How Many Nikkis are in Obsession?

Obsession is a horror movie about a man (Bear) who wishes for his crush (Nikki) to fall in love with him. In classic horror movie fashion, he ends up getting more than he’d bargained for. This post is going to be chock-a-block full of spoilers, so if you don’t want to be spoiled, stop reading.

I’m not a movie critic, or even someone that’s particularly into movies, so this isn’t a movie review. Instead I want to think about the theory of personal identity that is implied by the movie. Theories of personal identity tell us what it takes for a person to persist over time, so that (for example) the person who woke up in your bed today is the same person who fell asleep in your bed last night. You fell asleep in your bed, then you woke up in that bed. You were the same person all along. You weren’t replaced by a doppelganger. That much seems obvious, but other cases aren’t so obvious. 

Case in point: consider the plot of Obsession. Bear wishes for Nikki to love him, snaps the One Wish Willow, and then something horrible happens. But what exactly is the horrible thing that happens? The answer depends on the answer to a question of personal identity: is pre-wish-Nikki the same person as post-wish-Nikki? 

If they are the same person, then Obsession is the story of a person — Nikki — who undergoes a radical change in psychology. The horrible effect of Bear’s wish is that it radically warps Nikki’s thoughts and feelings: she had no strong feelings for him, but as a result of the wish, she became obsessed with him. That’s horrible because it’s a gross violation of Nikki’s autonomy; it’s as if she’s been drugged. Call this the one-person interpretation.

On the other hand, if pre-wish Nikki and post-wish Nikki are not the same person, then Obsession is the story of a person — pre-wish Nikki — whose body is taken over by a distinct entity. The horrible effect of Bear’s wish is not that it warps Nikki’s psychology, but that it creates a new entity — post-wish Nikki — who then proceeds to take control of pre-wish Nikki’s body. That’s a different kind of gross violation of Nikki’s autonomy. It’s not like she’s been drugged; it’s more like she’s been trapped in a cell while someone else takes over her life. Call this the two-person interpretation.

What’s interesting to me is that Obsession seems to give indications that both interpretations are correct. (And, heads up, now’s the last chance to avoid highly-specific spoilers.)

One the one hand, Obsession seems to strongly indicate that pre-wish and post-wish-Nikki are not the same person. It seems to indicate that pre-wish Nikki’s body has been taken over by post-wish Nikki. 

One indication is that Nikki’s pre-wish personality resurfaces at various points. She stops acting like she’s in love with Bear. She even says that she’s not the same person as post-wish-Nikki. She shouts “It’s not me!” and she talks to Bear while she says that post-wish-Nikki is “sleeping”.

All that strongly indicates that pre-wish Nikki isn’t the same person as post-wish Nikki. But it’s not actually decisive. It’s logically consistent with the idea that Nikki is the same person all along, and is undergoing lots of radical changes in her psychology. When she says “it’s not me!”, she could simply be speaking imprecisely (very understandable, given the circumstances!). Or she could simply be mistaken about what is going on: she thinks that post-wish-Nikki is a separate entity, but really it’s her all along. She’s confused because she’s undergoing such sudden and disorienting changes in her thoughts and feelings. But it really is one person undergoing all these changes.

So, the resurfacing of Nikki’s original personality does not decisively rule out the one-person interpretation. But there is another source of evidence against the one-person interpretation. That more decisive evidence comes from the scene in which Bear tries to cancel the wish. Bear calls the hotline on the back of the box for the One Wish Willow. The customer service rep tells him that the wish cannot be canceled except by Bear’s death. Then the customer service rep asks Bear if he wants to talk to Nikki, at which point we hear screams on the other end of the line.

The implication seems obvious. Pre-wish Nikki is continuously screaming, trapped in her own personal hell. Post-wish-Nikki is not continuously screaming (though she certainly does do a fair bit of screaming). Therefore, pre-wish and post-wish Nikki are not the same person. 

That seems decisive, so why shouldn’t we conclude that the two-person interpretation must be correct? One very simple reason: if the two-person interpretation is correct, then Bear’s wish didn’t come true. Bear wished for Nikki to fall in love with him. When he made that wish, there was only one Nikki: pre-wish Nikki. He wished for her to fall in love with him. But if the two-person interpretation is correct, then that didn’t happen. Nikki — now pre-wish Nikki — was trapped in her own body, while some new entity — post-wish Nikki — fell madly in love with Bear.

This is a coherent interpretation of the movie, but I think it’s pretty unsatisfying. It really seems as though we’re supposed to think that Bear’s wish is a monkey paw situation: his wish was granted, but with an ironic twist. But on the two-person interpretation, the wish simply wasn’t granted. By way of comparison, suppose Bear wished for Nikki to fall in love with him, and then Sarah became murderously obsessed with him. That’s weird and bad, but it’s not a monkey’s paw situation. It’s not that his wish was granted, but with a twist. It simply wasn’t granted.

The tagline doesn't make much sense unless this really is a Monkey Paw situation!

So what is going on here? I’m not sure, but here are the three possible interpretations:

One Person - Bizarre Psychology: There’s only one Nikki all along. And, as indicated by the customer service scene, she is continuously screaming in agony. But all this screaming is “internal” — she’s screaming “inside her own head” — and she’s screaming internally while also feeling desperately, slavishly in love with Bear. She feels all this at once. She doesn’t alternate between agonized internal screaming and extreme affection. Nikki, as one person with one mind, feels all these feelings simultaneously. That’s so deeply weird, that I’m not really sure I can make sense of it. This interpretation also seems especially hard to reconcile with Nikki’s saying things like “it’s not me” and “I’ve never been with you”. For if this interpretation is correct, then when Nikki says these things, she herself — the person speaking — has very recently felt intense love and affection for Bear. That just doesn’t seem right.

Two Person - No Monkey’s Paw: Pre-wish-Nikki loses control of her body as a result of Bear’s wish; post-wish-Nikki takes over. Bear wished for pre-wish-Nikki to love him, but at no point does she love him, so Bear’s simply wish simply isn’t granted. On this interpretation, I was simply mistaken to think that this movie is following in the tradition of The Monkey’s Paw. It seems like the movie is telling us, “Be careful what you wish for!” But really, it isn’t. The story isn’t that supernatural forces granted Bear’s wish, but at terrible cost. The story is that supernatural forces punished Bear for making an immoral wish. They didn’t do so by granting his wish, but by making him think that his wish was granted, while also creating an evil spirit or demon that takes over his crush’s body and torments him. I don’t know... it’s just not all that satisfying, is it?

Two Person - True Wish: This is the interpretation I think I like the best so far. I’ve been assuming that, if the One Wish Willow works, then it does so by granting your wish as stated. But maybe that’s not how it works. Maybe it looks into your heart and gives you what you really want, even if it’s not exactly what you said.

Over the course of the movie, Bear shows himself to be shockingly indifferent to Nikki’s internal life. Even before his wish, when Nikki expresses that she wants to quit her job, he isn’t supportive. All he can think about is how it affects him: he won’t be able to see her as often. After the wish, when he sees that something is clearly wrong with the person he (rightly or wrongly) believes to be Nikki, his first priority is not to help her, but to preserve their relationship. He persists in trying to get her “back to normal”, when he long since should have been trying to find her professional help. And even when Nikki’s original personality resurfaces, and she begs him to kill her, Bear’s first reaction is to take offense that she doesn’t want to be with him. Bear is very selfish.

So maybe what we should say is that, in his heart, Bear never cared about Nikki as a person. He had a certain picture in his head of what it would be like to be with Nikki. And that picture is what the One Wish Willow latched onto. He got someone who looks like Nikki, and who feels extreme love for Bear. Since Bear never really cared about Nikki as a person, his wish comes true without Nikki loving him. 

This interpretation might also help to explain why post-wish Nikki is so strange and unstable. When Bear thought about a relationship with Nikki, he didn’t have a realistic idea of what she would be like. He (presumably) only thought of how much she would love him, and how they would go on cute dates, etc. As a result, post-wish Nikki is stable only so long as she and Bear are going on dates and otherwise acting like they’re in love. When she’s forced “off script”, she falls apart. There’s nothing in her psychology — as created by Bear’s wish — that equips her to deal with anything but being in love with Bear.

So, this is my preferred interpretation of what’s going on. But who knows! Anyway, it’s interesting to think about, and I’ve written about 1600 words about it while waiting for my laundry to get done, so something about the movie must have stuck with me.