Why Obsession Is a Feminist Horror Film
I think we’ve all either watched Obsession by now or, at the very least, stumbled across the heated conversations it’s sparked online. Scroll through TikTok, Reddit, or X, and you’ll quickly notice a pattern. Nikki is labelled crazy, obsessive, unstable, and dangerous, while Bear is defended as a lonely man whose wish simply went horribly wrong.
That’s the real horror.
It’s fascinating how many people watched a story about a woman losing her autonomy and still walked away believing she was the problem.
That’s exactly what makes Obsession such an effective feminist horror film.
The film is not about a dangerously obsessed woman. It is about what happens when a man believes he is entitled to a woman’s love. More importantly, the reaction it has generated online mirrors the very dynamics it appears to criticize. Time and time again, the conversation shifts away from the man who caused the harm and toward the woman living with its consequences.
Perhaps that’s the film’s cruelest twist.
Obsession follows Bear, a shy and socially awkward man who develops feelings for his co-worker Nikki. After she rejects him, he makes what he believes is an impossible wish so that she would fall in love with him. To his surprise, the wish comes true, but with a twist.
Obsession seems to follow a familiar horror formula at first glance. Nikki suddenly becomes frighteningly attached to Bear, crossing boundaries and behaving in increasingly disturbing ways. It is easy to dismiss her as the “crazy girlfriend” or the obsessive woman whose love becomes dangerous.
But that reading only scratches the surface.
Nikki is not acting of her own free will. Her personality, emotions, and choices have been magically manipulated after he made the wish. The real horror begins long before she becomes obsessive. It begins the moment Bear decides that Nikki’s rejection is something that can be erased rather than respected.
The wish is more than a supernatural plot device. It functions as a metaphor for male entitlement; the fantasy that a woman’s “no” can somehow become a “yes” if only she loved enough. It transforms a familiar reality into literal horror by making visible what coercion often looks like in the real world.
Love without consent is not love. It is control.
Many viewers defend Bear by arguing that he never expected the wish to work. That much is true. But intention only excuses an accident until the moment someone recognizes the harm they have caused.
The moment Bear realizes Nikki’s feelings are not genuine, the accident ends. From that point forward, every decision is a choice.
He could have tried to reverse the wish. He could have sought help. He could have accepted that any relationship built on stolen consent is not a relationship at all.
Instead, he accepts it.
He allows himself to enjoy a version of Nikki that no longer belongs to herself. He climbs into bed beside her knowing she has lost control over her own mind and body. Once Bear knows Nikki’s mind has been stripped of agency, any sexual relationship between them ceases to be consensual. Consent requires the capacity to make a free and informed choice. Nikki no longer has that capacity. What follows is therefore not simply morally troubling; it is rape.
Even when Nikki leaves signs that she is still trapped inside, silently pleading for him to recognize that something is terribly wrong, he chooses the fantasy over the woman.
That is the moment Bear becomes the villain.
Ironically, one can argue the title itself tells us this. Obsession is not describing Nikki. It is describing Bear. His inability to accept rejection, his willingness to possess rather than be loved, and his refusal to restore Nikki’s agency even after realizing what he has done are the true obsession at the heart of the story.
Yet much of the online conversation focuses almost exclusively on Nikki.
She is called “crazy,” “psycho,” “toxic,” and “proof that women are drama.” Others insist they felt sorry for Bear because he was lonely or because he “deserved love.”
Those reactions are, in many ways, scarier than anything the film actually shows. Because they reveal how instinctively many people empathize with the man causing harm while scrutinizing the woman experiencing it.
That pattern extends far beyond horror films.
Women who survive abuse are often judged less by what happened to them than by how they respond. If they become angry, they are “hysterical.” If they fight back, they are “violent.” If trauma changes their behavior, they become “unstable.” Society has long been more comfortable questioning women’s reactions than confronting the actions that produced them.
Obsession recreates this dynamic almost perfectly. Nikki loses control over her own body, yet much of the public discussion asks whether she was “too obsessive” or “too crazy,” as though those actions were ever truly hers. In doing so, many viewers unintentionally reproduce the very victim-blaming the film appears to criticize.
The horror, then, is not simply supernatural. It is social.
An unsettling sequence from the movie is watching Bear successfully position himself as the victim. As Nikki’s behavior becomes increasingly violent and unpredictable, he appears trapped in a terrifying relationship. To those around him, and to many viewers, he looks like an innocent man trying to survive an unstable partner.
But his victimhood is a performance built on his own refusal to tell the truth. Every terrifying event that follows can be traced back to Bear’s repeated choice to prioritize the fantasy over Nikki's freedom.
It reflects a reality many survivors know all too well. Abuse often hides behind charm, self-pity, and carefully crafted narratives of innocence.
Perhaps what stayed with me most after watching Obsession is the fact that Bear inflicted horror, while Nikki was forced to experience it as she becomes a prisoner inside herself.
Yet we experience very little of it.
Because Obsession is told almost entirely through Bear’s perspective, audiences spend most of the film inside the mind of the person inflicting the horror rather than the person living through it. We understand his loneliness, his fear, his regret, and eventually his panic. Nikki, meanwhile, is largely observed from the outside.
Imagine a different version of the film.
Imagine walking home with Nikki instead of staying with Bear. Imagine being trapped inside your own body, fully conscious but unable to control your actions, while the man you trusted continues treating your body as though it belongs to him.
That would be an entirely different horror film … and perhaps an even more terrifying one.
It also raises an interesting question. Can a film fully function as feminist horror if it primarily centers the emotional journey of the man causing the violence rather than the woman living through it? There may not be a single answer. But asking the question reveals just how much perspective shapes our understanding of horror.
Perhaps that is why Obsession has sparked so much debate.
The film does not simply ask who the villain is. It asks whose perspective we instinctively trust. If audiences leave believing Nikki was the problem, they haven’t just misunderstood the story. They have unknowingly recreated the very logic it appears to condemn, which is excusing the man who stole a woman’s autonomy while blaming the woman forced to live without it.
That may be the scariest part of Obsession. Not the supernatural curse itself, but how readily so many viewers extend their sympathy to the man responsible for it.
About the author:
Sara Zouiten is a Moroccan journalist and feminist advocate. Her work explores gender, politics, human rights, and social issues through an intersectional feminist lens.
