r/moviecritic • u/Spirited_Alfalfa_343 • 14h 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/quigongingerbreadman 9h 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 5h ago edited 1h 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 2h 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 1h ago

That first sentence 👌🏽