You see, folks, it doesn’t seem that hard, right? It’s possible to make an actual horror movie without too many shenanigans, without the need for constant jump scares and sudden loud audio bursts. A plot that actually makes sense. One that is not cringey. One that actually creeps you out after the movie has ended. I rarely watch romantic horror movies, but Obsession is so widely talked about that I couldn’t resist. With a current IMDb score of 8+, I had to get in on the action. That score will likely drop over time, but I can’t see it dropping past a 7. Obsession is likely one of the scariest movies to have come out so far this year.

The plot is simple enough: a teenage boy is too awkward and scared to convey his feelings for his coworker. He discovers some make-a-wish thing and makes his one wish that the girl love him back as much as he loves her and become the sole love of her life. Well, he gets what he wished for, but of course, he also gets more than he bargained for. It’s a simple concept that has obviously been done many times before, which allows the directors to cast a pretty wide net when trying out different things to make it work. In Obsession, Inde Navarrette, playing the role of Nikki, takes center stage and really makes the movie shine. She would obviously have to, given that she’s playing the obsessed girlfriend role, and I think they did an excellent casting job in choosing her.

So what actually makes the movie scary? It’s when Nikki starts to act strange once Bear makes the wish. Simple, right? But it works. The few scenes where they play with the lighting, covering Nikki’s face in darkness, are just creepy. That door scene where her entire face is covered in darkness and we only get to see the glare of her eyes? Yeah, I knew then that this movie was going to be something good. As viewers, this is the part that really gets you because you have no idea what the directors have in mind. Will this movie be one of those where they use CGI to make Nikki look like some demon? Will they rely on a cheap jump scare? You have no idea, and that suspense is what makes it even better. The scene in the bedroom where Nikki watches Bear sleeping, as well as when she walks across the bed in that odd way, literally gave me goosebumps. Also, I’m not going to lie—it made me stare at the dark corner of my own bedroom after the movie ended. I think the director took a page right out of the Smile horror franchise. There’s a reason why Smile is so highly rated and in fact, Smile 2 was one of my favorite horror movies of that year. There’s just something that unnerves the viewers when we see creepy smiles and facial expression. That scene where Nikki and the group were playing a game and Bear had to kiss Sarah on his left? It slowly panned to Nikki’s face in a big frown and that for some reason was freaky. Again, this works because you don’t know what to expect and that slow pan to her face makes it that much more spooky. Also, the wide panning along with the blurring of the background for certain scenes reminds me of Undertone, which forces the viewers to always feel the need to anticipate something happening. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t but you’ll never know.

I liked the ending. It leaves no doubt, in my opinion, as to what happened. We know from the beginning that Bear is a cowardly person. Nothing he does throughout the movie forces us to change our opinion of him. Therefore, it’s no surprise that, at the very end, he decides he can’t go through with his own suicide and tries to vomit up the pills he swallowed. He loves Nikki, but obviously not enough to go through with ending his own life to break the wish. He knows that the real Nikki is somehow trapped when, at one point, she asks Bear to just kill her while her conscience has a moment of reprieve due to the demon Nikki sleeping. It’s then ironic to discover that demon Nikki uses her one wish so that Bear loves her more than anyone else in the world right before he can vomit up the pills. The wish takes effect, and we see Bear suddenly change his persona, leave the bathroom, and go to Nikki. However, the pills also take effect, and he dies in her arms. The curse on Nikki breaks with his death, and she snaps back to reality and takes in the carnage all around her.

It’s obvious that Nikki had never reciprocated Bear’s love from the beginning, even before he made the wish. The first clue is when Sarah tells Bear that Nikki had placed him in the friend zone, which is why she thought their relationship was so odd. Secondly, Bear learns that Nikki and his other good friend, Ian, were having on-and-off sex. Third, and most telling, is right at the end when Bear dies in her arms. Obviously, the real Nikki is in shock after snapping back to reality, but the way she just shoves Bear off her is a telling sign that she never truly cared for him. In my opinion, her life is now likely ruined, as she’s responsible for three deaths and will probably go to jail or something.

Even though the concept of Obsession is simple, there can still be some important clues and topics to discuss regarding Bear and Nikki’s relationship. One could make the argument that Nikki was semi leading Bear on in the beginning into thinking he might have had a chance with her. We don’t know how they were prior to the beginning of the movie but they all four of them seemed like good friends stuck in a dead end job with hopes of bigger dreams. Nikki told Sarah she placed Bear in the friend zone but she didn’t make that clear enough to Bear. With Bear, he’s not blameless. As well as being a cowardly person, towards the end, when he uttered the phrase in anger of what makes him so unbearable to be with, it shows signs of his incel behavior. He likely believes that he is genuinely a good and loving person and therefore, couldn’t imagine how Nikki would not reciprocate. It could also stem from his anger knowing that his good friend Ian, who seems to be more of the brash and easy going character, got to have sex with Nikki and not him. Bear fails to see how Sarah, who is right in front of him, is the actual girl that likes him and it was Bear who only thought of her as a friend. So, yeah, like what Nikki did to him he did to Sarah. He likely can’t understand why Sarah would like him, just like how he likely can’t understand how Nikki would not not like him. In the end, nobody wins. Bravo to this great movie. Fans will definitely look forward to this director’s next movie.