Did 'Obsession' just expose a disturbing pattern of male entitlement hidden behind the “nice guy” label?

I'll be honest, a ghost jumping out from behind a door has never done anything for me, and I have spent years trying to explain this to people who think horror films are nothing but jump scares. The films that genuinely unsettle me are the ones where the man on screen is not a monster at all—he is just a guy who thinks being nice to a woman means she owes him something in return.

This is one of the horror genre's most interesting recent developments, which many viewers now label as "incel horror". These films tap into a very familiar anxiety: the fear of entitlement disguised as vulnerability, of obsession masquerading as romance, and of men who see rejection not as a boundary but as a personal injustice. Unlike traditional horror villains, these characters often look ordinary. They are charming, polite, even sympathetic at first. The terror comes from recognising how familiar they are.

The subgenre has been quietly gaining momentum over the past few years, reflecting growing conversations around misogyny, online radicalisation, male entitlement, and the darker side of modern dating. Films like You Only Live Once, Fresh, Run Rabbit Run, and Promising Young Woman are all interested, in different ways, in the gap between how women experience danger and how easily that danger can go unnoticed by everyone else. There is something about this genre that refuses to let you look away, and Obsession is the latest example of a film that understands exactly why.

The story follows Bear, a lonely guy with an unrequited crush on his childhood friend Nikki. Desperately tired of being stuck in the friend zone, he makes a wish on a ‘One Wish Willow’ for her to love him more than anyone in the world. You know what they say, "Be careful for what you wish for." While Bear's wish does come true, the Nikki that comes back is not really Nikki at all. She is obsessive, violent, and completely unhinged, forcing Bear to come to terms with the fact that he essentially wished away her free will and got exactly what he thought he wanted.

That is the part that makes it such an interesting watch right now, because the horror is the wish itself: the absolute entitlement to decide that what you feel for someone matters so much that her actual personhood is just an obstacle to get around. Fresh explores something similar, but through a slightly different lens. Steve initially presents himself as the perfect boyfriend. He is charming, attentive, and refreshingly normal in a dating landscape full of disappointments. The real horror lands when he drops his performance to reveal a man who sees women as products to be consumed, their value existing only in relation to his desires, giving us a familiar narrative that a woman's body exists for male use.

Promising Young Woman takes a less literal but arguably more disturbing approach. Its villains are not obvious monsters but ordinary, well-liked men who convince themselves they are good people while exploiting women who are too drunk to consent. The film is less interested in individual evil than in the entitlement and self-justification that allow these men—and the people around them—to minimise harm, excuse abuse, and move on with their lives.

Across all of these films, the scariest thing is never the violence itself but how reasonable these men believe they are being. They just want her attention, her affection, her forgiveness, her body, another chance. The horror comes from watching those seemingly small desires expand until they eclipse the woman's humanity entirely.

And Obsession could not have come out at a better time. The male loneliness discourse, the resentment brewing around dating apps, the growing number of men who seem convinced that women owe them something, and have found entire communities willing to validate that belief, it has all become impossible to ignore.

What the film understands, in a way that much of the online conversation misses, is that Bear's wish has nothing to do with Nikki. He does not wish for her to be happy, nor does he wish for her to choose him on her own terms. He wishes for her to love him exactly the way he has already decided she should. At its core, that is not love at all. It is a desire for control dressed up as romance because that sounds more acceptable.

What are these men actually afraid of when a woman says no? 

The fantasy at the heart of Obsession is all about never being rejected by her. Because for men like Bear, hearing "no" tends to go one of two ways: either they spiral into self-pity, or they decide the woman is the problem. In both scenarios, she stops being a person and becomes a character in a story about his hurt feelings.

"I think it is largely a mix of ego and loneliness. A lot of people think, 'How could they possibly reject someone like me?'" says Sharanya Agarwal, an illustrator and spiritual advisor.

That is Bear, completely. It is also the thread connecting so many of the men in films like Fresh and Promising Young Woman. None of them is really thinking about the woman—what she wants, how she feels, or whether she is okay. They are thinking about themselves and the version of the story in which they are entitled to something in return.

Dating apps have only complicated that dynamic. You can text someone every day, build an entire relationship in your head, and start treating potential as certainty. Then, if they lose interest or disappear, that bruised ego suddenly has somewhere to direct its frustration. The problem is that disappointment can quickly turn into resentment when someone starts believing they were denied something they deserved in the first place.

And the thing is, Bear did not become Bear overnight. A lot of men are raised being told, after every rejection, that the other person was wrong and there is nothing wrong with them, which, over time, completely kills any ability to reflect. "I think some men in India are typically more coddled, especially by the female figures in their lives, so when they seek comfort after rejection, they are often told that the other person is in the wrong. I think this stunts men's ability to reflect," Agarwal says.

Basically, he is just a guy who was never taught that no is a complete sentence, and the film is smart enough to know that it is scarier than anything supernatural being could ever be.

When did "I am a good person" become something women are supposed to owe you for?

Sumir Nagar, a behavioural expert who has lived and worked across four continents, calls what Bear does in Obsession the transactional trap. "A lot of people grow up believing that if they insert enough good person tokens—buying dinner, opening doors, basic politeness—a relationship should automatically pop out of the vending machine," he says. Which, when you think about it, is the foundation of every incel argument you've ever read online.

Nagar is also clear that loneliness is real, that rejection genuinely hurts, and that feeling invisible is a painful and legitimate human experience. "When a person is profoundly isolated, attraction ceases to be an invitation and becomes an emergency," he says. "They aren't looking for a partner; they are looking for an emotional life jacket."

The problem is the leap from that pain to deciding it is someone else's fault, someone else's responsibility to fix, someone else's job to say yes when they have already said no. And what makes it so exhausting, from the woman's side of things, is that the whole thing requires so much management. Sharanya told me that most women go out of their way to be as polite as possible when rejecting someone, and not entirely out of empathy. "Unfortunately, it's often out of fear that the man's reaction could be aggressive," she says.

Which Nagar backs up completely. "When women cushion a rejection, it's rarely about politeness; it's a tactical risk assessment. We've globalised a culture where a bruised male ego can instantly turn volatile, so women have learned to treat a breakup like they're dismantling an explosive." And that is the thing films like Obsession understand, but a lot of the online conversation around male loneliness tends to gloss over. The loneliness might be real. The pain might be real. But somewhere between feeling rejected and deciding to make it her problem, something has gone very wrong.

Why is the scariest man on screen right now just a regular guy?

Horror has always worked by taking the thing lurking at the back of your mind and making it impossible to ignore. What this particular wave of films has figured out, faster than any think piece, podcast, or Reddit thread, is that entitlement becomes genuinely terrifying when you follow it to its logical conclusion. In real life, this behaviour is often explained away. He is just persistent. He really likes you. He doesn't mean any harm. These films strip away those excuses and treat the dynamic for what it can be: a threat.

That is why this genre feels so effective right now. It takes an experience many women have been describing for years and places it at the centre of the story. And for a lot of women watching, none of it needs much explaining. They already know this guy.

Lead Image: IMDb

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