Obsession: who is the bad guy?

Obsession (2026): who is the bad guy?

Obsession (2026): Bear holding One Wish Willow

A horror of a “nice guy” trope, a “victim card for a psychopath”, or “it’s not his fault”.

Whatever your answer is, just remember, you wanted this.

(T)his obsession is getting worse and there is no one you can trust. Even the director asks you: “Are you sure he is the one to blame?”… and that’s what makes this movie a true horror.

The horror of Obsession (2026) is not about undigestible scenes with a shade of “I Spit on Your Grave” (2010), not in blood or demon possession. The horror of Obsession (2026) is normalization and a “victim card for a psychopath” distribution. A sad movie, telling a story of a person with psychopathic tendencies, who is deeply frustrated that life is not a porn-movie (“Whatever I do, mom is going to like it”) and people are not inflated pleasure-dolls.

Then the essence of sin really is — 'In the taking of heaven by storm, it seems to me,' said Ambrose. 'It appears to me that it is simply an attempt to penetrate into another and a higher sphere in a forbidden manner. You can understand why it is so rare. They are few, indeed, who wish to penetrate into other spheres, higher or lower, in ways allowed or forbidden.

Will you choose Bear?

Bear, 25 yo. He can’t man himself up to tell her about his feelings, so he finds a way to make it look as if “she wanted this” and “she was asking for it”. In his what I would call “In defence of Bear” video, Lucas Blue blames The Loneliness Epidemic. What was your excuse before women regained at least a partial right to decide what is happening with their bodies?

Next, Bear decides to abuse the only person who was nice to him in every way possible: physically, sexually, and psychologically. The host of the I am not a robot YouTube channel shares his discovery of how careless Bear is about those he is attached to—at the very beginning of the movie we see that Bear has left the Oxycodone bottle open, which has led to his cat dying. Later, he remind that “Nikki is still there, feeling everything and not being able to do anything about it. <…> She didn’t do anything wrong and she is the one paying for it”.

This is every rape-victim story. Those who survived sexual assault wish they didn’t, because it’s not life after it. People recover for years, decades, some never do, some of them commit suicide. “How will I ever be normal again?’, “Something dies in you”, ‘I feel like in that moment I lost who I was, it didn’t even matter anymore who I was a person”—that’s the world of the rape victims. Instead of living, creating, evolving, rape survivors spend their lives regaining control over their bodies, regaining sanity, and very often it is too much, because nobody comes to this life to do that on an everyday basis, human beings are not wired for that, and after years of struggle, many just give up.

“It’s a rape scene. She is practically catatonic. She is just lying there like a tool that he is using”, says Cody Leach. After Bear discovers that something about new Nikki is not up to his liking, he makes a call to the support line, asking for the way to “update the settings” as Nikki wasn’t loving enough. “Now, he is somebody who is absolutely in the know that something is off and yet fully taking advantage of it. Despite one person in this exchange being completely unable to give consent or do anything willingly.” Sounds like the last 5000 years to me.

Later, Cody describes Bear’s attitude in a way that can be a movie motto: “This is somebody who is saying: I am going to have this relationship whether you are a willing participant in it or not.” Asking “What is so bad about being with me?” after you destroyed somebody’s agency, sanity, and general will to live is the real horror of Obsessions (2026)—it shares so many parallels with reality that it should be called a reality show. Asking “What is so bad about being with me?” is similar to asking “Why don’t you enjoy being raped? What’s wrong with you?” Again, sounds like the last 5000 years to me, during which rape has been a cure for every female issue, including lesbianism. In the reactions compilations, someone even asks: “Is he mad at her or something?” Yes, it is that bad, because it is that real.

“I would say the sympathy that the film extends to Bear in the first act is a very elaborate and effective form of misdirection. The film is saying, this is what guys like this look like. They are not monsters. They are sad. Oftentimes, seemingly decent, low-stakes guys, who you wouldn’t necessarily flag as dengerous if you met them at trivia night.

Sometimes, guys like this will destroy a woman’s life if given a chance, and they will tell themselves a narrative about it that makes them a protogoinst.”

Nightmare Masterclass

But what was she wearing?

At the end of the movie, Nikki finds herself raped, physically ruined and psychologically destroyed, and she is the one to carry all the responsibility and face all the repercussions—every rape survivor’s story. In his interview with the Movie Web, the director Curry Barker says that in the original script Nikki was supposed just to end it all, but then he listened to the people on the set, who were saying that leaving Nikki alive to deal with everything she hadn’t done and had never asked for would have been even more gruesome. And it is, because of how real it is.

After Nikki’s body was taken from her and she can do nothing but observe what is being done to her, she is being called a villain for not liking it. Sounds familiar, right? “It only took ten frames to ruin a girl’s life”, says Editor Josh while analysing the tricks of the trade that were used to communicate the message that one person’s immediate desire costs another person their life. This should have identified the villain of the story, but don’t rush, for many people it is still a question: was Nikki into Bear or not?

“Is she into him?” The question everyone is asking about a girl who (unfortunately for her) has decided that a man can be her friend. Here is where my personal experience breaks through. As an intellectual and sound enthusiast, I was surrounded by men most of my life, as the literary community and academia are still predominantly male-represented, and I speak from experience when I say that if you simply treat a man as a human being, if you are just exercising basic politeness and you are simply nice to a man, he interprets it just like that—she is into me. Spoiler: I never was. The lesson I learned from my experience correlates tragically with the message of the Obsession (2026)—men are not friends. A similar message was communicated earlier by Eva Victor and her “Sorry, baby” (2025), an apology every girl must receive upon being born.

"It only took ten frames to ruin a girl's life"

We need to talk about Alex Meyers

Yes, Alex Meyers, who published and then deleted a movie review on Obsession (2026), and who also published and deleted an apology for his movie review on Obsession (2026). According to CrispysTavern, this wasn’t the first time Alex Meyers revealed his very arguable attitude to women, as well as his inclination to promote it and gaslight anyone who points out his openly misogynistic tendencies.

Although the original video is no longer available, it is still possible to get the idea of what it was like to watch it. Amanda Todhunter speaks about how “Obsession is exposing the misogynists (and Alex Meyers apparently)“, pointing out how unexpectedly the movie resonated with the audience and revealed some very unexpected sides of it. For instance, Alex Meyers built his review around Bear being perfectly innocent and not guilty of any wrongdoing until he did the wrong thing (the thing Alex Meyers never calls by its name). Alex even underlines how incredibly sensitive and “gentlemanly” (direct quotation) Bear behaves: “he gives her privacy and space, he turns around when she takes her shirt off”.

In scenarios of this kind, the abuser makes his desires and his vision of the world the only possible option, the only law, the only way to live. It reminds me of another horror movie, a franchise actually—Saw: you lose your leg, or you lose your life, that is the only choice you have. Or closer to real life—the last thousands of years of human history: half of the population was denied any agency and was beaten, tortured, and enslaved into submission. Aristotle, with his gender-based male supremacy theory, was not the first to express the idea. He was the most eloquent at the point when the long-term extermination practice finally culminated into a doctrine, a basis for Biological Determinism and Dehumanisation. The world Alex Meyers sees as a fun place to be (apparently).

Alex Meyers would become your friend, earn your trust, and then, one day, he would grab his two best friends and take you for a ride. Then they would threaten to murder you if you didn’t have a sexual encounter with him. And Alex Meyers would be so kind and sensitive as to gentlemanly use protection, right after you were given a choice between being raped or murdered. In this equation, murder is a One Wish Willow Wand. Right after that, he will be calling you his girlfriend. Because you are a “hot Latina and one can only remain strong for so long”, and he doesn’t care that you have explicitly told him multiple times that you don’t want to have a romantic relationship with him.

Obsession (2026) is too real

As many would tell you, there is no jump scare in Obsession (2026), the scariest part of the movie is how real it is and how normalised and, in many cases, defended the position of an abuser is. He is just lonely and in love with a girl who is sending him signals (spoiler: she doesn’t). Moral: if a bear is walking on two feet, that’s the wrong bear.

If you ask for my personal take on the movie, I will say: take it as a warning. The warning that has finally been voiced: If you are simply nice to someone — you are giving them signals. If you are polite and helpful — you are giving them signals. If you finally learned your lesson (and survived) and you stopped being polite, nice, and helpful — you are a b[I]tch and that is your way to flirt, because you want to be conquered (apparently). To put it shortly, you are out of options around such people. Why? Because they are predators, they are criminals. But how do you know a bear is the wrong bear?

Lisa Bilyeu can help you explore the question. Her conversation with philosophy researcher and shadow work expert Previn Karian, titled “The Nicer He Seems, The More Dangerous He Is!” explores the issue of recognising danger before it strikes. Her interview with interrogation and deception expert Gregory Hartley will help you to do it faster, and a former FBI Counterintelligence Special Agent Robin Dreeke has some advice on how to act if you come too close to the wrong bear.

Obsession (2026) skyrocketed to the “horror movie of the year” nomination in months. Because it is too real and it is your creation, and I, together with many other female individuals, have a lifetime to introduce you to the notion of long-term consequences, something we are familiar with way more than any of us ever wanted to be (and it’s not like anyone asked us if we wanted that).

Ianina, 2026