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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’s commentary is just post hoc rationalization to appease feminist seethe following the movie.
From a lipstick feminist perspective, the takeaway is that Bear—as a low status male—had no right to wish for anything, much less be deserved of having a wish of his come true (even if accidental and mangled).
Bear should have read the One Wish Willow’s mind and known what would have happened. Failing that and after making the wish, he should have immediately recognized his wrongdoing and should have been hyperagentic and competent enough to just Figure It Out and undo whatever the One Wish Willow did. No, instead the clueless “Nice Guy” chose to rape Nikki with the One Wish Willow’s help.
Just have the emotional intelligence to recognize when a supernatural, possibly omnipotent force is up to no good and Do the Bear Minimum in defeating it to go back to accepting your fate as a low status male. Ugh, it’s that easy—why can’t men just get it? The bar is on the floor. This is why women choose the animal bear.
The wish itself is just window-dressing.
James Bond or Jason Bourne are an idealized, fantasized version of real spies/special forces soldiers. They are a convenient vehicle to show action scenes and maybe share some ideas about terrorism, conspiracies, state secrets, geopolitical issues etc.
In the same manner, having a man 'cause' a woman to be crazy allows to show what a crazy woman looks like, and give some words of caution about it.
Notice how in this real life setting you have a woman having multiple meltdowns in public and nobody really reacts whatsoever? Notice how the friend group is at best cursorily inquiring if the man is taking advantage of the crazy woman?
The message of the movie is possibly that a crazy woman will ruin your life, perhaps drive you to suicide and nobody will save you. The director is pretty clever for finding something that resonates with viewers and getting away with it.
And by Barker's own admission, the first draft of the screenplay was just a movie about a toxic abusive relationship with no supernatural elements at all. It was only a chance viewing of a Simpsons episode that inspired him to include the "monkey's paw" element.
I doubt Barker was consciously thinking "if I make a movie about a woman with borderline personality disorder who's the villain, people will call me a misogynist, so I'd better come up with some pretext by which a male character is really to blame for her villainy". It was probably more of a subconscious thing, where the "monkey's paw" plot device felt "safer" for reasons he likely couldn't put into words.
I didn't know that, makes me like the guy even more.
Citation in case anyone doubts me:
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