Written and directed by Curry Barker
Starring Cooper Tomlinson and Inde Navarette
Distributed by Focus Features (United States)
Running time: 109 minutes
Rated R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, sexual content, pervasive language, and brief graphic nudity.

Obsession (2025) follows Bear Bailey (Michael Johnston), an introverted, hopeless romantic who faces severe anxiety trying to confess his love to his good friend, Nikki Freeman (Inde Navarette).

In the opening shots, the cold palette and absence of characters close to Bear emphasize his unhappiness in his isolation. Characters in the background are blurry but still perceptible, suggesting that human connection is constantly in the back of Bear’s mind but always out of reach. This loneliness is underscored when his cat, Sandy, dies; she had been the only other occupant of the one-bedroom home he inherited from his grandmother.

His infatuation with Nikki seems sweet on the surface. But during his speech to his best friend, Ian (Cooper Tomlinson), in which he practices what he will say to her as he confesses his feelings, it’s clear that he loves what Nikki provides for him rather than Nikki herself.

Pretending to talk to Nikki, he says, “You were the only person who was nice to me when I moved here.” This suggests that Bear has experienced social ostracization and exclusion before, and this line explains in part his intense nervousness and anxiety about talking to Nikki, who is supposed to be his friend. It also suggests that Bear views himself as an outsider. Instead of this being a singular experience that he has grown or learned from, it is now a facet of his personality, and he views Nikki’s acceptance of him as an outsider as a reason to believe that they could be happy together romantically.

After a phone call with Nikki during which she complains about losing her crystal necklace, he goes to a crystal shop to buy her another. This will be his in; by replacing something she cherished, he will be able to say the thing he cannot with words—that he loves and cares for her.

But when he gets to the crystal shop, he is instead enchanted by a small children’s toy called the One Wish Willow, which grants the user one wish if he breaks the stick in half. It is unclear why Bear decides to pick this toy over the necklace. It has no significance for Nikki other than that it would be a present from her friend Bear. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the intimacy of replacing a necklace was too explicit a confession for Bear, so he went for a less obvious option in case Nikki said no. This choice reveals something about Bear’s character: He abandons his logic for his emotion. His fear of rejection is understandable, but he makes an incomprehensible choice. Giving Nikki the necklace would surely communicate his feelings better than giving her the One Wish Willow, which says absolutely nothing on its face. He has more of a chance of being rejected by giving her the One Wish Willow because it is not personal to Nikki and therefore does not convey the message that he understands her and cares for her.

This abandonment of logic for the sake of emotional security is a consistent feature of this story, which not only diverts Bear away from a path of clarity and reason but is also the driving mechanism through which Nikki is subjected to torture.

After several excruciating tries to draw Nikki away from their friends for a personal talk at trivia night, Bear settles for driving her home. In the car, their conversation suggests closeness but is stilted by silences that should be filled with Bear’s confessions. Instead, he keeps quiet, pushing himself to talk but always doing so to change the topic, much to his own frustration.

After Nikki eventually gets out of the car and walks toward her door, Bear realizes that he forgot to give her the One Wish Willow. Knowing that even if he had, he wouldn’t have said what he really feels, he instead breaks the stick and says the words to himself, “I wish Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone else in the world.”

What follows is completely unexpected. The wish has a horrific effect on Nikki’s life. Her body is taken over by an extremely violent and obsessive entity. She lies that her dad has cancer to invoke sympathy from Bear, so he stays with her all the time. She digs up his dead cat and makes a shrine to her on Bear’s kitchen floor to show her devotion to him. She brutally kills her best friend, with whom she suspects Bear is having an affair, by smashing her face into her steering wheel. The real Nikki is buried in her own body, and we see fleeting glimpses of her when she suddenly recoils from Bear’s touch, screaming in agony and disorientation.

As audience members, we must admit that Bear had no way to know that his wish would cause this. For the first quarter of the film, he suspects that his wish has worked, but he resists accepting that because of the impossibility. But we get periodic glimpses that the real Nikki is trapped inside her own mind—and Bear sees them. Even if he could not accept that his wish had worked, Nikki’s actions are in line with someone experiencing a psychotic break. After digging up the cat, Nikki makes Bear lunch for work. When he bites into the strange, discolored meat, he realizes that she has cut up his cat and fed it to him. A picture of the two of them is taped to the inside of the lunchbox lid; Bear is circled with the words “you,” and Nikki is circled with the words “not me.” So why does he spend so much of the film trying to find ways to contain this new Nikki so they could have the relationship he has always dreamed of?

We can sympathize with Bear for rejecting a conclusion that seems inconceivable. His entire worldview must change to accept that Nikki’s body has been hijacked due to his wish. Previously, he believed that he lived in a world governed by reason, but he now knows that he lives in a world where dark magic can affect the lives of innocent, unassuming citizens. This is also hard to accept because it means that Nikki is powerless to stop it. Bear has forced Nikki into a state of waking torture in which she has become a prisoner inside her own body with absolutely no hope of breaking out.

In a state of intense bewilderment, Bear goes back to the crystal shop for answers, where he is told, rather candidly, that the only way to free Nikki from this agony is to kill himself. If he dies, the wish will die with him, and Nikki will be free; otherwise, Nikki will live like this forever, in an endless state of powerless servitude.

The film has presented us with an unwinnable ultimatum, which can reasonably evoke sympathy from the audience. Only one solution exists, which requires the biggest loss any human being can suffer. However, it is made clear through the consistent presentations of Nikki’s agony that this is a necessary action. In the final scenes, as Bear debates whether to overdose on pills to end his torment, the film is faster paced, manic, evoking the feeling that Bear is running out of time before something even worse happens, and we cannot help but hope for his death to prevent it. His life taken to save Nikki’s is not a sacrifice, because a life in which he has wreaked such havoc on an undeserving Nikki is not a life worth living. Forcing someone into servitude is a catastrophic violation of individual rights, and morally it must be met with forfeiture of the criminal’s own rights, even if the full effects were unintended. What removes or diminishes our sympathy for Bear is how long it takes him to recognize the fact that he has done something wrong and therefore, should be punished. Even if Bear didn’t know what his wish would entail when he first made it, his decision to accept someone else’s enslavement as long as it serves his desires is evil.

One of the most basic virtues we can exercise is choosing to think rationally and to evaluate the world around us. Therefore, wilfully inducing inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment is a source of evil. Bear spends much of the film ignoring that which he knows is true: Nikki is behaving significantly out of character in a way that puts her life and the lives of others in danger. He lies to his friends and himself, trying to convince them that Nikki is fine, that they love each other so she seems different. When no one believes him, he regurgitates her lie about her dad dying to explain her drastic change, even though he knows it is untrue and makes no sense considering their distant relationship. He isolates her further by telling Ian that nothing is wrong with her, even when Ian identifies her behavior as beyond abnormal and suggests that Bear might be taking advantage of her in her time of crisis.

In the dead of night, the real Nikki manages to break through to talk to Bear, saying that the entity inside of her is sleeping. She begs Bear to kill her, emphasizing that this experience is agonizing and terrifying. Instead of empathizing with her and recognizing his own mistakes, he demands to know what’s so bad about being with him that she would rather be dead. She tries to reply that she has never been with him, but he cuts her off by storming out of the room.

Although Bear, to some degree, is a victim of circumstance, his callousness and complete disregard for Nikki’s experience is truly evil. He had no way to know that his wish would induce such a horrific experience for everyone involved. But when he identified his wish as directly responsible, he should have taken the necessary steps to remedy it. He should not have continued to puppet her around, treating her more like an object than a person. One of the most horrifying and graphic scenes is when he has sex with her; the camera zooms in on her blank expression, absent and disassociated from her own body, as Nikki makes placid sounds of enjoyment.

Even if it is unintended, subjecting someone to involuntary servitude is one of the most heinous acts a person can commit, and there is properly a legal requirement to take away some of the criminal’s own rights in response. But Bear being arrested and thrown in prison would not have freed Nikki. The only way Bear could free Nikki was to take his own life or to take hers. But taking hers would have been immoral to the highest degree because she did nothing wrong.

We can feel sympathy for Bear that he is left without options, but logic and reality demand recognition. His decision to ignore Nikki’s predicament is evil; by doing so, Bear willingly ignores his ability to think by pretending he doesn’t understand the circumstances, which only serves to prolong Nikki’s servitude to him.

Bear’s death is a catharsis for the audience. The audience and Bear are the only ones who know that Nikki is trapped inside of her own body because of the wish. We see Nikki, charismatic and confident before Bear subjects her to this torture. Then we see her in the final scene, screaming yet paralyzed by shock, and we know Bear had to die—anything else would not have delivered the retribution Nikki deserved. Obsession horrifically shows the evils of this action, dealt with justly through the ending.

We can feel sorry for Bear that he had to take his own life while recognizing it is the only thing a sane person could do—because he’d doomed Nikki to a fate worse than death.

We are pleased to announce that “Stranger Danger: How Bart Ehrman’s Latest Unmasks the History of Altruism,” Ben Bayer’s review of Bart Ehrman’s Love Thy Stranger, has been published as the cover story of the October/November 2026 issue of Free Inquiry. You can read the opening paragraph below and the full essay at Free Inquiry.

Anyone today who cites the Bible to make moral objections to homosexuality or premarital sex becomes an easy target for a certain critical question: Why follow those passages but not the Old Testament rules permitting the sale of one’s children into slavery and condemning the act of touching pigskin?

Read the full article at Free Inquiry.

CANA — New research has suggested that the famous miracle of the water turned into wine at the wedding at Cana may have been undone soon thereafter, as Jesus witnessed guests doing the Electric Slide.

GLOUCESTERSHIRE — A group of Muslim men released by authorities earlier this week were back in custody today after police received reports that the men had shared a meme online.

I can’t afford a Rolex, but I don’t accuse the watchmaker of robbing me. If I wince at a bill in a fancy restaurant, I don’t sue the owner. Similarly, if a Taylor Swift ticket is too expensive, I close the Ticketmaster tab and move on, looking for entertainment I can afford. I don’t fume at the concert organizer.

I’m shocked how many don’t share my attitude and instead demand live entertainment on a silver platter at a discount price — or else.

Many concert-goers feel “robbed” by high ticket prices and fees. They rejoiced when a Manhattan jury found Live Nation Entertainment (LNE) and its subsidiary Ticketmaster liable for monopolization under federal antitrust law (the “or else”).1 Finally, they imagine, the “greedy” corporation that “skins” music fans will get what it deserves and the fantasy of premium seats at top-tier live music tours at bar-band prices will become reality.

A fantasy, because Live Nation’s dominance did not cause prices to rise.

Especially after Covid, demand for live shows has exploded.2 An increasingly prosperous worldwide audience is willing to pay for a night out. But top-tier artists don’t grow on trees. No one has a monopoly on Bad Bunny’s performances like Bad Bunny himself. Where fans outnumber seats, prices rise.

Ticket prices also likely rose to replace the falling recorded-music revenue. Today, we stream all music for a small monthly price, but pay more to attend concerts that artists rely on. Artists and their teams set the face value of the ticket, and retain 80 to 90 percent of the final ticket price (a figure no one disputes). Concert prices went up because tours have to fund careers, not because LNE runs the industry.3

In this new music economy, Live Nation learned to put as many fans in front of as many artists as the calendar and logistics allow. Reliably managing venues, ticketing, routing, staging, security, and the rest of a modern tour’s machinery is a Herculean feat. LNE also carries the risk of the tour, often paying artists an upfront guarantee, absorbing the loss if the tour underperforms, and carrying insurance to recover costs in the event of cancellation. It’s no scandal that a firm like this ends up with more business. It is what competence looks like.

Does Ticketmaster “gouge” concertgoers? The resale market suggests otherwise. If Ticketmaster charged outrageous prices, scalpers couldn’t keep earning a windfall. Highly profitable resale is evidence that, if anything, Ticketmaster is undercharging.

What sparked popular outrage against LNE is more evidence that prices were not “too high.” In 2022, Ticketmaster buckled under the enormous opening-day demand for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. Had prices been unaffordable to many, an onslaught of fans and scalpers wouldn’t have crashed the system the moment tickets dropped.4

What about steep fees for premium seats and parking, which even some Live Nation employees privately said were “robbing them blind baby”?5 Such language helped plaintiffs inflame the jury. But it proves only that a few employees — like many of LNE’s critics who object to ticket prices — tragically misunderstand the value of premium services to fans. It’s not robbery; it’s high-value trade.

What about Live Nation’s exclusive long-term contracts with major concert venues, or their allegedly “monopolistic” business model?6 The scary “flywheel” is actually the strategy that keeps prices from rising further (though they probably should). Concert staging, logistics, advertising, and accounting earns little money, but feeds volume into highly profitable ticketing (Ticketmaster) and sponsorships (brand placement and vendors). Without exclusive contracts ensuring that the staging and promotion business is supported by ticketing and ad revenue, the business might not be sustainable. If LNE were broken up, prices at separated concert promotion venture would likely have to rise, or artists’ share would have to fall.

In short, Live Nation built a good business in a complex and changing economic reality. Antitrust prosecutors are trying to scapegoat them for high prices.

State plaintiffs had to display mental gymnastics to concoct “evidence” against LNE. The best they could muster was to compare LNE’s average price to that of AXS, the closest rival. But AXS itself acknowledged its services were not comparable in value to LNE’s.7 Even so, the price gap was a mere $1.72. Using this cooked-up pocket change, the government is hounding a company that brings you the shows you value. As LNE is asking in its latest motions, the judge should toss the groundless verdict.8

What to do about rising concert prices? The answer is plain: don’t buy the ticket.9 Whenever I skip a show I find too expensive, I remember that no one has a right to luxury entertainment and turn to my essentially free library of unlimited music in my pocket. Neither fans who pay for a night out nor those who cannot afford to are victims.

In 1964, a young University of Michigan anthropologist went to live with a tribe untouched by modernity.

What he found destroyed the noble savage myth.

Then his own discipline spent the next four decades trying to destroy him for publishing it.

The field was long dominated by a myth.

Postwar anthropology, inspired by Rousseau and Marx, held that "savages" were peaceful and cooperative. Violence, hierarchy, and inequality were supposed to be diseases of civilisation, invented by property, colonisation, and markets. Abolish those, and the natural harmony of man would supposedly return.

Then a kid from rural Michigan went to check.

In 1964, Napoleon Chagnon, one of twelve children from a poor family in Port Austin, traveled to the Venezuela–Brazil border. He went to live with the Yanomamö, roughly 20,000 people scattered across the Amazon rainforest, largely untouched by the state, by markets, or by modernity. 

He would return nearly thirty times over the next three decades. His 1968 book, Yanomamö: The Fierce People, sold nearly a million copies and was translated into fifteen languages.

But this is what he actually found: Raids between villages were routine. Infanticide was common. Women were regularly abducted and traded after violent conflict. Headmen, as a rule, were killers. Chagnon mapped Yanomamö genealogies using early computer methods, learned the language, and lived inside the villages for months at a stretch. The data was not hearsay.

A particular finding broke the field. In a 1988 paper in Science, Chagnon documented that the unokais, men who had killed in raids, had on average more wives and more surviving offspring than non-violent men of the same age. In a state of nature, violence was being reproductively selected for. The Rousseauian premise ran backwards.

If violence, hierarchy, and inequality were what civilisation produces, they should be rare where civilisation is absent. Chagnon found the opposite. Where the state, the market, and modern institutions had never arrived, up to 30% of adult male deaths were violent. The men who killed were the men whose lineages survived. In the modern United States that figure is under 1%. [In today's New Zealand, the figure is 0.3%.]

The reaction was immediate. Marshall Sahlins, one of Chagnon's former graduate teachers at Michigan, turned on him. Terence Turner and Leslie Sponsel circulated a warning to the American Anthropological Association (AAA) describing "an anthropological heart of darkness beyond the imagining of even a Joseph Conrad, though not, perhaps, a Joseph Mengele." Salesian missionaries in the region joined the coalition. What Chagnon had found could not be answered on its merits, so the man who found it became the target instead.

Then came the book that ended him. In 2000, journalist Patrick Tierney published Darkness in El Dorado. He accused Chagnon of triggering a measles epidemic through vaccine experimentation, arming rival factions to stage conflicts on film, cooking his data, and behaving as "a war criminal or even a genocidaire." The New Yorker ran Tierney's companion article the same month. Chagnon's career effectively ended before any serious investigation reached a verdict.

But every serious charge eventually collapsed. The vaccine complied with WHO protocols. The measles epidemic predated Chagnon's arrival. Venezuelan physicians, the Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Michigan, the American Society of Human Genetics, and the U.S. Department of Health each investigated. Each reached the same verdict: no crime, no cover-up, no fraud. Jane Hill, who chaired the AAA's own inquiry, wrote privately that Tierney's book was "a piece of sleaze, that's all there is to it." [Alice Dreger, a historian of medicine and science, concluded after a year's research that Tierney's claims were false and the Association was complicit and irresponsible in helping spread these falsehoods and not protecting "scholars from baseless and sensationalistic charges." The controversy is covered in the 2005 book Yanomami: The Fierce Controversy and What We Can Learn from It by anthropologist Robert Borofsky, and Dreger's 2015 book, Galileo's Middle Finger. Chagnon himself revisited the topic in his later book, 2013 Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes: the Yanomamo and the Anthropologists.]

The AAA task force issued its own report in 2002 anyway, condemning Chagnon for prioritising his research over the Yanomamö. Raymond Hames had already resigned from the panel mid-inquiry, and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, a National Academy of Sciences member, quit the AAA in protest. Three years later, the AAA membership voted to rescind the report. In 2012, Chagnon was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. The following year, Sahlins resigned from the Academy over it. 

The noble savage myth itself outlived the twentieth century's political movements. Today it powers the decolonial framework that dominates the humanities and much of political discourse. The claim is unchanged: violence, hierarchy, and inequality are artefacts of property, civilisation, and colonisation, and would vanish once those were abolished. Three decades of Chagnon's evidence showed the claim was wrong. The re-tribalisers ignored the evidence.

In the absence of the institutions the utopians wanted to destroy, human beings behaved more violently than within them. The discipline that could not answer his data answered his character instead. That is what an intellectual monoculture does when evidence contradicts its premises. It goes after whoever brought the evidence.