Well, I finally watched this movie. I'm just gonna assume you have too or at least know what happens.
The horror itself was fine, not the scariest thing I've seen but it was ok. I've seen yandere stories in anime or manga scarier than this. Honestly my movie watching experience was overshadowed by the other reason people talk about this, the discourse around "who the real villain is". Unsurprisingly, foids pin all the blame on Bear.
Their first claim for why it's all Bear's fault is "he took Nikki's free will away by using a wish granting toy". That is pedantically true, the series of events began from that action, but everyone who says this conveniently leaves out the obvious fact: Bear didn't know some stupid $7 toy was actually gonna have supernatural powers. He was just as confused as everyone around him. To use a plastic wish granting stick to wish for love looked about as effective as asking a magic 8 ball for advice.
The next claim for why Bear is evil and the most disgusting villain of all time is a variation of "he took advantage of her when she was under his spell". It is true that Bear goes along with it initially and starts dating/banging Nikki, but mind you, Bear didn't suspect the stick did anything. He went along with Nikki's explanations for why she was acting weird, like her father dying or her being on drugs, because he's a functioning adult who didn't believe anything supernatural could be at play. But once that was made apparent to him, he did try to fix it.
So then the next claim is "he didn't try to help Nikki" or "he didn't try hard enough". First of all that's not true, he did try to fix what he did, and second of all, what was he supposed to do exactly? Nikki was possessed by something supernatural. No mundane solution like taking her to a hospital was going to work. The movie makes it very clear that the only thing Bear could do to end the situation was to off himself, something which no sane person would do as a first resort.
Now mind you, I'm not saying Bear did NOTHING wrong. Of course he did, he's flawed and makes mistakes just like all of us. What I am saying is this narrative that he was malicious and just wanted to take away Nikki's free will so he could fuck her (ie rape her) completely twists his true intentions. He had a crush on someone and he wanted her to like him back. Not even just to fuck her, he wanted her to genuinely love him the same way he loved her. His only real
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