Haunted by the Past, Trapped in the Present: The Realism of "Obsession"

 When looking at how the movie Obsession portrays obsessive love, the answer depends entirely on which film you are watching. Two prominent movies share this title—the 1976 neo-noir psychological thriller directed by Brian De Palma, and the 2025 supernatural horror film directed by Curry Barker.

Both films use obsession as a primary engine for their plots, but they approach the psychological realism of "obsessive love" from vastly different angles.

1. The 2025 Horror Film (Obsession)

In Curry Barker’s supernatural horror film, a man named Bear uses a mystical artifact to force his crush, Nikki, to fall in love with him. What follows is a pitch-black, terrifyingly heightened exaggeration of anxious attachment and codependency.

Where it Accurately Reflects Reality

• Loss of Identity: As the "love spell" takes hold, Nikki’s actual personality completely dissolves. In severe cases of real-world psychological obsession, the obsessed individual completely subordinates their own hobbies, values, and sense of self to focus entirely on the object of their affection.

• The "Trap" of Hyper-Fixation: Nikki blocks the door when Bear tries to go to work and screams if he turns away from her in bed. While real-world stalkers or obsessives might not have supernatural backing, this rigid, claustrophobic demand for constant proximity and attention accurately mirrors severe borderline personality traits or erotomania (the delusional belief that someone is deeply in love with you).

• The Catalyst of Guilt: Bear’s willingness to tolerate her toxic behavior because "the sex is great" or because he got what he wanted captures a very human reality: people often stay in highly dangerous, codependent cycles out of a mixture of guilt, self-interest, and denial.

Where it Fails Psychologically (The Hyperbole)

• The Speed and Violence: Because it operates as a horror movie (often compared to Smile or Talk to Me), Nikki’s obsession escalates rapidly into severe, unprovoked physical violence and murder. In reality, while obsessive love can lead to stalking and intimate partner violence, it is rarely a sudden, supernatural switch into a "possessed" state of homicidal mania.

2. The 1976 Classic Thriller (Obsession)

Directed by Brian De Palma and written by Paul Schrader, this film is a direct, heavily romanticized homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. It follows Michael, a man haunted by the kidnapping and death of his wife, who meets a carbon-copy doppelgänger decades later and becomes consumed by her.

Where it Accurately Reflects Reality

• Grief-Induced Fixation: Psychologically, Michael is suffering from severe, unresolved trauma and complex grief. His obsession with the new woman (Sandra) isn’t actually about her—it is about using her as a tool for expiation (atonement). He wants a "do-over" to fix the mistake that killed his wife. This accurately reflects how people projection-map their past trauma onto new romantic partners.

• Shared Delusion (Folies à Deux): Sandra begins replicating the dead wife’s clothes and habits, altering herself to fit Michael's delusion. In highly toxic, obsessive relationships, a partner will sometimes completely warp themselves to fulfill the unhealthy emotional demands of the dominant partner.

Where it Fails Psychologically (The Melodrama)

• The "Gothic Novel" Tone: The film operates on the plane of an operatic melodrama rather than clinical psychology. Legendary critic Roger Ebert noted that the film is completely implausible on a logical level, utilizing slow-motion reunions, swirling cameras, and booming orchestral scores to mask a plot that relies heavily on a bizarre, borderline-incestuous twist. Michael’s obsession lacks the gritty, erratic, and pathetic reality of actual obsession—it is treated instead as a grand, tragic romance.

The Takeaway: Neither film works as a clinical case study. The 1976 film treats obsessive love as an elegant, tragic symptom of grief and ghost-hunting, while the 2025 film treats it as a visceral, claustrophobic nightmare of extreme toxic attachment.

Which of these two versions of the film were you thinking of? If it's the newer horror version, we can dive deeper into how it subverts traditional rom-com tropes.