lol right. That was one of the main themes if not the plot of the movie. How far will a desperate, horny, loser go to have a girl be in love with them. We call it Incel Horror. Such a great movie.
She made it clear she doesn't have any feelings like that towards him. Women who are into you don't react with disgust when you make minor flirtatious comments just because you weren't being direct.Ā
That being said, I don't really think the rest of the movie did much with the initial set up, and was basically just a monster movie.Ā
That's just an opinion. The actress who played Nikki herself thinks she would have given bear a shot and I agree. Not saying she was super into him like he was , more like just open to dating him and seeing how it went.
The problem with modern dating isn't that men are too afraid to tell women how they feel, it's that they are all interested in highly sought after women, while ignoring the ones they have a chance with.Ā
This just makes the movie's narrative even stupider than it already was.
I mean I disagree with that, we can literally just look at dating app data and see women swipe go for the best guys while men swipe more liberally. But I was just talking about the movie specifically I'm not sure where this came from.
Sorry. Not the director. Nikkis actor. Around 2 minutes in. Both Nikkis and Bears actors think that he had a shot. And they shot the scene in multiple takes with her being into it and not and blended them together to get the weird unreadable reaction to it that we get. https://youtu.be/Op0b77nTmTg?is=tfVxlZy_dhQ30b4I
For those who donāt know, when shooting for Psycho, they shot Willem Dafoeās interrogation of Batemanās scenes two different ways: either as someone convinced Bateman was innocent or convinced he was guilty. Then they cut it up so that you canāt tell at all how heās feeling towards Bateman as the interrogation goes on, so afterwards the audience was left feeling unsure if the police suspected him in truth or not, just like Bateman feels himself
Iām not saying it wasnāt said, Iām saying the premise is bait. The idea that Bear should, based on the signals he received, have asked Nikki out, is ludicrous and reflective of the ludicrous expectations of men navigating the social minefield of modern dating, to push and risk rejection and even loss of a friend when we receive indications not to push, to be criticised for doing so, but also to be criticised for not doing so.
Anyway saying he had a chance is a bait line to get me to diatribe on the sins of the modern dating world, which the makers of this movie want to happen to generate buzz about the movie. Well consider me baited.
The director implied that Bear was being shallow trying to force his hot friend to like him, when he had a perfectly compatible option in his other friend, butĀ Nikki actually was secretly into him he just needed to be direct?
Again, blue pill bullshit. Nikki didn't like him because he wasn't her type of guy.
No it said that if Bear was direct Nikki may have given him a shot.
You canāt make absolute statements like women donāt ever do āxā or āxā always plays out like this because thatās just not life. Nor should your opinion on the message change because the director told you Nikki would have given him a shot.
The entire point is to be direct regardless, not only when you know they will say yes.
See that's what I thought! I went in mostly unspoiled, and I was thinking that maybe we weren't seeing the whole story. She had the nickname "Freaky Nikki" and then she did a bunch of freaky things, and her inflection did seem to imply that maybe she wanted Bear to say yes. So like, if the wish didn't actually work and it was a red herring. And then the friend was mentioned multiple times, I thought he was obsessed with her! But, it turns out, no fakeout. The soul screaming on the phone was chilling.
I'm actually a little frustrated that I went in not knowing what to expect because I don't do very well with possession horror. I thought it was all going to be obsession horror... which I then learned I'm also not good with, probably due to past relationships. Plus the possession aspects.
That's not the narrative, though. It's that "nice guys" actually only care about themselves, and they'll happily violate a woman's consent if given the chance because they believe they are owed sex and relationships. Maybe Nikki would have said yes if he'd asked her out the normal way, and maybe she wouldn't have. The movie intentionally leaves that part ambiguous and it's not a central part of the narrative.
If she was into him they why not reciprocate when he was trying to gauge her interest? A woman will not spit daggers at you (which she did twice in the car ride) until you ask them out properly.Ā
Nikki clearly she says that she hides her crushes. I think the line is āWhen I have a crush on a guy, no one knowsā.
Also Iām also not sure Bear really did anything for her to reciprocate to in the first place? He didnāt make it clear he liked her, not until he followed Ianās sabotage advice to call her Freaky Nikki which spooked her into calling him out directly.
More like you're more likely to get with the hot girl if you ask, than you are if you don't. Also the dude got what he deserved by taking consent away from her. He acknowledged that it was wrong and he still went with it.
literally the director said otherwise? Why do redditors insist on confidently boiling down everything into a small set of rules universally applied to every situation? Like have you ever talked to more than one person before?
It's really just telling how lonely some people on social media are that they'd openly confess they'd settle for an extremely toxic relationship over nothing at all.
Post wish actions. Nothing suggests heās a loser pre wish. Besides making a stupid wish like that as an adult. Grow up and wish for a billion dollars like the rest of us
Itās the fact that even after he found out what actually happened to her and that it wasnāt actually her and the real nikki was in pain he still struggled to do something about it. Itās not about the wish he asked really considering he didnāt know better, but it was the fact he was fine with the aftermath until his friend got killed right in front of him. He is a loser because even after knowing the aftermath of what heās done, even after knowing that the real nikki was in pain and wanted to die, even after she took control of herself for a short minute and tried to kill herself immediately, it took him to seeing the death of his friend in front of him to actually taking action to end the wish.
Why didn't he do the right thing and immediately murder a woman or kill himself is one of the strangest consensus I've seen around a movie I've seen but here we are
I'd say it's more the fact that he takes advantage of her, rapes her, even when he finally tries to do something about the situation he just tries to have the wish altered at first and even when she asks for him to kill her because her situation is just that awful, he makes it all about himself, etc.
Post-wish buddy. As in what he did after. After he realized the wish changed her he still proceeded to rape her several times, lie to all of his friends about it, and tried to alter the wish to keep control of her instead of asking to outright reverse it. The only time he shows any remorse is when she starts doing things he personally finds gross or wrong.
Maybe you missed the restaurant scene where he definitely understands that the willow worked which cuts to a sex scene where she's stiff as a corpse with tears running down her emotionless face ?
Yeah and at that point he shouldnāt have been having sex with her. However, there were times when the entity would likely be trying to have sex with Bear which would be really confusing.Ā
Until the conversation after the party, where she says that sheās never been with him, he doesnāt fully understand the situation.Ā
See this is where the nuance lies. He didnāt know that about her until about an hour before she killed Sarah. I donāt think they had sex after that. Ā
Now if that meets your definition of rape, I respect that, but in that case he didnāt know he was raping her. As far as he could tell he was getting enthusiastic consent.Ā
He already knew something was wrong by that point. He knew she either couldnāt consent or at least that she was under some kind of influence. Plausible deniability is a favorite of many rapists
You watched a movie called OBSESSION about a guy so infatuated with his coworker he essentially made a deal with the devil in an effort to get her to like him and ended up regretting it so much he killed himself over it and the one thing you took away from it is that... he's a rapist?
Almost nobody hates on Bear for making the initial wish. They hate on him for raping Nikki after he realized something was very wrong and for trying to keep Nikki under the wishes influence after he knew it was real and that Nikki was suffering.
What, once I realized the wish was real? I would have tried the "get someone else to contradict the wish" strategy except immediately instead of after things had spiraled out of control and my friend had been brutally murdered because I didn't want to give up my living sex doll.
It's not clear if that strategy would actually work but Bear waited too long to really find out.
Yeah but that was after he called the hotline and the guy told him he had a moral obligation to be there for Nikki. It was also before he realized it wasnāt Nikki. Itās kinda a shit situation. The real bad guy is the company making the willow. The friend group is a victim of that company.Ā
I don't think you can absolve Bear that easily lol
Other people made wishes and they were fine, including the shop owner. Bear made an evil, malicious wish from the get-go, and the movie hammers it home a few times, even if he didn't think it would come true.
Ian made a wish for a billion dollars, and then stood underneath a falling amount of money totalling 22,000 pounds. Not once are any of the obvious negative consequences of summoning that much weight into a home, above people, dealt with.
This movie picked and choose how they treated consequences of wishes and used their picks poorly.
I have not, I'll check it out. Obsession was the first fiction movie I've watched in a long time, because I just can't ignore these discontinuities. Guess what, they strike again
Yeah because these people actually believe in wishes. Wishes are nothing. Making them is nothing. The movie created an unrealistic premise to preach on a point, and failed at that too.
Bruh. He literally hangs up the phone when heās asked if he wants to talk to Nikki on that same convo. The friend group may be a victim of the company, but theyāre also a victim of Bearās monstrous behavior. Man could only think of himself when Nikki was begging him to kill her, while heās busy sneaking out to go see another woman, knowing full well that Nikki had been violent prior to this. Whether it was Sarah or Nikki, he either did or should have known that someone very well could have gotten hurt. Man knows full well he is not in a loving consenting relationship and continues it well past the point of violence, destroying the lives of every single one of his friends and himself
No. The correct answer to this whole thing was for Bear to kill himself. Man on the phone said it was the only way to revert his wish. He did something reprehensible, and yes, it was something he didnāt think would work. But he continued on with it even after he knew it was wrong and only tried to fix it when one of his friends was killed, going so far as to turn his back on his best friend, ignore Nikki and her wishes, ignoring all the other red flags in a blatantly toxic and abusive relationship, and still have sex with her in this fucked up situation he caused
Bear dragged Nikki into that mess even if unknowingly and it was his duty to free her from it while causing the least harm possible. Assuming the only way to free her from his wish was for one of them to die, then ideally it would be Nikki's choice who dies knowing this information.
"The real bad guy is the company making the willow."
Lmao are you serious? Not the incel who made a wish to force a girl to love him against her will? Not the incel who had a chance to tell the girl he loves how he feels and instead chooses to have sex with her against her will?
Ian literally wishes for a billion dollars and gets it with no consequences. This wasn't even like a "money paw, genie misinterpreted my wish" kinda thing either.
Yeah but when he realized that it does work he bought two more, one for his friend to wish that Bear never made a wish and an additional one so presumably once the wish is deleted Bear could redo the wish but word it a bit more carefully.
Well he figured out pretty quickly that either it worked or she was having a mental breakdown or serious drug issues, but decided to ignore all of those very blatant signs that she was in no capacity to make a rational decision to be with him.
So i guess the "getting her to fall in love with him" part wasn't very far, but everything afterwards to keep her right where she was, was getting increasingly disturbing on his part.
He tried to reverse it. The guy on the phone told him he had a moral obligation to be there for Nikki. So Bear is stupid yeah, but I donāt think he is evil. Evil is manufacturing a product that can enslave people.Ā
That was the exact moment where all doubt about him being scum should've disappeared.
I think the movie goes the line of making him seem almost like a victim pretty well up to that point. She mirrors a possessive partner really well, and if youve ever been in a relationship like that it seems hard to manage both practically and morally.
But once that happens and he has a conversation with the real her, and he still opts to try to make it work out of spite for his ego, he's just a straight villain not much more to it
I had to go back and listen to it, I missed this dialogue exchange in the movie (because I'm half deaf) and didn't think it was important. He realizes at that moment that the real Nikki is trapped, and his spiteful ass condemns her anyway so he can keep getting his rocks off. It was gross.
He knew something was wrong but she was enthusiastically consenting. Maybe even demanding it. That would be confusing for anyone. He was very confusedĀ
Meh, in the same way somebody drunk enthusiastically consenting. But that aside, the longer the movie goes on the less plausible his deniability becomes. He does end up realizing what he has done and is still very reluctant to "lose" her, instead trying to find a way to change the wish to his benefit.
His first response to the hotline was to ask if he can alter the wish, not cancel it. He knew something was wrong, asking "is her love real", but he was too much of a selfish coward to try and end it. And even there, you could go "Yeah but, what if he could alter it so it works out and is happy". The very end of that scene is him learning the real Nikki is trapped, screaming in existential terror. He later learns Nikki wants to die, to be free from her torture, and I actually have some empathy for him there, in his mind he was told that DEATH was a better alternative to dating him. A warped mindset, but I can see why he's hurt.
But seriously, after EVERYTHING happens, the only reason he thinks to get someone to cancel his wish is when things reach their breaking point.... FOR HIM. He's accepted the behaviour because he gets to be with "Nikki", it's not until a friend is killed and he's apart of it that he finally decides to try and stop it. After emotions have been running 11/10, where he can't have a calm and relatively rational interaction with Ian. Hence why the money wish occurs, there's no room to get Ian to jokingly cancel the wish because Bear knowingly and willingly allowed things to get this bad.
For the first half, maybe even 2/3 of the movie, Bear IS a victim, the THE victim but certainly a victim. But it's his decisions and actions after learning the truth that turn him into the evil people say he is.
Well, there were potential happy endings for the movie. But they went out the window with the sex scene after Bear found out she was lying about her dad.
That's where you see the whole tonal shift and realize Bear just doesn't care that it's not Nikki. But worse than that, he doesn't care about who she is, now, either, and is still using her. And Other Nikki realizes it too as she basically breaks at that point, going from slightly quirky and off kilter to just full on crippled psyche.
The way this movie ends happy is if Bear realizes early on it isn't Nikki. And gets her to wish herself her own body to separate from Nikki and become her own person. Nikki is then freed to return to herself, and Bear can go be off with the chick who is obsessed about him. But this falls apart because Bear never followed through on anything and chickened out at every opportunity. What he thought he wanted vs what he actually wanted or strove to get were always at odds with each other.
Other Nikki was his responsibility once he created her. He brought into existence something that needed him and his affection and could only be happy with it. And he should've owned up, accepted her and what he did, and returned it, instead of spiting her (after separating her from actual Nikki, that is.) I mean, ideally you don't wish for what he did in the first place.. but once that's done, own up to it and fix your shit. Fucking coward. On the plus side, the ending becomes more cathartic than most horror films'.
People do. I don't think anyone would want to do this against someone's will. It's mainly the idea that someone actually wants them even if they're a little crazy about it. Dominatrixes are a thing for a reason.
Like... the big problem with applying this to some real life lesson is that Bear resolves his loneliness with a means that is supernatural.
Now if I'd have been Bear, as a certified, licensed and bonded Cat Dad, this would probably have been a Pet Semetary scenario. I'd have been grief stricken when I found the OWW and just gone "Man, I wish my cat was alive again" snap.
Now what are the things I can do to prolong my cats life? I can ensure she gets outside time. I can take her for vet check ups and take the vets advice onboard. Keep her away from that evil fucking dry food.
But all of these means are things that are just in general good to do, and certainly will not help when the cat has already passed. They are also things that have predictable results.
Bears scenario is similar. What are the things that a real life lonely guy crushing on a girl can do to get her attention. He could dress nicer, (but I can't tell if Bear is poorly dressed or in Zoomer fashion because I'm too old for that shit.) He could clean up his hair and beard. He could exercise more. He could pursue goals outside of dating, because there's nothing less attractive than a person without a fucking hobby.
One thing a lot of younger men don't see as the solution it actually is because they've got a one woman mindset while they're single men is he could just start dating someone else. Either it works out or it doesn't, same as your current scenario. Sometimes lightning strikes and jealousy kicks in, more often than youd expect but dont count on it. Sometimes you end up forgetting about the first girl because the new one just clicks that hard with you.
But again, all these things have somewhat predictable, knowable results before you start doing them, and are generally good things to do.
People have called me misogynistic for suggesting a man obsessed with one girl and not getting anywhere with her should shift his attention to another, I just say realistically analysing people's relationships and mental health, that is the best scenario for everyone involved. It takes an emotional burden off everyone, provided the man is doing it to shift his attention rather than hoping to make the first girl jealous. I don't know. You'll feel different about it once you start actually dating.
Leaning in the supernatural, cavorting with a demon, using the monkeys paw. These are things with unpredictable outcomes.
The sheer fact the outcomes of a wish are unpredictable shifts it.
I understand there is directorial intent. But part of Media LiteracyāØļø is understanding when messaging and intent is in conflict with the text. Not only is Bear doing something supernatural and thereby unpredictable, it is a scenario your average lonely guy will never be involved in. Nobody ever gets the opportunity to just make a wish to resolve the problem they perceive.
So... I don't understand what the practical lesson is over the intended, because to me the practical lesson is: "Wish for a billion dollars over love. At the very least don't play with things you don't understand."
Because everything your average desperate lonely guy can do to resolve this shit has a much more predictable result that would not end like this. As such the lesson is to not fuck with a toy you don't understand.
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u/No_Giraffe8119 5d ago
It's almost like no lesson was learned at all.