The movie “Obsession” seems therapeutic for people struggling with unrequited love (spoilers for those who haven’t seen the movie)

It’s a great horror film on an aesthetic/execution level but I also thought it had an interesting theme for people struggling with limerence or unrequited love—that the very concept involves a kind of implicit violence against the person and is ultimately self-defeating.

In the movie, the main character Bear wishes for his crush, Nikki, to love him, and her personality is replaced by an obsessed and demonic alter ego, while her true self suffers from the loss of autonomy. I think this is meant as a morality tale to demonstrate that unrequited love isn’t necessarily so innocent, but is actually grotesque in a way.

How could this be so? It’s really just simple logic. If you love someone and desperately wish for them to love you back, you’re really wishing for them to be someone else. After all, if they were really the kind of person who would love you, they’d actually love you. So even if you got what you “wanted”—for them to love you—it’d ultimately be illusory, because the person loving you would be a different person from the one you were pining after to begin with. So while your pining might seem harmless, at its core you’re fantasizing for a lobotomized replacement of their personality with someone else.

The movie has all kinds of hideous violence and grotesque imagery that I think is meant to push us to reexamine this common aspect of human psychology, which most people probably regard as innocent and harmless. I think the shock value of the movie could actually be quite therapeutic for people suffering from limerence, forcing them to confront what it is they actually want (personified by the horrifying “freaky Nikki” persona) and hopefully choose a better path for themselves.

Have others seen the movie and did you get a similar message from it?