Fortnite, the gaping maw devouring pop culture as we know it so it can feed it into an AI-driven pipeline that cannot resist another skin to sell to its millions of players, is finally bringing Nikki, the titular obsessor, to its battle royale so she can snipe Sabrina Carpenter and a robot who looks like Sonic the Hedgehog and then dance on their corpses. Almost like she’s a puppet with no control over her body.
Uhh obsession does tell that story. Bar for bar.
spoiler
Did you miss the bedroom scene? It’s like the most iconic scene of the movie, literally a dark room with her screaming, and the one time we undeniably hear from the trapped Nikki. But even starting from the car scene it’s clear she’s in there suffering.
100% not trying to dog on you, it’s just that what you described is the very thing I loved the movie for.
Honestly I’m starting to think the film was designed to have a very clear feminist reading yet pull very different interpretations at the same time. It’s master class. They shoulda called it Subversion.
That’s definitely not a major focus though. I felt it more as a sick reveal and confirmation (there are a couple times up to that point where she briefly has conscious control) of what’s really happening there.
That being said, the overall effect of the narrative achieves a very similar goal. It’s just not a victim’s story, it’s a perpetrator’s story. Bear is a fucking coward, and his passivity, willful ignorance, and eventual outright complicity make him a villain. This is a story about how a guy whose initial motivation is not, technically, to cause abuse, is still every bit as much of an abuser.