Obsession was never about incels

Overview

The speaker reviews Karak Barker’s horror film Obsession, framed around a central question: can you ever truly know if someone loves you? They use the movie to analyze both its philosophy and the online “incel” controversy around it.

Core premise and why it’s disturbing

• The film’s horror isn’t built from typical twists or supernatural jump scares. Instead, it follows the logical consequences of a wish that grants exactly what the protagonist thinks he wants.
• The movie centers on a monkey-paw scenario:
  • A man wishes that someone love him.
  • He gets that outcome.
  • But then he realizes he still cannot know whether the love is “real” in the moral/spiritual sense the wish undermines.

The central psychological/philosophical argument: insecurity about love

The speaker argues that the film explores:

• Epistemic insecurity: uncertainty about whether feelings are reciprocated or genuine.
• “Love” and “choosing” as metaphysical problems:
  • Can love be guaranteed by will, evidence, or coercion?

The “proof” problem and why evidence fails

Bear’s behavior is described as building a court-case-like argument from “evidence” (gestures, conversations, signs of affection) to force a conclusion: Nikki must love him.

The key complication is that the wish makes Nikki’s devotion inevitable. As a result:

• Bear’s “evidence” becomes less trustworthy the more it “proves” her affection.
• The speaker connects this to existential themes (especially Jean-Paul Sartre) about the contradiction between:
  • wanting love that is freely given, and
  • wanting it to be guaranteed/certain like a possession.

Sartre and “freedom” under the wish

The film is used to argue that Bear wants more than love—he wants love under conditions that eliminate uncertainty.

• When Bear tries to undo the situation (e.g., contacting “customer service”), he wants to keep the love but avoid the harmful consequences.
• The “service” refuses meaningful cancellation or adjustment.

The existential sting is that once Bear wants out, the exit isn’t available—raising the question of whether Bear was ever truly free.

The horror’s real victim: Nikki, and the “certainty trap”

A major claim is that online debate often sidelines Nikki’s suffering, because the movie is heavily filtered through Bear’s perspective.

The speaker counters that Nikki’s ordeal is central to the horror:

• Bear’s uncertainty tortures him.
• Nikki’s certainty tortures her: she knows her feelings are trapped/compromised and cannot be heard or believed.

Key lines and their meaning

The speaker highlights:

• Nikki begging not to wake her and pleading to be killed (her voice/identity being overridden).
• Bear’s “What’s so bad about being with me?” as an ego/entitlement logic distilled into a question.
• Nikki’s devastating reversal: “I’ve never been with you, Bear.”

The speaker interprets this as showing that Bear’s “relationship” is largely a fantasy enforced by the wish, rather than a shared reality.

Love causation vs. coercion (real love needs consent over time)

The speaker argues that simply having a cause for love doesn’t automatically make it fake. What matters morally is coercion:

• Real love must involve the other person’s capacity to reflect, refuse, revise, leave, and choose again.
• Nikki’s “love” fails this test because the wish denies her that freedom—even if emotions appear present.

The incel controversy: acknowledged, but rejected as the film’s main point

The speaker seriously considers the popular “incel monkey-paw” framing, citing outlets like Fangoria and actor commentary about Bear as a new kind of villain.

They concede the film includes elements associated with incel/nice-guy stereotypes, such as:

• entitlement,
• self-pity,
• wounded ego,
• and treating devotion as justification.

However, they argue this reading is incomplete because it:

• doesn’t explain why Bear remains insecure even after “getting the girl,”
• ignores Nikki’s side of the nightmare (her inability to be believed),
• reduces the film’s stronger themes (unknowability of love and the ethics of attention) into a comforting “it’s just bad internet guys” box.

They further claim the label allows audiences to avoid responsibility for recognizing similar vulnerabilities in themselves.

Ending lesson: unknowability remains even with more evidence

The film’s bleak conclusion is that you can’t have final certainty about another person’s inner life—only partial knowledge that grows over time but never fully eliminates doubt.

The speaker contrasts:

• certainty-seeking love, with
• Iris Murdoch’s view: love is the difficult realization that other people are real, not characters constructed from your ego’s narrative.

The practical antidote: attention

The speaker offers attention as an antidote:

• slow, generous, non-instrumental noticing of the other person as they are,
• rather than as a character in your self-story.

They connect this to a haunting phone-call line: “just because you chose this for her doesn’t make it less real.” The final argument is that Bear’s tragedy comes from not paying attention to Nikki’s real separateness.

Presenters/Contributors

• Kar(l) Barker / Kari Barka / Curry Barker (director of Obsession, as named in the subtitles)
• Jean-Paul Sartre (philosopher referenced)
• Iris Murdoch (philosopher referenced)
• Plato (referenced)
• Brian Herb and Julian Savilecu (authors referenced; Love Drugs)
• Simone Weil (referenced via force/violence and attention)
• Indie Navaret and cast (credited by the speaker, as mentioned)
• The speaker (host/presenter of Philosophical Film Club; not named in the subtitles)