And you’re right: Bear doesn’t know Nikki and makes no effort to get to know her;
he is unaware that she is estranged from her father, even though they’ve been friends for years; he shows no empathy for her situation—and this was long before the whole "wish" business—when she opens up to him about her work.
He never bought her the necklace, nor did he grant her the wish.
He couldn't care less about her consent.
He isn’t in love with her; he loves the idea he has of her.
In real life, I’m certain that in 90% of cases, this "nice guy" would have turned out to be a coward too, and would have "unalive" Nikki the moment she became even the slightest bit of an inconvenience to him.

'Real love is giving someone the opportunity to say no'. What a great insight, perfectly frames Bear's issue.

The fact that he didn’t know about her dad. Ian knew

The fascinating thing about the One Wish Willow is that it's not evil in the slightest. It's not some monkeys paw shit or whatever. It gives you EXACTLY what you ask for. Ian offhandedly wishes for $1 billion without specifying how and it rains the money in his house. So some people definitely seem to have good experiences with it. Bears goes wrong because hes a selfish prick.

Here's what I genuinely interpreted from the movie at this point. When Bear first takes Nikki home, he assumes the wish doesn't work, but he DOES think Nikki's intoxicated, so when he allows her to advance on him, it's evil, because he THINKS she's not sober, and only when she freaks out does he not go through with it, so we know from that scene forward that her consent is unimportant to him. When he later sees her at his door and she tells him she was on drugs, he obviously believes her and thinks she's sober moving forward into the montage where we see them having sex, so while we know he WOULD rape her if he could, in the montage, he THINKS he's getting consensual sex with her anyway, so he just doesn't have to do that. However, during the dinner scene is when I believe he got 100% clarification of the wish's effect, so when he has sex with her in the very next scene, it's pure rape, but I will say, I don't think he realizes real Nikki still exists in this scene. I think that HE thinks he's essentially erased the real Nikki, and the wish Nikki is all that's left, not that this excuses him from having sex with a person he knows he FORCED to "consent" to doing so, and, honestly, being okay with the fact that he wiped her mind is even worse than raping her. Moving forward, we come to the customer service scene where he discovers the real Nikki not only still exists in some plane of existents, but is suffering while the wish remains active, and during this scene, he also finds out that killing himself will cancel the wish, and he hardly acknowledges this choice. Like, I'd get him being scared and hesitant to end his whole life, but he doesn't even seem to CONSIDER doing it. Then, we get to the worst scene of all. When she begs him to kill her, all he can say is, "wHaT's sO bAd AbOut bEiNg wIth mE?" then abandons her in her anguish like a fucking pussy. This action leads to wish Nikki forcing real Nikki's body to murder Sarah in the next scene, meaning he forfeited the last chance she had at escaping the situation without going to prison for life. Sure, he does eventually TRY to kill himself (after it's too fucking late), but even then, he pussies out and only dies because wish Nikki wished his autonomy away. I hadn't realized how satisfying that is until just now. Bear is a monster, and it goes without saying, no one should let themself become like him.

Bear taking his own life wasn't a "redemption arc" it was an act of cowardice either way, successful or not. He couldn't take it any longer and took the easy way out.

He sounds like Llamas with hats the whole time “Carrrrrrl why would you do this Carl “

13:45  also wanted to point out at the party scene that even Wish Nikki knew of its existence and the indifference Bear had with her through the party and looked embarrassed to be aorund her .

Often when Bear tried to make it circle it back to how he was feeling and never Nikki herself.

And the entity controlling Nikki reads Bear's indifference as a error in its objective that needs to be coerced and manipulated as the wish intended by any means . Which means subtle threats like in the Hansel and Gretel story .

And when Bear asked for space and wanted to go to Ian's . About subtly wanting to take her own life and kill Bear to be together in what comes next as threats to coerce Bear back in .

Including once Bear was about to take his life about wanting space and breaking up to get him to come out before finding the willow and using it .

As a guy myself, thinking back a bit after watching this movie made me realize how close I could have become to becoming Bear. Much like our ursine incel supervillain of a protagonist, I knew a girl in college who I thought was so cute and was crushing on so bad. Unlike Bear though I actually had the balls to confess to her, and even though she rejected me it certainly helped not just that she and I stayed on good terms, I had family and REAL friends to talk it out with after the fact. But with how hard a time I had moving on afterward, I probably WOULD’VE gone down the same dark path if not for those friends and family.

Looking back, I think I get WHY I had as hard a time as I did dealing with it.  Horrible anxiety and self-consciousness not unlike Bear’s, plus great difficulty making friends and just interacting with people (potentially connected to my autism spectrum diagnosis as a toddler), made confessing to her this monumental task instead of just something to take a chance on. While someone else may just need to be… brave, I had to be braver than I had possibly ever been in my entire life. And when she rejected me I felt, at the time, that all that bravery had been for nothing. But one of the friends I talked with had it so right - if nothing else, I got closure from the whole ordeal. I sense that without that self reflection and without those people to chat it out with, I may not have been able to handle it and landed up becoming a monster.

I think the most dangerous train of thought is the idea that there is someone "perfect" for us, when we all know deep down no one is perfect. Not only is it wrong to put someone on such a high pedestal because in doing so, we're basically saying they can do no wrong which is literally impossible, but we then subject ourselves to the reality that this "perfect" individual has the ability to reject us and the notion that no one else will ever compare or be as right for us, which I imagine can be terrifying, especially for those who are either insecure or have huge egos. It's very obvious that Bear knew nothing about the real Nikki, basing who she was on fantasies he'd created in his head. From a psychological perspective, it makes me think of Limerence, with Nikki being Bear's Limerent Object.

The movie itself hinted at what a better wish would've been when "Nikki" gave bear the tiger's eye crystal during dinner, saying it represented confidence and will power. Wishing for that would've done him wonders, without having to remove anyone's autonomy but like stated, Bear didn't see himself as the issue, so he didn't think to fix what he lacked. Because even with confidence, he can still be rejected. It's wild to think that the actual script for the movie was even worse, but they humanized Bear a bit more in the final cut, which gave a slower reveal that the one truly Obsessed was him.

Options:

"Make her say yes"

"Make her tell him how she feels"

Seriously?!!!

Those are bad too and violate Nikki in other ways. The wish should NEVER violate the free will of others.

6:08  even Curry said in interviews he left this ambiguity on purpose . Since there was a strong chance on both sides on Nikki taking a chance on Bear or flat out rejecting him .

And what's sad is Bears fragile ego and cowardice because he had no abundance beyond just Nikki and dating overall . Is why Bear just freezes and his moment of hesitation costed Nikki's freedom and his and his friends lives .

And the fact Sarah started showing interest in bear but because he got tunnel vision with one girl he couldn't see the opportunity with being with a girl he wanted Nikki to be to him was on his left .

I love it how Bear unknowingly wasted his chance to have the curse undone by the Customer Service. The guy at the other end implies that it is not impossible to undo it, but just like you can only wish for one thing, you can also only ask for help once, and Bear already asked first to just alter the wish. That's when he wasted his chance to have the whole thing undone.

I actually felt bad for Bear in the end. I know he is the "villain" of the movie. But when he was in the bathroom contemplating unaliving himself. I just saw a broken man who never got loved the way he wanted and lost everything in his life he cared about just because he made a wish that was unrealistic that somehow came true through magical means. Not like he's a victim or anything, but I felt the hollowness and pain of his existence and that resonated with me. In that moment I felt empathy for him.

29:05  ill never stoop that low to AI companion gf apps . My self esteem , independence and pride won't let me

Obsession is Bear's.
It always has been his, his construction of the idea of her.
It was that fabrication he wished upon.

He could have had a chance with her, but he never genuinely listened to her, never knew who she is, never cared for her aspirations or dreams. Nikki peeped it with the convo about her father.

Ultimately, he never had the courage to confess his feelings, when he had the chance, thus sealing her not considering him as a potential romantic interest.

I LOVEEe the line you started the video with because it’s SO relevant to this movie and the waves it’s made

I see Bear calling customer service to be a really great critique of current male gripes about 'Westernized women'. As in, they are really saying they want a more palatable presentation of women's captivity, one where they have even LESS freedom to state how miserable their own oppression is.

5:52  I see a lot of discourse about the wish itself. How, if he didn’t know it would work, it’s normal to wish she loved him. That we’ve all wished that at some point and if it was miraculously granted, would we also be monsters? (Obviously excluding the remainder of the movie where Bear clearly is).

My issue with that is that the wish didn’t make sense in the moment as an impulse. He was afraid of rejection so he didn’t want to confess, in that moment, most people would be thinking “I wish I knew how she felt about me”. Or “I wish I had the courage to tell her how I feel.” His wish only makes sense as a “normal” wish if she’d already rejected him. But he doesn’t see it being possible she wouldn’t, his self worth is so nonexistent that he is positive she doesn’t love him back. Because why would he wish for something that was already true?

So that’s why I will die on the hill that the wish is already the problem. It doesn’t matter if it was real or if he didn’t know it was, etc. Contextually, his wish came from that same sense of cowardice and insecurity and desire for possession. He didnt want her to choose him. He chose her.

“It’s just Bear, alone with the fantasy he wanted all along, shouting into an echo chamber.”
That is such a bar. Bear was alone even when he was with Not-Nikki.

While I took no personal interest in the Nice Guy trope as a horror thing, I wrote a story before this film about what would happen if a Nice Guy got the woman of his dreams. I asked, what does that relationship look like? What does the man have to sacrifice? What does the woman have to sacrifice? What would they both have to learn to be there for each other? What problems would arise? What insecurities would they both bring to the relationship?

Obsession doesn’t ask these questions. Instead it’s more interested in one-sided ownership and the problems that come with it. Thematically, Obsession seems to be about the difference between love and romance. My story, in contrast, is about how love isn’t enough for a relationship to work.

Additionally, I can’t unsee the AI-esque nature of Not-Nikki. I also can’t unsee Not-Nikki being an extension of Bear himself. She at first says “my cat” when she’s referring to Bear’s cat.