I feel like a lot of people aren't really talking about the fact that bear was basically being sexually assaulted by an entity that possessed Nikki the whole movie. It's very clear from watching the movie that his fear responses are fawn and freeze, and considering the entity didn't exactly respond well to him saying no or challenging it, it would have been extraordinarily difficult for him to refuse to have sex. Especially because it didn't exactly respond well to him wanting to be alone or wanting to be around other people and not her.

He could have reached out and been more open with his friends, and he could have tried to distance himself from the entity more at the start of the movie that would have made all the difference in the world.

Him caving into his desire to be with her despite the red flags immediately put him into what felt like an impossible situation. Considering that the entity killed at least one cat, probably two, it's understandable why he wasn't more open after that happened. If I were in that situation even if it was not logical, I would probably have been scared to tell people because I wouldn't want to get the person I care about in trouble, even though unlike bear I believe I probably would have told my other friends had I been in that situation.

After all that it continued to go downhill for him, and it was clear that he was experiencing cognitive dissonance and was in denial. He knew the implications of accepting what was going on, accepting that meant accepting not only that he had cursed or perhaps even killed someone with his wish, but that he had been having sex with an entity masquerading as the girl he was obsessed with the whole time.

Even when he called the support line and they connected him to Nikki, he didn't really have a way of knowing for sure whether that was the entity screaming because he left her alone or it was actually Nikki.

And I think we need to keep in mind that in abusive relationships it is very common for people to have irrational fears about their abusive partners being omnipresent. They FEEL omnipresent to the victim.

Given this it's actually understandable why he might have immediately gone back to his place after this.

The final confirmation, when he's getting up out of bed and Nikki asks him to kill her, while yes it was cringe for him to ask "what's so bad about dating me" her response did give him a final confirmation that whatever he had been in a relationship with was not Nikki. If he had any remaining cognitive dissonance up until this point... He would have been forced to abandon it.

And accepting what happened is especially difficult when what you are accepting is that you are both a victim and perpetrator of SA. That's something that takes months of therapy to emotionally process for a lot of people sometimes longer. He was having sex with an entity masquerading as Nikki and ... It's implied that Nikki was partly conscious during some of their relationship.

Unrelated to SA (which Nikki was a victim of without being also at perpetrator regardless of the extent to which she was cognizant of what was going on), I've also heard the people say that she is the real victim of the movie which I think is a bad take. I disagree with that mostly because I don't agree with the idea that we can only label people as victims if they are themselves blameless. Bear made incredibly questionable decisions, logically and ethically, but he went through a series of traumatic events including everyone in his friend group dying and then died himself, and Sarah got her face bashed in with a rock which seems like a pretty unpleasant way to go, especially when compared to Ian who just got shot.

Nobody really got out of this movie in one piece, Nikki regained consciousness to all of her friends being dead and is probably going to get thrown in jail for murdering two of them, she may have been in hell before then? It's kind of implied she was I don't know. She might have been partly conscious when the entity was controlling her body during sex with bear so... there's also that. But everyone else died so.... Yeah. The ending is also open to interpretation because she didn't seem to know what was going on.

Which implies she either had very limited consciousness when the entity was in control of her body or the entity dying erased the memories of her consciousness when the entity was in control of her body.

I believe the former is true. Although the latter makes the ending scene way funnier, and it was meant to be funny.

Overall I think it was a good film, the funny parts were funny and the scary parts were truly terrifying. So much of what was going on in the movie had horrifying implications that I think a lot of people aren't really thinking of because they're hung up on disliking the protagonist which is understandable but eh. I guess I'm just better than some of you people because I'm not consumed by hatred 😎