{"id":1229,"date":"2026-05-28T14:37:50","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T13:37:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pomegranatemag.co.uk\/?p=1229"},"modified":"2026-05-28T15:42:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T14:42:58","slug":"the-scariest-part-of-obsession-2025-the-nice-guy-trope-and-friend-zone-purgatory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pomegranatemag.co.uk\/?p=1229","title":{"rendered":"The Scariest Part of Obsession (2025): The Nice Guy trope and Friend Zone Purgatory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Trigger warning: Mentions of SA<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ro Wallace shares their hot takes on the movie no one can stop talking about, Obsession, <\/em>and why the Nice Guy trope might be the scariest part about it. Spoilers ahead!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There might not be anything I despise more in cinema than the Nice Guy trope. You know the type, the mopey, self-pitying male who wallows in his own pit of insecurity, convinced that simply not being a villain means he deserves the girl. So you can imagine how my body recoiled when the central character, Bear, played by Michael Johnston, came onto screen in the opening scene of Curry Barker\u2019s debut studio feature, Obsession.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite my cringe at Bear\u2019s character, I can not praise enough how Curry Barker executed the lived nightmare of many women: your male friend confessing his feelings to you, no matter how many times you made it clear you saw him as a little brother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features \/ \u00a9 2026 FOCUS FEATURES LLC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Obsession <\/em>isn\u2019t really a horror film about monsters or jump scares. It\u2019s about a type of man that most women have already met, in fact, they\u2019re friends with them and believe the friend zone to be more of a state of purgatory, somewhere they can eventually move out of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the film, we are introduced to Bear through his longstanding crush on his friend Nikki, played by Inde Navarrette, who can only be described as an \u2018It Girl\u2019, she\u2019s beautiful, sharp, and sarcastic, and seems like the type to be completely unbothered by the opinion of men who can\u2019t handle that. She has never given Bear any romantic signal, despite this, he continues to nurse and feed his feelings, desperately scrolling through her instagram at night and waiting for the right opportunity to confess his love for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the film\u2019s central, supernatural turning point, Bear makes a wish on a One Wish Willow, a gift he was going to give Nikki before he chickened out of confessing his feelings, he wishes she would love him \u201cmore than anyone in the f*cking world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features \/ \u00a9 2026 FOCUS FEATURES LLC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In all fairness to Bear, he was completely unaware that his wish would even work in the slightest, let alone that it would result in Nikki\u2019s personality being taken over by a demonic version of herself that is pathologically obsessed with him, while the real <\/em>Nikki is being tortured, literally trapped in Hell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than confessing how he feels, or respecting the friendship for what it is, he violates her, taking advantage of the Nikki who will comply with the fantasy he\u2019s created in his head. And in one of the film\u2019s most distressing moments, the real <\/em>Nikki surfaces through the haze, lucid enough to beg him to end her suffering and kill her, his response is not guilt or horror, it\u2019s a wounded ego: \u201cWhat\u2019s so bad about being with me?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This line is one of the film\u2019s most poignant indicators into the kind of person Bear really<\/em> is and solidifies the film\u2019s intention of Bear as the \u2018villain\u2019 and Nikki as the \u2018victim\u2019, even if she goes on a murderous rampage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Inde
Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features \/ \u00a9 2026 FOCUS FEATURES LLC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Despite knowing that Nikki is not really<\/em> Nikki and that she never chose to be with him, he still refuses to recognise the girl he has trapped in her own body. He is selfish enough to let Nikki, supposedly someone he cared about, suffer unimaginable torture, if it means he can have what he wants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is easier for Bear, in this scene, to believe that her plea for death is because there is something \u2018bad\u2019 about being with him specifically; rather than acknowledge for a moment that he has stripped her of any autonomy, like how it would never cross his mind that when they\u2019ve been having sex, he has been raping her, as that would make him a bad person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features \/ \u00a9 2026 FOCUS FEATURES LLC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What makes Obsession <\/em>so uncomfortable, and so necessary, is that it\u2019s not dealing in the kind of violence that\u2019s easy to condemn like the obvious physical or sexual assault that we are constantly subjected to watch as entertainment. Bear is not lurking in the shadows, he\u2019s not waiting for his chance to brutally assault a woman, he\u2019s the guy who your mum thinks is such a sweetheart. His violence is the type that doesn\u2019t see women as people. He never once considered Nikki a full person with interiority and preferences that might conflict with his own, she was always, to him, a romantic prospect who hadn\u2019t come around yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obsession <\/em>made me reflect on the times I\u2019ve been handed the \u201cnot all men\u201d speech as a defense for generalising men when in relation to harming women. But if not all, then how should we determine the good ones from the bad, on the merit of how nice they are? Obsession <\/em>is here to tell us: Good luck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is interesting to consider how this film may land with the young men who recognise themselves in Bear, my hope is that they will start to confront their own insecurities so they can maintain meaningful relationships with those they care about. I believe this is the film\u2019s intention too. And for the female audiences, we can all agree that Curry Barker is invited to the hangout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obsession isn\u2019t really a horror film about monsters or jump scares. It\u2019s about a type of man that most women have already met, in fact, they\u2019re friends with them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":288,"featured_media":1237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,153,5],"tags":[41,187,184,186,185,29],"class_list":["post-1229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-culture-new-stories","category-pillar-2","tag-culture","tag-film","tag-horror","tag-movies","tag-obsession","tag-pomegranate"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Scariest Part of Obsession (2025): The Nice Guy trope and Friend Zone Purgatory - Pomegranate<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Pomegranate's Ro Wallace shares their hot takes on the movie no one can stop talking about, Obsession, and why the Nice Guy trope might be the scariest part about it.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pomegranatemag.co.uk\/?p=1229\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Scariest Part of Obsession (2025): The Nice Guy trope and Friend Zone Purgatory - 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