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(Horrified Linguist) No, no, no, no, no! Uncanny Repetition in OBSESSION

By. "Wise Up" Katie Weiss

OBSESSION (2025) horrified me more than most of the films I have seen over the last few years. Inde Navarrette gives an absolutely stunning performance as Nikki Freeman, the victim of a One Wish Willow-induced love spell brought on by Baron “Bear” Bailey. Everyone in my theater watched with bated breath as we waited for Nikki’s next horrifyingly possessed move. Is she going to soil herself again? Is she going to tell another weird story in the middle of a party? Is she going to up her kill count before the film’s conclusion? Many of the actions Nikki commits as she is trapped within the confines of the One Wish Willow horrified and shocked me in ways I haven’t felt in a very long time. This film will stay with me for reasons that go far beyond a jump scare. I, like many viewers, cannot get her eerily uncanny words and actions out of my mind.

I am not a psychologist, nor am I a roboticist. However, I am a linguist! And linguists sure do love incorporating ideas from other fields into our own. If Sigmund Freud and Masahiro Mori taught me anything about their respective fields, it is this: I am certainly not alone in being completely freaked out by the uncanny actions, mannerisms, and language use of possessed Nikki. It is perfectly natural to feel a bit creeped out when we encounter an individual who possesses both human and inhuman traits, and because Nikki is the victim of a One Wish Willow possession, she is the perfect candidate for holding characteristics that are totally human – she is still in her own body, after all, even though she has very little control of it – as well as characteristics that fall outside of what we might consider normal human qualities. For example, there are many scenes in the film when even possessed Nikki is perfectly capable of moving her body in ways we see every single day from simply existing in our known worlds. However, when she has seemingly inhuman movements – when she walks backwards at an inhuman pace and moves her arms and legs in angles we would never ordinarily see, for instance – we are deeply troubled to witness someone who shares our same characteristics while also wildly deviating from those characteristics as a result of the horrifying spell she has been forced under.

So, how does this fit in with a linguist’s viewing of OBSESSION? Possessed Nikki’s language use is so familiar to us language-speaking viewers, but at the same time, the way she speaks is often so...uncanny. In English, when we really want to emphasize a particular stance or emotion we have, we might repeat a word to make sure we let our audience know how badly we want or need something. “I am so, so excited to buy a new Creature from the Black Lagoon poster!” “I really, really love the first two Creature from the Black Lagoon movies!” “I am so very disappointed that the third Creature from the Black Lagoon movie is not as good as the first two!” You get the idea. We naturally place emphasis on a desire or feeling through repetition, and possessed Nikki does this often to express how she feels about Bear. The now immediately recognizable “nice date” scene has multiple examples of possessed Nikki’s use of repetition to reveal feelings of obsessive love, intense panic, and any other emotions the One Wish Willow forces through her mind. We see an expression of these emotions when she tells Bear she loves him “so, so, so, so, so much.” Everything from her body language to the overly intense look in her eyes as she makes this statement seems a bit outside of what we might expect from a non-possessed individual as they express love for their partner. As observations of possessed Nikki’s uncanny mannerisms and eye contact settle in, her over-use of intensifying adverbs makes the scene that much more eerie and unsettling. We have all probably told someone we love them “so much,” “so, so much,” or even “so very much,” but five “so’s” just seem a bit excessive. So excessive, in fact, the seriousness with which she declares her love makes the interaction even more out of the ordinary as Nikki is clearly possessed by some inhuman entity whose only goal is to shower Bear with uncanny levels of what can only be described as a horrifyingly unhealthy obsession.

Possessed Nikki takes repetition one step further during the same “good date” as the scene reaches its most dramatic point when she stands up and exclaims, “No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! Don’t do that!” The first “no” she says could arguably be a tiny glimpse of the non-possessed Nikki as she tells Bear the truth about her dad’s cancer diagnosis (or lack thereof). However, the more uncanny her repetition gets, the more uncanny her eye contact and mannerisms become, as well.

If you are brave enough to watch/ re-watch OBSESSION, take notice of possessed Nikki’s use of repetition. Even though it is perfectly within the realm of language use to intensify certain desires through repetition, possessed Nikki’s use of the same linguistic tool to express these feelings might serve as further proof that whatever unnamed entity who possesses Nikki through the One Wish Willow knows exactly how to imitate a human, but is, at the same time, not quite human at all.

For more from our Horrified Linguist, check our her piece on Frankenstein and THE Bride and her breakdown of the linguist use of ASL in Primate.