Edit: Spoilers Ahead!

Of human behavior commonly considered to be evil, we often give cowards a pass. It doesn’t even rank in the top seven, according to the Divine Comedy. Cowardice is so normalized I haven’t even heard an accusation of it from one person to another outside of media and history. Despite in my opinion being one of the most potent forces of evil driving human-made disasters today, cowards by their nature tend to be overlooked.

In the beginning of the film Obsession, we find the protagonist and villain of the film in a state of extreme weakness, insecurity, and apathy. He lives in his grandmother’s old house and has made no changes to it whatsoever since moving in. He spends his time obsessing over the object of his affection, his childhood friend Nikki, or otherwise abusing his grandmother’s prescription drugs. This is a sorry state which I can even relate to and is not itself inherently evil. I speculate that Bear is extremely depressed for a reason. What is cowardly is how Bear manages his difficult situation.

Bear is unwilling to face his demons and pursue a life which doesn’t need to be self-medicated away in someone else’s abandoned house. He has not pursued or even considered pursuing seeking actual medical intervention for his depression, nor seek support from friends or family. He has no plans for his future, and he doesn’t even know what could make him happier outside of the oxycontin and his fantasies. He has no self control nor an interest in helping himself (or anyone else) at all in any way. The only aspiration he expresses in the film (to become a food critic) is made offhandedly and unseriously, unrelated entirely to anything else Bear says or does in the film. Bear has many real problems, but being a coward is his choice.

The earliest victim of Bear’s cowardice is Sandy, his late grandmother’s cat. Sandy consumes some of the oxycontin that Bear left out and dies. When he discovers her body, he asks “how did you get into the bottle?” The answer is obvious. A cat can’t open a child-proof prescription container. Bear left it open. Instead of even acknowledging the possibility that his neglect for the cat he had total power over caused it harm, he dismisses the event altogether and carries on as if nothing happened. There could be no self-reflection and no effort toward self-correction after what to many would be a major wake-up call. The only effect Sandy’s death had on Bear was to provide him an excuse for his behavior later. This is cowardly, and it is foreshadowing.

Bear doesn’t know Nikki as well as she makes the mistake of thinking he does. From his behavior in the film, it’s unlikely he ever intentionally tried to know who Nikki the person was. Other characters in the film correct Bear in reference to facts about their mutual friend which he is often incorrect about. He asks his friend for seduction advice and has no reason to think otherwise about what Nikki would want or even enjoy. Nikki is a concept to Bear. She is the concept of someone cool and attractive who could love him when he feels no love (even from himself). Nikki freely self-discloses her intimate thoughts to Bear, who is flattered that she would but doesn’t have enough of himself to care about or understand what she is saying. Nikki isn’t a person to Bear, but his target.

Before I continue, I want to describe the ambush predator. Unlike the pursuit predators who actively and openly hunt their prey, overpowering their terrified victim after running them down, ambush predators don’t present their threat to their prey until after it’s too late. Ambush predators are too weak to be pursuit predators, so they hunt differently. The jaguar rests high in a tree, waiting for its hapless prey to pass within pouncing distance. The goldenrod crab spider presents from within a flower, waiting for pollinators to seize suddenly. The pitcher plant smells sweet, luring its victims in before drowning and consuming them. Human predators also exist as both pursuers and ambushers. In intimate relationships, predatory men rarely present their threat to their intended prey until after it is too late. This is cowardice in human terms.

Bear makes a selfish wish. At first I believe this impulsive act was by itself innocuous, but according to the writer and director this is the first truly evil deliberate act by Bear in the film. I had to reconsider my initial position. It is true that Bear had no way to know that the wish would actually work, but the wish itself is evil. Let’s say that Bear instead purchased a gag tablet of ghb from the joke store, put it in Nikki’s drink, and was just as shocked that it actually worked. The supernatural nature of what Bear did should not distract from the intent of his actions even if he didn’t expect it would work.

It is not ambiguous in the film’s text that Bear knowingly rapes Nikki as the first abuse of his new power. Even without the supernatural context, Nikki is clearly to Bear and herself not in control of her behavior. In the script the characters themselves openly discuss that Nikki is probably too drunk to be rational. Bear acts supportive to Nikki at every step and is likely actually uncertain about the situation himself. There is a pattern here, though. Every opportunity that the fully sober Bear has to get closer to sleeping with Nikki in this plausibly deniable situation, he takes. He has no self reflection, he is just an opportunist. He cares less about the well-being of his friend than he does about using her body. This is a realistic depiction of an unfortunately common tactic cowardly men resort to. This is called date rape in our world.

Nikki splits from her wish self who loves Bear more than anyone in the world, to her true self having an updated insight into Bear’s actual cowardly nature. Both versions of Nikki suffer greatly. The true Nikki suffers her body being used by Bear against her will to perform his fantasies, and wish Nikki suffers by doing everything she can to love Bear when he is a bottomless pit where love goes to rot. Both sides of Nikki suffer from Bear’s extreme neglect of her while she is clearly too compromised to feed herself or even go to the bathroom without him in proximity. Bear is not capable of loving himself or anyone else. Instead of facing this grievous issue in his life, he decides to play house with the dying wish Nikki and performs a boring relationship he eventually loses interest in. At no point does he perform any care for Nikki at all or help her in any way. He just isn’t happy so he asks Nikki to try harder. At no point was wish Nikki not trying her hardest.

When wish Nikki begins to unravel at the horrifying discovery there is nothing in Bear or about Bear she could love despite being obligated to and true Nikki uses every moment she can to resist her captor, Bear is forced to acknowledge that he has a problem. From his perspective, his problem is that his wish isn’t working right because he doesn’t feel the love he is entitled to from Nikki per his wish. He is too cowardly to consider that his inability to feel anything for Nikki while she is forced to serve him in the situation he manufactured may have something to do with who he is. Again, he externalizes the problem he caused and calls the One Wish Willow hotline to ask them to make his wish work right. Very explicitly the operator asks him if he wants to cancel his wish, to which he responds he does not want to cancel and just wants to fix it. It is obvious to everyone but Bear that there is nothing that can be fixed about the situation. Bear would also know if he wasn’t a coward.

Frustrated, Bear decides to try to cheat on the imprisoned Nikki when the opportunity presents itself. True Nikki asks him to kill her to end her misery, he implies she should stop complaining, and then he leaves with the intention to cheat on her. There is nothing to Bear other than his cowardice and opportunism. Wish Nikki, knowing Bear better than he knows himself, acts to protect her relationship in a way befitting of the extreme situation which has been unfolding throughout the film Bear has attempted nothing to alleviate. From his perspective, he is the victim because he asked her to fix their relationship and she didn’t.

Bear, realizing he can’t even cheat on Nikki to distract himself from her unhinged behavior that he directly caused, decides to take the coward’s way out. Even here he chickens out at the last moment dooming Nikki to her unwilling servitude. By happenstance, his cowardice is overwritten by the effort wish Nikki is obligated to make. Poetically, Bear dies powerless.

What is the difference between Bear and millions of other wayward men too cowardly to face their true selves, but still feel entitled to a partner obligated to serve them when they won’t even serve themselves? With many, there is unfortunately little practical difference. With the rest, the difference is opportunity. The behavior modeled masterfully by this film is why cowardice should be taken seriously as evil. It must not be mistaken for the weakness it comes from and must be seen for the force of destruction that it truly is.