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!!!content warning!!! |
Full spoilers for Obsession (2026) you have been WARNED now let me get this off my chest
Cat's dead. Title drop. this movie is about a dead cat.
My partner (who now makes me jump if she walks around a corner too fast) pointed out that Bear is neglecting his cat before the start of the movie (open cans on the floor, extreme glut of dry food) and his neglect leads at least in part to its death. I think it goes further.
We know that obsessed!Nikki isn't Nikki, and is in fact excruciatingly aware that she can't be Nikki, no matter how hard she tries. (Nikki calls her a "she" so let's roll with it.) We also hear real Nikki on the phone call with the One Wish Wonder guy; she's somewhere else while obsessed!Nikki is in play. But who/what is obsessed!Nikki?
Here's a list of weird shit obsessed!Nikki does over the course of an hour and a half:
- scream at night
- stand in the corner of the room at night and watch Bear sleep
- go thru the trash and take things out
- leave a dead animal in the middle of the kitchen floor (the second time for no reason, almost out of compulsion)
- comment on what things do or don't smell like
- fail to read social cues and emote inappropriately (too loudly or too long)
- spend all day waiting by the door when Bear goes to work
- drool on herself
- pee on the carpet
Some of these are dog indicators; most of them are cat. Bear is neglecting Nikki the same way he neglected his dead cat.
And the cat keeps coming up! First she drags its body back to the kitchen to make a memorial. Then she brings flowers to the bedside "for [the cat]". Then she cooks it and feeds it to Bear.
On the one hand, this could be real!Nikki sneaking thru the cracks: a cry for help, or rebellion against her captors and rapists. We know she has moments of lucidity where she regains control; but these only last a few seconds, and she spends them on efficient and decisive communication and actions, not petty revenge.
On the other hand, obsessed!Nikki may be trying and failing to appeal to Bear. Whatever she is, she clearly doesn't have a complete grasp of human, uh, everything. He told her the cat was important and she latched onto it because she wanted to be important to him too. She's pressing the button and getting confused when the treat doesn't appear. She's sentient, but not smart enough to fake empathy.
On the most confusing hand, she ignores Bear's admonishments to serve him the cat. After the cat-sandwich incident, he reveals that they previously talked about this kind of thing, suggesting she's desecrated the cat's body more than once.
When obsessed!Nikki reads some of her prose, it's an incestuous cannibalistic erotic fantasy. It's the most specific version of what she actually wants that we get to hear, but it doesn't quite click with the cat-sandwich. If she wants to consume and be consumed -- finds it erotic or romantic in some way -- one might expect her to add a piece of herself, a hair or pinky toe.
She's the cat. She has to be the cat. She describes being left alone at home as if she were dying; the cat died from neglect. She insists on memorializing it, to the point of upsetting him, even though she shouldn't care about it as much as she cares about him. She thinks about the cat more than he does.
Why did the cat have to die? Why is its name invoked mere minutes before the wish? Why does Nikki piss in the exact spot it died? Why does Bear 'kill' obsessed!Nikki with a pill overdose, the exact same way he killed the cat? Why does the pill bottle have his mother's name on it?
Good movie 10/10 highly recommended i have a headache and am sick to my stomach gn
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