A little over halfway through the movie Obsession (directed by Curry Barker), Nikki (Inde Navarrette) starts acting strangely at a party. When she is separated from her new boyfriend Bear (Michael Johnston), she pouts and whines. When Bear draws a “dare” in the game the group is playing that tells him he must kiss the person on his left, her face contorts to an exaggerated frown and she silently crosses the room, moves the chair of the person on Bear’s left, and plants herself there instead. Creeped out by this behavior, someone jokes, “What kind of spell did you put on her, Bear?” and everyone laughs nervously—except Nikki, who laughs manically and for far too long.
We know, and Bear knows too, that he did put a spell on Nikki. High school friends now in their mid-twenties, they are colleagues at a struggling music store. Bear has long nurtured a crush on Nikki but can’t bring himself to ask her if she returns the feelings. Driven to despair by his own cowardice, he uses a One Wish Willow—a kitschy gag gift he bought at a New Age store—to wish that Nikki “loved me more than anyone else in the world.” You know what they say about being careful what you wish for.
At first the magic is relatively subtle, and Bear is thrilled to get the girl. Nikki doesn’t just launch herself at him like a marionette whose strings are being pulled. She woos him, cautiously at first and then intensely, trying to convince him that she has been carrying the torch for him as well. Despite some very concerning moves on their first few dates, Bear keeps believing (hoping?) that her love is real. Even when he begins to suspect the One Wish Willow is involved, he wants to believe the wish merely opened a floodgate of affection that was already there.
