The film’s climax exposes the full horror of Bear’s desire for control. After failed attempts to reverse the One Wish Willow’s magic, Bear chooses suicide as the only escape. Nikki secretly uses her own Willow to force him to love her with the same obsession, binding them together until his death finally shatters both wishes and frees her mind amid devastating consequences.
Horror movies are reigning in Hollywood like never before. Movies like Sinners and The Substance have multiple Oscar nominations (and wins) while long-standing franchises like Final Destination are having a blast at the box office. Horror (at least the non-paranormal kind), is no longer your niche A24 genre known only by the filmbros of the world. And some of these really have these rather simple stories, sharpened to brilliance by the execution. Case in point: Curry Barker’s Obsession, which takes a familiar “be careful what you wish for” premise and pushes it into a darker, monkey's paw territory. Below, we explain the gruesome ending that the film reserves for it's characters, and the bits that it leaves out. Read on.
The film follows Bear, a lonely young man who has long harboured feelings for his childhood friend Nikki despite knowing that she does not see him romantically. After a series of personal frustrations and emotional setbacks, Bear visits a strange novelty store where he purchases a supernatural object called the One Wish Willow. The Willow grants one wish when snapped in half, although the consequences are never fully explained up front. After an incident where Bear fumbles his chance to confess to Nicki, he breaks the Willow and asks for Nikki to “love him more than anything in the world.”
At first, the wish appears to work exactly as intended. Nikki suddenly becomes intensely affectionate and attached to Bear. But soon, she turns violently possessive and borderline creepy, even going to the extent of harming others. As Bear realises that Nikki’s obsession will ultimately get him killed, he looks for a way to undo what he started.
After Nikki’s fixation escalates into violence, Bear desperately tries to undo his wish. He learns from the One Wish Willow customer service the cannot simply use another Willow to reverse the wish: each user is restricted to one usage, and he and Nikki are trapped in this for life. He still buys the last two Willows left at the store and tries to get his friend Ian to wish him out of the situation. This plan, however, backfires because Ian wishes for a billion dollars instead, and cash starts raining from his roof. In less than a day, Nikki shoots Ian dead when he arrives at Bear’s house to help him out of his predicament.
Bear now coaxes the possessed Nicki to wish for his freedom ‘as an act of love’, but Nikki, of course, is in no condition to agree. Left with no workable solution, Bear realises that the only way to end the curse is through his own death. He locks himself in the bathroom and swallows a bottle of pills, the same pills responsible for the death of his cat earlier in the film. Almost immediately, he panics and attempts to force himself to vomit them back up.
At that moment, we hear the distinct crack and jingle of a One Wish Willow from outside the bathroom. Against his will, Bear’s body rushes out of the bathroom to kiss his girlfriend. As he lies dying in Nikki’s arms, we realise that Nikki used a willow herself to wish for him to love her with the same obsession that she has been forced to feel toward him.
As Bear's death has broken both their wishes, the real Nikki regains consciousness, and the film ends with the sound of her wails and the police sirens as she discovers the bodies of her friends she has unknowingly murdered.
In simple words: the real Nikki is trapped somewhere beneath the obsessive persona created by Bear’s wish. There are evidences of this scattered across the film. You see it in her facial expressions when the two have sex. It also comes out at the boy’s night that Nikki forcefully attends, when she suddenly starts screaming that it is not really her and smashes a glass against her face. In a minute, she snaps out of it, acting as if nothing ever happened.
Later, when Bear contacts the One Wish Willow helpline, he asks whether Nikki’s feelings are genuine. The operator responds ambiguously before offering him the chance to speak to the “real Nikki,” leading only to terrified screaming on the other end of the line.
But the clearest giveaway about Nikki’s condition arrives later in the film, when Bear attempts to leave the house while Nikki sleeps. A frightened version of Nikki speaks to him while the obsessive entity remains dormant, begging him to kill her and end the suffering. Bear, being Bear, pays no heed to it, and it only goes on to make things worse for everyone involved.
The next time we see Nikki gain consciousness is when Bear dies, and the film draws to a close, which is when she realises the predicament she is about to be trapped in.
Nikki is in an almost impossible situation now. Her friends Sarah, Ian, and Bear are dead, while Nikki is physically present at the crime scenes and covered in evidence linking her to the murders. Even though she was not fully in control of her actions, nobody would believe that she was possessed, and al clues will lead to her being in jail or a psychiatric facility.
In the end, it’s a story about selfishness and control. Bear does not try to reverse the wish in time because Nikki is suffering. He only seeks help once her obsession begins threatening his own comfort and safety.
By the time Bear finally accepts death as the only solution, the damage has already been done. Nikki survives, but she inherits the consequences of everything Bear wished into existence.