Obsession - The Cat (Spoilers)
I keep seeing people talk about Bear not knowing the wish would work…But I don’t really agree. Kinda.
The movie opens with Bear’s cat dying. The cat dies because it ingested the medicine in Bear’s (grandmother’s) medicine cabinet.
Jump forward to the wish. Bear is offered an opportunity to tell Nikki how he really feels, but he chickens out at the last minute, and instead makes his wish. Shortly after this wish is made, Nikki begins acting strange, like she’s drunk or on drugs…And she tells Bear “her cat died.” Which is really weird, because well, her cat never died, Bear’s did.
Nikki continues to loop back to cat, over and over throughout the movie, despite Bear repeatedly asking her not to do that.
Now, when Bear goes to meet Sarah, he brings the pills along with him, and awkwardly/jokingly refers to them as sleeping pills. Why did he bring the pills with him to meet his female friend alone at the park?
After all, they aren’t his, they’re his grandmothers. He doesn’t need them to manage any kind of condition. Sarah is killed by Nikki shortly afterwards.
I think the intent of the pills is to mirror roofies, and the cat serves as a way to draw your attention to this. Nikki becomes transfixed on the cat because she “is” the cat. Bear passed up his opportunity to potentially pursue a consensual relationship with Nikki and instead made the wish. I think the wish in this instance is a stand in for how he intended to proceed (drugging Nikki), and is ultimately why the wish turns out so negatively. Aka, his intent was always negative.
Sarah serves to show that even when presented with a situation in which he knows the girl likes him, and would presumably consent to his advances, he still opted to bring the pills along. I think Nikki kills her here not only as a narrative punishment for Bear’s actions, but also because she is “saving” her friend from Bear.