For anyone who noticed the abrupt jump cut at 33:21 - I had to trim 15secs from the end of the analysis to resolve a visual claim. The missing narration was (SPOILER WARNING FOR MOVIE) "...and he collapses onto the floor in almost the exact same position as his neglected cat from the beginning. And in the final moments of the film, original Nikki is left alive inside the wreckage of everything Bear caused. The credits roll over her screams, forcing us to sit not with Bear's suffering, but with hers."

Also yes I pronounced "rhetoric" wrong, my sincerest apologies 😭

Thank you all so much for watching, commenting, and subscribing. I'm still a tiny channel, so seeing this essay resonate with so many people has meant a lot ❤

its very ironic and heartbreaking that nikki, the true victim, was the only one left alive to suffer the consequences of bear's actions

The line "Is it so bad being with me" is all you need to know what kind of person Bear is.

Someone wrote somewhere that the cat dying in the beginning of the movie is foreshadowing that Bear should never take care of living beings

The entire friend group was toxic af.

Every step of the movie, I kept repeating to myself, "This friend group is so unrealistic, how would they not implode upon themselves immediately?" only to realize this was the exact dynamic of my high school friend group. Just like this movie, no one bothers to be proactive about everyone's toxicity until it blows up in everyone's face, and now the group is completely fractured. I am not on speaking terms with any of them.

He wasn't killing himself to "do the right thing" , he realized he couldn't fix the wish and couldn't get away from her any other way. Bear is a coward and a bad person right to the end. He wasn't saving her. He only cared about himself.

What pissed me off the most was the hospital scene. She very obviously needed to be hospitalized on a 72 hr hold and had the police come in to talk about domestic violence. The system failed her too…

I find it interesting that when Bear says to Ian that "he can have Nikki" (as if this is still about someone possessing Nikki), Ian says "I was going to tell you" as if he was more concerned about being caught in his lie than he was about his clearly distressed friend covered in blood

What bugged me about Bear trying to replace Nikki's crystal necklace is he doesn't even know what kind of crystal it was.

I noticed that Nikki never has a scene when she’s in her own space( her house or room) that reflects her. She’s with her friends in bars or Ian’s
or Bears house or someone else’s car. We Never get to see her room or anything that she’s has put her personal touch on. I personally love this choice because we never get to see Nikki who she really is on her own. It’s all through the lens of
Bear and his fantasy of her or the rest of her friend group . And then the real her is trapped within herself and when she’s free, everyone she knows is gone and she’s left to deal with the consequences of others.

Same reason she wanted to quit her job and leave all-together: nobody really cared for her.

The way the characters around bear and nikki reminds me of how people will look at girls who spiral from feeling insane from their partner's abuse. They will look at the girl being "insane" and instead of wondering why she feels and is acting that way, they feel bad for the abuser, seeing the situation as "wow she's crazy, I feel bad for him".

Bear choosing the One Wish Willow for Nikki is also a manifestation of his indecisiveness. Instead of taking the jump and buying a necklace that Nikki may or may not like, he bought a wishing item which essentially gives the onus of choosing on Nikki. By choosing the willow, he opt out of choosing entirely because he can't fathom the idea of rejection

What I find crazy is Bear treats 2 Nikki's awfully. He forces Original Nikki to change then gets upset with Broken Nikki because Broken Nikki doesn't act like regular Nikki. He even creates a paradoxical hell for Broken Nikki because during the fight where Broken Nikki cries and has a breakdown because she cant be regular Nikki. But because Bear tells her to be like normal Nikki it goes against Bears wish because normal Nikki didn't have romantic feelings for Bear so Broken Nikki mentally can't be like normal Nikki. But because Broken Nikki has tge desire to make Bear happy and love him its an endless paradoxical hell.

People sympathized with Sarah which is ofc needed because what happened to her was vicious.. but she was not a girl's girl at all. She saw Nikki hurt herself with a broken bottle and what was her next step? That's right, to try to hook up with her friend's "boyfriend". Nobody in that group ever loved Nikki.

3:00 The worst part is that he DIDN'T do it to free her. He did it because he couldn't deal with her anymore. She was too crazy to tolerate. He didn't care about Nikki

No bc one thing I’ve always said as soon as I watched this movie was that no one loved Nikki fr. Not one person on her life actually cared about her bc I know if MY homegirl was acting like this I’d be stepping in. Even the fact that they let her go with bear to the hospital alone… bro wasn’t gonna help her, he was too busy focusing on himself. Y’all saw his reaction to the bottle and just… let him go to the ER alone? No one wanted to come with??? No one tried to follow up????? Like wtffff

Whilst Nikki talks about her writing in the car, Bear confuses two genres of intimacy: Love and Romance.

Nikki wishes to write about a deeper love, because she isn't feeling loved. She has little or no relationship with her parents, she's the fuck buddy of Ian (who on multiple occasions treats women rather poorly), and overall she feels trapped. She wants to do something meaningful with her life and not be stuck in one place. She wants to find a deep and true love; one that sweeps her off her feet

Bear on the other hand, confuses love with romance. He is only thinking selfishly about the physical nature of love; kissing, cuddling, love making. He's a guy and his desire is for only one thing: Sex. He Sweeps her off her feet, by pulling the rug out from under her. Because of Bear's wish, he forces Nikki into her own worst nightmare:

1.Instead of doing something meaningful in her life and moving forward, her consciousness is trapped inside her body. She is trapped in a prison she is incapable of escaping.

2. Instead of getting to pursue her dream of becoming a writer, the only thing "Not Nikki" wants to do is sit and fawn over Bear.

3. Instead of finding that true love she has been seeking, Nikki is turned into a sex object. Much in the same way that Ian has been using her sexually, with no love whatsoever, Bear is now doing the same thing. But instead of Nikki having a choice to let her body be used only for pleasure with Ian, Bear strips her of all choices.

Bear seemingly has no issue assaulting his crush, even hoping he can add an addendum to his wish to fully stop Nikki from fracturing and freaking out, rather than letting her be able to make her own choices.

Honestly, the car trip to Nikki's is one of my favorites now upon rewatch, simply because it sets up so much and everything spoken about happens, but in a twisted, cracked mirror sort of way.

Nikki was truly surrounded by people who could not have given less of a shit about her. Ian used her and tried to stop her moving on with her life/start any new relationship. Sarah decides Bear is 100% in the right because of her crush whule watching her friend go through what she thinks is a mental health crisis stemming from Ians mistreatment and uses that as an excuse to try and kiss her friends boyfriend! And the guy who claims he loves her doesnt know a single thing about her.

Its no wonder she was trying to get out of there, she didnt have a single friend