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Notes -
The creator of the film Obsession, Curry Barker, claims that the One Wish Willow is not a monkey's paw, but I feel like this doesn't make sense, or, if it is true, it undermines the point of the film.
Bear wishes for "Nikki to love [him] more than anyone in the fucking world." An aligned One Wish Willow should not have made her obsessive to the point of murder and cat-cooking. Even if you follow the logic that the real Nikki would never fall in love with him, so it has to create a Freaky Nikki persona who would, that also just isn't what he asked for.
Even if he was more in love with the idea of Nikki, than in her in her full personhood, Freaky Nikki is not Nikki, and not just in the minimal way that his wish should have implied.
I feel like Barker's statement implies that a more evil wish, like, "I wish for Nikki's personality to be completely erased and replaced with a robot persona that carries out my orders exactly as I intend them" would have had better results than Bear's comparatively less evil wish. But since the film is a classic "be careful what you wish for" horror movie, I find it easier to believe that the wish granter is actively malevolent in how it interprets any wish that impacts human agency, and even a wish like that will have a bad outcome somehow.
Like, is the take away really supposed to be that Bear simply should have waited to get a better sense of the limitations and proclivities of his wish-granting artifact, by watching other people use theirs, and then make his wish after running it by a lawyer? Surely not.
Barker doesn't strikes me as someone who very concerned with rigorous logical world building. He does seem to think a lot about producing an interesting and entertaining product. I don't think the movie is trying to make a point or even trying to explore any themes very deeply. I think the simplest explanation for the things he's said is that he doesn't want to be constrained in how the world works. Is it a monkey's paw? If he says yes that restricts in-world stories where the wish didn't have bad consequences. He's also said it's not a demon possession movie, but not really clarified beyond that. It's very clearly a monkey-paw-demon-possession-like movie, but there's no benefit in actually committing to this. I imagine coming from a sketch comedy background his instinct is to avoid boxing himself in, especially with an idea that turned out to be such a success.
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