere to its advantage. I think it's just so wonderfully done that it just is so effective.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

100% agreed. The sound in this movie is unparalleled. When I consider this, especially for the music, I want to send you back in your memory to the moment that Nikki shows up at Bear's door, hidden shadow, and then admits quote unquote that she has feelings for Bear. And the music is swelling. Like this is a triumphant romantic victory. Bear is delulu, absolute delusion. And he's counting this as a romantic victory for himself, but because we know the wish is active, that music is playing it up, but it's actually weaponizing the language of love stories against this, and being able to do that to mix it, it's kind of like that mix of like sweet and savory. How does this sound so good but feel so bad? And it's such a great juxtaposition. I think even from that, were you talking about with the sound design?

unknown 48:08

Yeah.

Sean 48:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:09

Oh my gosh. I'm thinking back to the moment where Nikki is standing in her own piss and shit, essentially. Oof. And we have the squishy movement. You hear it. You hear it all. You hear every drop of fluid on her and on the floor. You hear it. Folks, this movie is coming to digital at the beginning of June. If this is still in theaters, you need to go see it in the theater. You need to go see it in the best quality theater you can. Or when you see this at home, wear noise-cancelling headphones because oh my gosh. Between this and Undertone earlier this year, that's spatial audio. Incredible experience. But my God, even the sound plays in to the physical deterioration of their relationship, and it becomes not just this abstract like rotting, but it becomes wet and gross and like physically embodied. And the sound just like does a beautiful job of setting that up. But one only thing that I want to shout out the use of physical space in this movie, it's blocking, it's set design, and the way Nikki can disappear into the corner while she watches Bear sleep. Holy shit. This movie makes this house feel infinitely larger than it is. And oh yeah. What I love here is that it takes this like feeling of intimacy and reframes it as containment and being trapped. Like you feel more and more and more suffocated in this house, even to the point where little things like the flowers that are in the window in the kitchen. You see them having their honeymoon phase montage, everything's bright, airy, vibrant. But then katsu a little bit later, the flowers are dying, they're dead because the relationship isn't blossoming or blooming, it's decaying, and everything already is decaying, just like everything in this fucking house is continuing to decay. Got I fucking love this movie.

Sean 50:16

It's a lot for sure. And yeah, the depth in the physical space for sure, just the choice to have a lot of moments where Nikki is just out of full focus. Like her face is in like the shadows, so you can barely make out her eyes are popping through just a little bit. You maybe catch a little smirk or something like that, but it's so dark in those moments that it just something about it just it adds to just that visual alone, that choice to have that the her character in that physical space with that lighting adds to how uneasy and uncomfortable this movie makes you feel by just that alone. Just that alone. Amazing, amazing job. What is actually really funny though, that I thought was really amusing was that the music store, like this whole group of friends that that work at their you know, friends' dad's music store or whatever, the music store they filmed at was the same music store they filmed Wayne's World.

SPEAKER_01 51:16

No fucking way.

Sean 51:17

So go figure. Yeah, go figure, yeah. Same, I mean, all these years later. Wow. All these years later. Party on, Garth. Party on.

SPEAKER_01 51:25

Holy shit, that just sent me back. Shaw wing. Damn, Sean.

Sean 51:31

Shawing. Yeah. I thought that was hilarious. I was like, I didn't, I didn't know. So good, so good. There are just so many standout scenes in this movie. There's so many standout moments in this movie. I will give it up to even just the very early-on scene where you know shit is hitting the fan, and it's literally the moment that Bear decides that he can't fucking tell Nikki anything. Like he still just doesn't have the whatever, the cojones, whatever you want to say, to just say that he loves her or likes her, or that you know, he shoots his shot. He can't do it. He just can't handle maybe the thought of getting turned down, the rejection, and so he doesn't. But what does he do? He fucking snaps that one wish willow. He makes the wish. I want Nikki to love me more than any other person or anything in the world. And immediately you get the shot from the distance of Nikki now standing at the doorway, looking at him, and then she starts coming straight back up to the car, and you think, like, okay, so this is how it's gonna go down. There's gonna be some obsession here for sure. Cool. But what I wasn't ready for was how wild that this performance got right off the bat, to the point of like the point of you getting like Nikki snapping in and out of what seems to be herself, fighting through something that's taking hold of her, taking over her, right? And there's these moments that shine through that are just so unsettling, like the fact that she had said something, like said had said something about you know her cat dying, but then he's like, No, my cat died, and she's like, Yeah, you know, like totally, man, listen, this wish scene it starts off so innocent, but again, it's all rooted in he's focusing on the wrong things and the wrong person.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

But the moment that he snaps that one wish willow and removes her choice, that is the I wouldn't say it's even the first, but like the first major moment where it's like, bro, you're fucking fumbling so hard. The movie is may still let him be scared, confused, or remorseful later. But the violation, like this is the genesis of that. This is the beginning of that. And even when we get past that, when Nikki is back in his house and they're having their first kiss, in the middle of the kiss, Nikki screams and backs away like something has hijacked her because it's actually Nikki coming through. It is one of the movies' strongest, earliest signals that this is not consent. And again, we talk about this like fucking that classic love song Love Potion Number Nine. You're just making people fall in love with you, right? It all sounds so romantic until you recognize what it's actually doing. And when you see Nikki break through just long enough to be horrified before she's tampered back down by this wish entity, fuck.

Sean 54:43

Oof. It's so much, it's so much. There is so much going on here, and you know, you oh man, you had talked about like the physical space and you know, that whole thing, and just like lurking in the corner of the room in the shadows, going into the scene of like him of Bear waking up and watching her sleep or watching finding out that she's somewhere in the room in the corner watching him sleep and how creepy that whole scene was. I mean, that was insane.

SPEAKER_01 55:12

Again, again, I want to draw the line and the parallel of the things we romanticize. So we've talked about Love Potion number nine, we've talked about that song obsession. Now we're talking about Edward Cullen in Twilight. Because I think we all as reasonable human beings understand that Edward Cullen and Twilight, watching Bell Sleep, is fucking creepy. But that book, not no, kind of kind of romanticizes it. And when you have the roles reversed and we're just kind of more honest about what that looks like and what that feels like, I think it's a great representation of like, no, that shit ain't right. I don't like that shit, dog.

Sean 55:48

I don't like that shit. Ooh, it's just so it's just so creepy. Oof.

SPEAKER_01 55:54

Speaking of the sleeping of things and just the things that happen in that cursed cursed bedroom, I want to highlight the absolute monstrosity that was I if we were gonna talk in Star Wars terms, this is Bear's Mustafar moment. This is Bear's version of Force choking Padme and fighting Obi-Wan because we have them living through this honeymoon phase, they're at the restaurant. Ian says her dad is not dying. I've looked into this. And also the reality that Nikki had expressed disinterest in Bear. So there's no more plausible deniability. I think he has delulued himself into thinking oh wait, okay, yeah, this is like weird, but maybe she maybe this is okay. But now he is confronted with a cold hard truth and all the facts. So this moment punctures the fantasy and forces Bear to face the reality that this relationship is not real. And when he confronts an ass Nikki and she says this, oh my god, in this moment in her delivery of I thought we were having a nice day, it is fucking heartbreaking in so many ways. And it's terrifying because the wish wish with a capital W cannot tolerate any kind of reality intruding on this moment. But why I say that this is his descent, his Mustafar moment, there's no coming back from this. She asks if it matters. He says, Nope, doesn't matter to me. And they cut to sexual assault.

Sean 57:32

100%, because obviously we know, but that is definitely the one of the turning points for Bear, the character. This is definitely where he shines the most as the antagonist is in this in this film.

SPEAKER_01 57:45

When you get to that scene and you see he is on top of her, not even looking at her, and the wish is making these sounds, but you see Nikki and her eye, like she's crying, her eyes are so disengaged. This is something that I think is highly dramatic to watch on screen, especially if you have your own connections to this. That shot gets right to the horror of this premise. Bear is receiving physical affection from someone whose agency has been compromised, and there is no choice here, zero choice.

Sean 58:22

That was definitely a wild time. It was hard to watch. That's when you know, yeah, this is definitely a lot darker than you anticipated it being when you first sat down to watch this movie for sure. And you know, along with those types of that that heavy of scene or that heavy of a feeling that you get and what they're depicting in this movie, there are these moments that at least kind of cut through some of that with like a little bit of dark comedy, right? And there's those moments, like to put it into perspective, there's the moment where he's just trying to go to work or whatever, and Nikki is literally like, Oh, you don't have to go, you know, and then he's like, No, it's okay. And then he goes to, and you could see the whole door has been duct taped shut, like the most insane way you can possibly think. And he's like trying to pry open the door, but it's really hard because it's duct taped, and she's like, Well, you know, if you can't get it open, you can just stay. And he's like, nah, he's like, nah, I get this, don't worry, I'll get this open. And he just finally gets it open. Like, those are the moments that I think cut through a little bit of the intensity with a little bit of dark comedy that work kind of really well in this movie. You need a little bit of that in here because it's so heavy, and then it goes straight into like Nikki sitting there with that uncomfortable smile for however long, to where you were talking about the squishy squishy of her like pooping and peeing herself, standing there for like what, 12 hours or however long she was.

SPEAKER_01 59:47

I should be clear. I need to rewatch the movie. I don't think it was actually poop, but she definitely threw up for sure. So maybe it's something happened. I don't know. It was something definitely vomit, probably a little poop. Let's be honest, probably just a little bit of poop. But the depth there, man, the comedy of that fucking duct tape door, you are literally stuck here inside with me. Hate that so much. But again, another example of how Bear lacks the testicular fortitude required to have any kind of real confrontation here. That is he's just like, I'm not gonna acknowledge the fact that my door's fucking taped shut, which again, with where the state of possession is, maybe the right call, maybe the right call. But it is tough nonetheless. Another moment that I found funny until it was very suddenly not funny was the customer service call. So good.

Sean 1:00:41

So good. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:44

I'm gonna tell you an impression that I had from this. And maybe I'm reaching for things that are not there. But one, what a hilarious representation of sucks to suck. And we all have these unproductive customer service calls, right? But yeah, what I took from it, because he's calling the number on the back of the box, random fucking guy, this disinterested, zero hospitality, zero customer service, has now answered. And as he's talking about it, and like just kind of like like Bob and weaving his way through potential solutions, but there are no solutions here. What I found to be interesting is it was reminiscent of these motherfuckers that unleash this technology in the world and have no care for the consequences that befall anybody. How similar does that feel to some of what we're experiencing with like the rise of artificial intelligence? When you think of who Nikki becomes, this projection or this possession of Nikki, it's giving deep fake and it's also giving, yeah, but we don't want the accountability for what we made. I don't know. Again, maybe it's something there, but the fucking call itself, hilarious.

Sean 1:02:01

Yeah, there was a lot to that scene that I think takes you on this roller coaster of kind of uh dark comedy and just horrifying reality. And I think, you know, you gotta think of like what led to that. Because what led to that is like all this shit that we've been talking about, plus he, I think at that point has eaten the cat sandwich that was packed for him for lunch. Like, oh my god. So right before this scene that probably pushed him over the edge, it would push me over the edge is when he found out that he's eating a piece of his dead cat in his lunch, and he has these like creepy Polaroid photos that she's packed in his lunch, like one that's obviously looks like there's like some kind of surveillance camera in his house, and then also one of her, like as he's sleeping in the bed, which is also really creepy. So, like all these things happen, these turn of events that we've talked about, and he's like, you know what? Maybe this was a bad idea, and he calls. I'm one, I'm shocked that that number actually still worked. Let's just be like really grateful that there is even somebody that wanted to pick up the phone for this what looks to be a toy that could have came out of the 1950s. But he talks to who actually is Curry Barker, the director. That's the voice of Curry Barker. So that's the little cameo there. But it's just like this bro on the other end that literally could care less about anything. And what I loved about it in the comedy for me is one that it was so like nonchalant at first, and then there was this moment where he's like, Would you like to file like a cancellation request? And he's like, No, no, no, I don't want to cancel. I want to kind of like tweak it around or whatever. I don't want her to like, you know, maybe dial it back a little bit, and then they're kind of talking back and forth. You know, he says the whole thing of like, you know, like, you know, is this real? And then the dude on the phone is like, you know, just because you chose this for doesn't make it any less real. And then he's like, Well, I want to make a cancellation request, and he's like, nah, we can't do that. He's like, I offer it, then we're like, nah, we can't do that, which I thought was fucking hilarious. But where it takes this really dark turn and becomes really wild, and it's just this harrowing reality is that he says, Do you want to talk to Nikki? And he puts Nikki through somehow. We don't know. We don't know a lot about what's happening with this one wish willow and how this is happening and what exactly the entity or whatever the fuck is happening. We don't know a lot about it. I don't know if we want to know a lot about it, but we hear Nikki screaming, screaming in agony, like trapped almost. Like it's just so harrowing. The more you think about that moment, the more you're like, holy crap, if that was the real Nikki, that's how she's feeling right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:42

No shit, that's how she's feeling right now. And I think that translates straight into this moment where he's like getting out of bed, and Nikki is begging Bear to kill her. And I want to point out that what we get from that customer service call, what we get from the alleged sex scene, that we all know what it actually fucking was. You have this moment where Nikki, who is somewhere still inside of herself, is fighting against this. And I want to point out in the very beginning of the film, when he's driving her home, and she acknowledges, like, you're one of those, you're probably the only person I can talk to this stuff about. There is such a deep and profound level of safety and trust that she feels with him. So much so that when he calls her freaky Nikki, it throws her off. She's like, What the fuck? You know I don't like that. There is like a genuine friendship that she has with him. And then think about this person who you see as like one of your closest people to you doing this to you. No, and also it's his wish.

Sean 1:05:49

That whole scene is so absolutely wild. It's another one that, like, the more you look and the more you think about it, the more harrowing and the really heartbreaking it really is. And just Just like also dark, and it's you know, obviously, he's like trying to sneak out of the house, and you know, it's creepy that she wakes up or like it, but it's Nikki's voice, and it's she's saying it's actually Nikki. And I think they alluded to him like having sleeping pills with him. So, like, did he tranquilize her so that he can get through the night so she didn't wake up and watch him sleep or whatever? I don't know. That's kind of what I took out of it when there was like the mention of sleeping pills in his pocket or whatever. But there's the moment that that happens, and she's at she's literally saying, kill me, like begging him to kill her. And he has that really selfish moment where he takes it personally and he says, like, what and he says that I couldn't even believe he actually said it to be honest with me. And he got super defensive and selfish and said, Like, is it really that bad being with me? And she replies. The most harrowing thing that she actually replies with is literally saying, I've never been with you, and that hits you fucking hard. Let me tell you, the more you think about that moment, the more like I get chills thinking about it because yeah, she's literally never been with Bear. This is all a fucking fallacy. This is all just like something that he forced upon her.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:14

Man, it is gutting, it is absolutely gutting. And you see the levels of coercion every step of the way, but it's in that moment where Nikki is saying it. If you couldn't see it and you were you turned your eye to it in every other scene before, she is saying this isn't me. I don't want this. Please kill me. Nikki would rather die than continue to suffer in the way that she's suffering, which honestly, I think, makes the ending of this movie even worse. Even worse. Yeah. And there's actually a version of this ending where they wanted to end it with Nikki killing herself. So think about almost like an inverted I heard. Think of it as almost an inverted Romeo and Juliet. But thankfully, Curry Berker, Nady Never Ready, have this realization, like, no, she's a final girl, and she's been through this shit, so she's gonna be okay on the other side of this. Of course, leaving her where we leave her, it is devastating. Like, she's had her entire life ruined. And how does she not go to jail for all of this?

Sean 1:08:22

Yeah, okay. So that's the thing. Like, at one end, I guess, because I heard about this too, like, this wasn't the original intended ending, or this is what they chose. And I'm actually okay with this ending. I think the ending is good overall. I think the whole factor of you know, Bear dying however he dies, the moment that she actually makes the wish to make him love her the same way, and they have this like they have this like moment together where there is like this blissful happiness for just a moment before he actually overdoses and dies, and then she snaps to reality and she's like, What the fuck is happening? This whole thing is going on. But yeah, so like on one end, I can see like, okay, she had her, she had she got through it, like she got out. But at the other end, you're right, like, there's no way she's getting out of this. Like, you may be able to try to play it off like somebody else killed somebody, whatever. But one, your DNA is everywhere. Two, you were literally at a party where other people that aren't dead saw you have a psychotic break, so they're gonna probably talk about that. And I just don't see a reality where this doesn't ruin your life completely. So at the end of the day, no one really wins here.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:35

Once again, you cannot be a woman in this movie and come out unscathed. You simply can't. You simply can't.

Sean 1:09:41

Yeah, yeah. It's wild, it's absolutely wild for sure. It's it's crazy. But the uh yeah, the ending is effective in that way for sure. I don't think I would like it if she committed suicide afterwards. I think this ending works a lot better, but it still sucks to know that even though she made it out alive, she's screwed.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:04

Oh, that's so damn sad. I'm just thinking about this more because she put in her two weeks, like she had plans. She was doing some shit. You know what I mean?

Sean 1:10:13

And well, she was going to write, but whatever she was writing doesn't feel good. This like incestuous Hansel Gretel story that she decides to write at the Jenga party, recite at the Jenga party was a little bit disturbing.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:25

She was doing this whole brother will be inside her. It was deeply uncomfortable and unsettling. And what is hilarious to me is that that scene was part of her audition process in the chemistry reads.

Sean 1:10:38

I want to watch the audition tapes on that one.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:40

What her goal was. I wanted them to never know what I was gonna do next or what choice I was gonna make next. So the guy who was playing Ian was there and she locked eyes with him and she was like, I want to make him as uncomfortable as possible. So she started doing the weird little fucking accents and everything. 10 out of 10.

Sean 1:10:59

So good with the voices. Yeah, you you can't not do it with those without those voices. It was such a creepy moment in the whole movie. It was so good. But yeah, so like, yeah, okay. So she puts in her two weeks, she's gonna go write this incestuous Hansel and Gretel book, short story, whatever she's writing. To be clear, I think that's not what Nikki was gonna write. Oh, I don't know. I don't know, maybe I don't know where she pulled that out from. I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. We don't know. Oh my gosh. But she does have like just an insane, insane performance. It's unhinged. I don't think this movie works without Indy as Nikki. I don't know that anyone can fill this the shoes of Indy as Nikki in this movie. I think that it is just absolutely wild. It's one of the strongest performances that I've seen in horror in a long time, if ever, I don't know. It's very, very well, well performed. The whole like snapping in and out of like being the real Nikki and whatever's got a hold of her, the completely unhinged version of her obsession through this wish is just crazy. I think this movie plays with the with also just the idea that you know we know it's ultimately bare, but that there are moments throughout the movie and mostly early on where it kind of intentionally tries to blur the lines of like who did this, right? Who is the villain, who is not the villain, and it becomes very clear as the movie goes on who the villain is and maybe where you thought it was an innocent wish becomes a very dark thing that really flips like the protagonist antagonist thing on its head, which I thought I thought was really clever.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:38

Yeah, I mean, for me, there was never a moment where I felt like Nikki was the villain, but I think your perception of villainy in this movie is largely colored by your own experiences and the ways in which you relate to this movie. Again, three categories the people it's for, the people it's about, and the people who are somewhere in the middle. And if you're in the middle, I think you have like a nice experience of like, damn, that's some wild behavior. Wait a second, it's actually bear. Whereas maybe the people it's about, you think Nikki's a villain the whole time, and the people that it's for, you realize, wow, this is a cathartic release and a representation of all the worst relationships I've ever had. It's a spectrum. I want to be clear here. In no way am I saying that Nikki is absolved with behaviors. Nikki, internal Nikki, this isn't her, what she's choosing, anything like that. But we can see that the behaviors that this wish brand Nikki is giving, those are unacceptable and manipulative and gaslighty behaviors. And what this movie does really well is highlights those and again plays with this thought of when you look at this from the outside looking in, if you don't know what's happening, who would you think is who? Who was the assailant in this situation? And honestly, this is okay, this is actually a weird comparison. The housemaid. Did you see the housemaid, Sean? Okay, I did. I also saw the housemaid. I saw the housemaid after hearing about the housemaid as a book. And in that movie, you go in expecting and seeing one thing about one character, and then you learn Uno reverse card. It's the whole shit's different. So it I think this movie kind of has a similar effect.

Sean 1:14:26

Yeah, I could see that for sure. It does have a similar effect in that, but this is more of like a it's it I think it's less of like because like the housemaid was like a an instant flip that maybe you could have called it early on. Maybe if you knew the movie because of the book going in, you knew something was gonna happen. But this one is more like obsession, it is more of kind of like a slow progression of like little things that happen that start to like where you start off from. You if you're really following along, you start to see like the flip kind of slowly happen, where we all know it never really was a flip, but it's just what you see as an audience and what you feel as an audience. But I definitely see the comparison a hundred percent between Bear and Nikki. Great characters for sure. We talked a little bit about Ian for sure. Sarah, I think unfortunately for her, like she just met an untimely fate. I think that, you know, obviously it sucks. She was gonna get into, you know, a college. Uh, the last letter that came, she was gonna get into college. It's unfortunate she doesn't get to live that dream. Um it was absolutely wild that not only did we get like her death, we also got her propped up in the house afterwards, like stripped down, and we see the shot of her, like what's left of her face with the eye. And what the fuck was happening there? And then Nikki was like all of a sudden, like her hair was kind of different, and she had like somehow like either drawn or tattooed some really shitty tattoos to try to be closer to the image of Sarah so that Bear would like her a little bit more. Like that whole once we got to that, everything that happened after Sarah's death was wild as fuck.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:05

I can guarantee you that when Nikki was propping up Sarah's body, taking her clothes off, and drawing tattoos on her body, she was definitely listening to that song Girl Crush. I I can assure you a hundred percent. That song is all about like I think my man is stepping on on me, and I have a girl crush on that girl, and I want to be just like her so that he loves me. That's what that whole energy felt like to me. And I hate that Sarah was caught up in this. I mean, it also sucks for Ian. Again, Ian had his mistakes overall, not a bad human being. I mean, also shows you like you give somebody a one wish willow, and I think it'll show you who they are. And in this moment, he's like, Alright, a billion dollars, let me not take this seriously for a second. I get it. However, with Sarah, I think her death is kind of framed as like collateral damage to everything else that was happening, which is also a really shitty way of even like reducing her and her life and who she was and the track that she was on and what she had already done. Think about her genuine response to Bear when she learns of Sandy dying at the beginning of the movie. It's just damn. Like she was a great person. Yeah, she was let's frame this movie from her perspective. Outside looking in, hey, I have a crush on Bear. I'm great friends with Nikki. Nikki says, Hey, I don't like him. He's like a brother to me. But you two, I see it. I'm gonna talk to Bear and see if I can link you up. Then Nikki's on a drive home, all of a sudden, next thing you know, they're dating. And not only are they dating, they're being like disgustingly affectionate dating. They are all over each other all of a sudden. So she is still trying to be a friend to everyone, but also is dealing with some very personal feelings about this, which she has had probably the biggest betrayal out of anybody in this movie.

Sean 1:18:09

She, yeah, I guess you could say that, right? That's pretty wild. It's uh it's all very unfortunate, this whole triangle of crap that has happened, because there's a whole there's a whole lot happening with this core group of friends here that I think is just a mess. But it's also what I think works so well. Like this, you can tell that these this group of four friends, like they do it feels like they really know each other, that they do have kind of like this routine, that they, you know, they all have the same job together at their at whichever one's dad's music shop. And I think it makes them very relatable in some ways. It makes them you buy into it, uh the character development works really well in this one. And so, from a character aspect, I think it was the choices were really well done with the few characters that we get in this movie, and so very, very cool. I think for me, what's interesting is that you think of all this shit that has gone down in this movie because of this wish, and you think of all of these be careful what you wish for films that we've gotten over the years, and it all comes down to could this have been phrased any differently to avoid this outcome?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:18

Always, you know. I want to give you my strategy for this, Sean. And then for our patrons, you're gonna listen to the full episode, and we're gonna have our B side where we talk about what we would do with our own one wish willows and the wishes that we would make. I would offer this. My first and foremost strategy is to consult an attorney. I have a specific attorney that I will be consulting because as I draft this, I want a professional in identifying loopholes and precision of language.

Sean 1:19:48

You need a whole legal team to get you through this wish.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:52

Yeah, this is a very serious thing. And if I do not have the adequate legal representation, I will not be breaking that fucking willow. I can tell you that. I need to know what I'm gonna get into. So could this wish have been positioned differently? Absolutely, absolutely. He could have been more specific, and what he should have asked for actually was I wish I had the balls to say something. Like maybe he could have been even more specific. I wish I had the confidence and the courage to be honest with Nikki about how I feel because then the wish is about him and his actions, right?

Sean 1:20:31

And he can still get rejected.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:35

I wish I had the confidence and the courage to be honest about how I feel about Nikki and the peace and serenity to accept her feelings. That's it.

Sean 1:20:45

Yeah. I get it, I get it. You know what's really funny now that I think of it too is that we also get on both ends the support call and the dude at the store that was there the second time he goes to get and try to find the one wish willows is that both people say, like, well, one, both people recommended that he kill himself as a solution, but also the other guy at the shop was like, Oh, that's not that bad. So, like, he's like either he doesn't know the extent of what happened or he's seen a lot worse.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:15

He's for sure seen a lot worse. Here's the other danger that I see with this, and this is not about Bear and Nikki, because I think I've made very clear how I feel about their dynamic. What that was reminiscent of for me was how many times has a gosh, I don't even want to conflate these two things in the same topic. I want to give you a specific example, actually. When that guy said, Oh, that's not that bad, here's what it reminded me of Glee. Season five. I believe season five. There's a character who is making a confession at school that when he was younger, a female babysitter who was a teenager touched him inappropriately. And the responses that he got from the girls in that group were, oh my god, I'm so sorry. Because this is like a thing that traumatized this kid. And the guys in the group were like, Oh, what? That's why everybody wants that. That's not that bad.

Sean 1:22:17

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:20

So that's what that reminded me of. It reminded me of, and again, not again, not this is applicable to the bear because bear did some bullshit. Bear needs to suffer the consequences. He fucked around and he has to find out. But that guy's response, there's something there, and that's where I want to watch this movie more and more and more to dig into because that's the thing that stood out to me there.

Sean 1:22:42

Yeah, for sure. But that also begs the question did we? I already know my answer, but did we need to see or understand more of this one wish willow and why there is this kind of normalized response to this toy, for lack of a better word, from both the person at the shop and on the customer support line.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:06

If this movie has the legs to become a series or franchise or an anthology, I think we could explore more about the One Wish Willow, and I'd be down to explore that. I don't need to see anything else from Nikki unless she comes back later and is a final girl with a survivor, a self-help book, and she's doing big things with her life, and she's having survived the One Wish Willow. But I don't think I needed more in this movie, but I am intrigued enough to want to see more in the future from other things.

Sean 1:23:38

Yeah, I'm with you. I didn't really need to. It was a it was definitely a conversation that my wife and I had on the drive home, and she was like, I wanted to know a little bit more. And I was like, you know, I really didn't want to know a lot more. She's like, Why? I was like, because I don't think we need to know a lot more. I think what they gave us was great, and that restraint felt really good. And so yeah, I don't know. I don't think I needed more. I'm sure that there are people that want to know more. I think sometimes not knowing is better, it's more effective. But man, what an interesting concept. Have you seen other stuff that Curry Barker has done, like the milk and cereal or any of the like the other projects that he's done in the past?

SPEAKER_01 1:24:20

I'm gonna make a terrible confession. When I saw the name Curry Barker, I thought it was a parody of Clive Barker. I am unfamiliar with his game, but if this is my introduction to his game, same pretty strong game, sir. Pretty fucking strong game.

Sean 1:24:35

Yeah, for sure. I'm with you. I had no idea anything about Curry Barker, hadn't seen anything. I've heard people talk about milk and cereal recently because of this film coming out, so I'll probably end up checking it out. But I haven't seen I haven't seen anything else that he's done. So it'll be interesting to kind of explore that. And man, when you just think about this movie, this is a damn near perfect kind of horror film for me. I don't see that there's a lot of flaws in this. Uh, you know, we it can be the debate of like, did you want more of like where this came from or what the backstory is or whatever? I didn't think that. I guess I can maybe say that I didn't see the need to use the cat for as long as the film did, but we got it.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:17

Yeah, listen, the cat angle, I think, is gonna be the toughest pill to swallow in this movie. And we've talked about it a little bit here. There's a theory out there that Nikki is actually possessed by Sandy. I don't agree with it. I can see how people get there, but I think to share that she's possessed by that almost removes the burden of like, no, this is him just removing choice from her. But there are similarities and there are parallels. So I think that's gonna be a very interesting thing for all of us to unpack in our subreddit for sure. But there's so many, like, we do not have the bandwidth to like fully unpack every single theory in this movie. Maybe we can do a follow-up episode on this movie after you and I both get in another rewatch when it comes becomes available at home. Maybe we can do another episode unpacking all the different theories in this. For example, another theory is in the pictures that she put in the lunchbox with the cat sandwich. It's a picture of him, and then she said, not me. And the theory is that's actually real Nikki writing that to try to like essentially like beg and ask him for help. So I think there's some of that. And I'd be open to it, but Sandy's death in the beginning of it, the cat sandwich super fucking gross. I think that's gonna be something that probably turns some people off. But is it a legitimate, like, worst part of the movie? I don't think so. I think even then I enjoyed every single ounce of it. Sure, you may need to be cautious about who you recommend it to, but danger be damned, this movie is fucking excellent and it has very strong rewatch value. I cannot wait to watch this again, even though it's emotionally punishing and the sandy of it all is tough. I need to hug my cat when we're done recording this. I do think that this is something that's gonna continue to get richer and richer and richer with every single watch.

Sean 1:27:15

Oh, 100%. It is such a heavy watch and it's so uncomfortable, but I have to watch it again. I cannot wait to watch it again. I can't stop really talking about it with anyone. As soon as I hear somebody mention the name Obsession or say that they had gone to see it or about to see it, I immediately like my ears perk up. It's time to talk about it. I want to start a conversation about it. So I'm so excited to watch this one again. I wish I could go see it in theaters. Maybe I will before it's out. I don't know, but I'm definitely going to be watching this one again. I think there's so much value in a rewatch. There's so many little signs and signals and things that you can catch again and pay more attention to on a second watch. I just, oh man, can't say enough about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:59

I totally Get it. There is so much more to say about this movie. And the reality is we scored this a universal slash, and we did so because this movie, Obsession, knows exactly what it's what is horrifying about its own concept. It is pushing beyond be careful what you wish for, and it's carving right into be careful when your loneliness convinces you that love is something that you are owed. And be careful when you think being nice means someone else should choose you. Be careful when you make yourself the hero of a story where you have taken someone else's choice away. And the reality is that you cannot, and again, I'm gonna say this again for the people in the back, in case you didn't hear me the first time, in case you opened up this episode, skip my score, okay, back to this back of the episode, you cannot make anyone love you.

Toodles

SPEAKER_01 1:28:51

That brings our final score for obsession to a universal slash. Whether this wish-granting nightmare felt like a fresh spin on toxic desire or a premise that pushed too far in the wrong direction. This gave us plenty to unpack about love, control, and what horror can do with one very bad decision. But we want to hear your take. There are a million theories that we haven't even gotten to discuss here in this episode, and there's so much more to unpack from all of these scenes. So we want to hear your take, and we want you to head to our hackerslash pod subreddit to share your level of obsession with obsession.

Sean 1:29:25

And if your wish is to go even further than this episode, you don't need a one wish willow. You just need to consider supporting the show by visiting patreon.com slash hacker slash because really this is where you can enjoy even more of the show, including bonus content with early access, extended episodes with our B sides, movie nominations, and live shows.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:46

We'll see you next time, folks. And remember, you wished for this.

Sean 1:29:49

Please, no more weird shit.