I’d kill to be a fly on the wall and watch Nikki’s interview with the cops after she calls them and gets released from the hospital.
Nikki would’ve had to be inside and call the cops but way more likely she would’ve ran outside to the first person she called or to a place she knows to beg them to call. The police show up and find a woman covered in blood, and wounds (if they can’t see the glass in her head wound the hospital will inform them later), wearing another woman’s hair, and has strange drawings scribbled all over her as she’s almost incoherent.
They GO to Bear’s house and there’s a man at the front door who’s been executed, and then there’s a body of Sarah enshrined, naked, and has her face beaten beyond recognition with no wounds on her body that aren’t post mortem. A glance at the body shows tattoos that match the living victims scribbles and dna collection is gonna show the hair on her is from the body too later on. Then you have a body which clearly ODed with zero wounds on him, gunpowder on his hands, and was pushed off the couch from someone’s lap before rigor mortis set in.
The later investigation will show that Nikki and Ian are exes before Nikki suddenly and inexplicably became fixated and attached to Bear. She’s telling everyone she’s relapsing, Bear showed no signs of caring about her relapse during, and they all recount her suddenly freaking out and trying to kill herself the last time they all met. Some will even confirm the OD victim had no reaction as it happened besides frowning, and didn’t even look at her. Ian’s phone will confirm text messages from Sarah long after she died, but they’re not gonna be able to tell whether they’re from Nikki or Bear. They’ll also be able to search Sarah’s car and find the acceptance letter from Luther if not in the house if Bear took it with him. They find gunpowder on Nikki AND Bear’s fingers (Bear man handled that damn gun during his suicide pondering). Even if they drug test Nikki to see if she was drugged if she took anything in the last 6 months (unlikely since the whole group stopped doing drugs for at least a year by Sarah’s comment, and she relapses because her friend group is falling apart and she doesn’t think she’s getting into her art college). If that shit DID come back positive it would only help Nikki? I don’t think whether it comes back positive or not matters for the evidence.
The story that paints is Bear wanted Sarah, forced Nikki to play the girlfriend role for her, then when he found out Sarah was going to be leaving to art school he snapped and killed her. He then made Nikki dress up as Sarah and wear her hair and clothes out of regret. Ian came in to confront Bear (about Sarah’s whereabouts or as to where Nikki is and why he’s still keeping her drugged without helping her recover at all), and Bear executed Nikki’s ex to keep her. You can’t tell whether Bear or Ian died first so you have to assume Bear killed Ian then killed himself out of guilt for everything and loss of his love. (Which is also a really good point to the romance trope of “I was here the whole time”).
Now Nikki’s INTERVIEW and account of what happened? That’s gonna be the insane shit. I said in the last what happens after post that Nikki’s going to match all of the baseline descriptions and patterns of a hostage victim. We see touch screens in the film! Criminology started considering the psychology and patterns of killers and victims decades ago! Sarahs body alone and the nature of her being found stripped naked and presented while her cause of death is so insanely violent puts a crime of passion and fixation on the absolute top of the list for what’s going on. Too many people know Nikki and what she’s like to point to her being capable of doing I tout of jealousy for a rival love interest as much as Bear being the socially awkward guy who doesn’t have deep friendships snapping and killing the girl who he talks with the most.
Nikki’s account of things is that she asked her friend Bear who she knew was crushing on her to drive her home. She got in her house then everything went pitch black, she woke up outside and wasn’t acting like herself as she talked to Bear. She blacks out again. She wakes up naked and in BED with Bear and making out. She’s conscious during sex and can’t ask him to stop or do anything against him. At this point she’s mostly blacked out, she regains control at night and begs for Bear to kill her. She HEARS him walk away. Now every time she regains control she tries to kill herself because it’s so miserable to live terrified and flashing in and out of consciousness. Then suddenly she wakes up surrounded by her dead friends with a gun in her hand pointed to her head, and she finally feels full clarity alongside the fear of what’s going on
