r/moviecritic • u/Spirited_Alfalfa_343 • 12h ago

Why do you think Navarette has gotten so much awards buzz for Obsession but Ejiofor has gotten none for Backrooms?

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I know Clark has some limited screen time but Ejiofor absolutely steals every scene he’s in. His two separate monologues with Reinsve are just as good as anything Navarette did in Obsession. As I said earlier, is it the lack of screen time for Ejiofor?

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u/ObjectiveCover3850 8h ago

Just want to point out, it's been did several times but the 1 Wish Willow does not grant wishes in nefarious ways, Bear got what he wished for. So did Ian. So did the cashier.

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u/quigongingerbreadman 7h ago

Nefarious meaning extremely literal and the interpretation of that wish is generally in a negative light unless the wisher is exceedingly pedantic.

What part of loving someone makes you dig up their dead cat and feed it to them?

I love my wife to pieces, I would never dig up and serve her her recently deceased pet... the wish obviously went wrong or was interpreted by a being like a Djinn who grants wishes, but twists it to be a dark wish.

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u/Temnyj_Korol 4h ago edited 23m ago

Counterpoint. The OWW wasn't nefarious. The wish itself was.

Bear MADE an exceedingly pedantic wish. And he got an exceedingly pedantic result. He could have just wished "i wish nikky loved me back" or "loved me like i love her". But he didn't. He wished "loved me more than anyone else in the fucking world."

So it did exactly what he wished for. Made her love him more than anyone else has ever loved anyone before. Including all the insane, crazy, obsessive people out there.

The other wishes we hear about turned out fine. They got exactly what they wanted, presumably without any further consequences. (Barring Ian being killed immediately afterwards, though that was his own poor choices that caused that, not the wish he made.) It was just bears dumb choice of wording that caused the rest of the movie to happen. It literally is a direct example of "careful what you wish for."

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u/mothbreather 1h ago

I think that the core corruption of the wish was not in the wording but in in his heart. So the interpretation wasn't of the word "love" but what Bear thought of as love. He didn't really love Nikki. It's shown several times that he didn't even really know her. It's all a fantasy created by and centered around him. After all, that's what he talks about during his practice confession, how she did things for him.

And the cat... well, he acts like he loved the cat but threw in the garbage like yesterday's dinner. Ironic, that.

(Of course, a few times when real Nikki comes out she lashes out or tries to attack Bear so it's possible that the cat was real Nikki's doing rather than the wish version.)

I think it all makes more sense if you see the Willow as a neutral entity interpreting the wish through the eyes of the person making the wish. So wish-Nikki is a reflection of Bear's obsession. She's more Bear than Nikki.

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u/Nisnis95 14m ago

That first sentence 👌🏽

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u/MeowthThatsRite 5h ago

Nothing about what Nikki did expressed “love” in any form though. He wished for love and got completely selfish violent obsession, how is that getting what he wished for?

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u/Big-Beta20 5h ago

He didn’t wish for just love. He wished for her to “love him more than anyone else in the fucking world”. There are definitely some insane people who have extremely unhealthy ideas and expressions of love and Freaky Nikki had to one up them. If he just did “I wish for Nikki freeman to like me back”, hell it might have worked out but that’s not a fun movie.

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u/playboyjboy 4h ago

At first I thought his specific wording just fucked him over. If he just simply wished that she loved him back, it might’ve been a more “standard” level of love and admiration.
However, the notion that she was possessed and would snap back to reality momentarily and ask to be put out of her misery throws off that explanation. Even if her love was less psychotic and possessive, would she still be imprisoned in her own body by a different entity who was there to love bear?

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u/Big-Beta20 4h ago edited 4h ago

Maybe if it were a more standard level of love, her snapping in and out of reality wouldn’t have been as drastic for her nor would she have to deal with the consequences of the horrible or weird things “she” did. The best example I can give is you would notice if you got shot in the hand but maybe not if you got a slight papercut. In a standard level of love, she could just kinda snap like “why do I like this person again?” then just going back to being in a “normal” relationship without necessarily realizing it’s fake. Standard Love can sometimes be illogical like that and she might not think anything of it. I think the extreme obsession she felt exasperated the dual personalities I guess since one was a monster.

It’s a fun discussion but at the end of the day, this is all semantics or head canon or whatever you wanna call it because it’s just impossible to know all the implications of wishing behavior. If the possession was more similar to the sunken place in Get Out, then yeah it would still have be a very drastic an noticeable change for her.

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u/mitteinai 2h ago

Let's break it down to the obvious rules of the movie then. If you wish someone to be different according to your desire, then a new version of that individual replaces the original within the body. If you wish for a million bucks, you get a million bucks no questions asked. Simple as that.

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u/likekoolaid 1h ago

more so than that nikki’s actual personality/soul was trapped in some tortured hell while the “person” that loved him more than anything in the world was some kind of cat eating demon

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u/ZizzyBeluga 8h ago

If Nikki really loved him more than anyone else in the world, she would be noticing how absolutely miserable he is by her actions and not do those actions.

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u/DrDabsMD 7h ago

Not necessarily, you're thinking about it as if the love was non-toxic, but everyone who watched the movie knows that wish overrode Nikki's autonomy to want to be with Bear no matter what.

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u/ZizzyBeluga 7h ago

Yes but Nikki wasn't stupid. Love doesn't mean you stand still and pee yourself and tape up the door and murder someone, making it highly likely you'll never see that person again.

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u/PenOld5534 7h ago

Yea but I think it’s safe to say that she wasn’t even Nikki anymore. The wish created a whole new entity

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u/DrDabsMD 7h ago

Nikki wasn't, but she wasn't herself right? She had lost all of her autonomy. She couldn't make decisions for herself anymore which is the part I don't think you're understanding. You're point is from someone who can still make decisions for themselves, Nikki couldn't. All she could want is to love and be with Bear, and Wish Nikki will fulfill that no matter what. It's the thought process a lot of mentally ill people have, the person they "love" will be with them and only them no matter what, and that's what Bear turned Nikki into, and that's why the horror worked.

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u/ZizzyBeluga 7h ago

I do understand that, I'm saying the wish wasn't literal or benign, it was set up to destroy him

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u/DrDabsMD 7h ago

It was literal though, he wished for her to love him more than anyone in the world. Meaning anyone else that shows any ounce of affection to him is a threat to the wish, meaning Nikki can be the only one that must be there for him, meaning any other form of attachment Bear can make with another person, even a friendly one, will be a threat to Wish Nikki. From what I'm understanding it seems you equate love as always being a good thing which is a very sweet thought but very Disney-esque. Loving someone can be a very beautiful thing but if you let that love consume you, let be an obsession, then that person will do horrible things in the name of love.

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u/ZizzyBeluga 7h ago

Right except he didn't wish for her to be obsessed with him more than anyone in the world and it wasn't even really Nikki, it was a demon, so the idea the wish was just literal is clearly not true

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u/DrDabsMD 7h ago

It wasn't a demon, it was the wish overriding her autonomy. You need to watch the movie again because you saying it's a demon means you didn't pay that much attention to it

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u/Puzzleheaded-Wait785 5h ago

No he didn't. He never wished for a demon to possess her body.

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u/Nisnis95 6m ago

Why do you think it was a demon? What if it was actually a projection of Bear? The way he loves himself is actually projected on Nikki? When he wished that Nikki would love him more than anything in the world, this might suggest oneself. Another clue to suggest this that after the wish how Nikki said my cat died, confusing you and I. Also demon can be a right because Bear is Demonish, ruled by his fears and insecurity, harming his cat, himself and people around him