[This story contains spoilers from Obsession.]
It’s a tale as old as time: Be careful what you wish for.
In Curry Barker’s supernatural horror film Obsession, Inde Navarrette’s Nikki becomes the target of a dangerous wish when her shy friend Bear (Michael Johnston), desperate to escape the friendzone, wishes that she would love him more than anyone else in the world. To his surprise, it works — but not in the fairytale way he imagined. Instead, Nikki’s love spirals into something violent, possessive and terrifying.
As Nikki transforms from an ordinary young woman into an unhinged force willing to do anything to keep Bear to herself, Navarrette delivers a seamless and chilling performance that has quickly positioned her as one of horror’s most exciting new talents.
A major part of Obsession’s impact also comes from Barker’s fresh voice as a writer-director. Following its buzzy premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Focus Features acquired the $750,000 indie for $15 million, with critics and audiences praising its bold take on supernatural horror. But at the center of it all is Navarrette, whose fearless turn grounds the film’s shocking premise in something both heartbreaking and haunting.
“I think the horror world will be very happy,” Navarrette tells The Hollywood Reporter of Barker’s future in the genre. “It’s gonna be a lot better with Curry part of it, because he’s a new and specific voice.”
Read on to find out how Navarrette pulled off that bonkers performance, whether Nikki and Bear ever could have worked if he’d just told the truth, how she unpacked that devastating plea for death and what she believes really happens to Nikki after the film’s shocking twist.
I don’t know how much you’ve seen online, but everywhere I look, people are calling this one of the great horror performances. What has it been like stepping into horror in such a major way and already getting that kind of response from audiences, especially horror fans?
It feels very surreal. I try not to look at a lot of comments, only because I really want to take in every moment. I mean, I’m doing a press junket for the first time. I’m doing a bunch of things for the first time. So, I really want to be present, but it feels really insane. I mean, it’s nuts. It feels really, really good.
Your chemistry with Michael is so central to making this story work. Did that connection feel immediate when you first read together?
Yes, I felt like I understood Nikki more reading opposite Michael because the responses I was saying, the lines written down, became real and made sense. There’s a different meaning to them. It was like a person-to-person conversation versus two actors reiterating what was on a page, and our chemistry was so immediate and specific. We have brother-sister chemistry, which is great, because then you look at them on screen and you go they should not be together, it feels gross and wrong on so many different levels. But one specific one being that Michael and I have chemistry that is not romantic, so I think that really adds to their relationship.
Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston in Obsession.
Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection
Early on, Nikki and Bear’s relationship feels complicated and even confusing. One could argue she’s sending mixed signals, but when Bear downplays his feelings and says they’re just friends, Nikki looks like she’s genuinely disappointed. If Bear had been honest from the start, do you think Nikki might’ve been open to something more?
I completely think so. Something Curry and I talked about in the beginning was that since the whole film is from Bear’s perspective, we never leave that. We played with this idea of: Bear doesn’t know how Nikki feels. Bear only knows that he really likes her. So we played with the performance aspect of Nikki, of having it be super ambiguous. Does she actually like him? Does she not? Because that’s exactly how Bear feels. But I think, as the person who played Nikki, she definitely would have been open to the conversation if he had just said something, but he didn’t.
Nikki’s an extremely free-spirited person, because she talks about quitting, she talks about leaving, she talks about wanting to become a writer. I think Nikki loves, and she loves to love. It was a little disappointing that he also thought they were friends, because I think she felt a vibe.
Your physicality in this film is so unpredictable — sometimes terrifying, sometimes darkly funny — and certain moments even reminded me of classic possession performances like The Exorcist. Did you look to any iconic horror performances for inspiration, or was Nikki’s movement something you wanted to build from scratch?
Nikki’s movement was something that Curry and I built from scratch, not because we didn’t want to take any inspiration. It was just as soon as we got attached to the project, we just really spearheaded. It was a fast track. We filmed it in 26 days, and it was an indie-budget film, so we didn’t have a lot of things at our disposal. But that created this organic movement for me. I mean, I’m not a movement person. I’ve never really done that before. I used to dance, but Curry would be on the opposite side of me, mimicking something with his body, and then I would do it in a way, and be like, “No, no, like this.” And so we would mirror each other. Technically, the choreographer would be Curry Barker. (Laughs.)
Your voice work and facial expressions are unsettling at times, especially in scenes like the party sequence. Were those screams and vocal shifts really all you, and how did you craft Nikki’s voice once she begins to change?
Yeah, everything in the movie, whether it’s facials or vocals, are me. We didn’t use any AI, or CGI. Everything was extremely practical. I do know that certain things were pitched up for an effect, to be in symphony with the sound design. But Curry and I had a lot of fun making voices. It was terrifying, especially during that really long monologue. That was an audition scene for me. I just remember being like, “I’m going to have so much fun with this, because who cares?” You either have to send it or not go in at all. I remember doing the audition, and like my goal was to make everybody as uncomfortable as humanly possible, and [thinking], “How does that come out, and what do you do?” So that voice came out of an urge for me trying to make everybody extremely uncomfortable.
Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection
The moment where Nikki appears asleep, but Bear hears her tell him to kill her. How did you interpret that scene — was that really Nikki herself breaking through?
Yes, that really was Nikki breaking through. If you look closely during that scene, my body is convulsing. There were so many times when there was a physical nature to Nikki that my body also added. It was almost like my brain and body were completely disconnected, like the two Nikkis, where I would get really visceral shakes. Especially in that scene, you can see my body trembling, because you feel the physical anxiety. She’s begging to be killed, because she knows that a person that should protect her and love her, her friend that she has been kind to, and listens to. At the bar scene, she goes back to him, like, “No, you were saying something.” She really, really cares about Bear. And how gut-wrenching that is to watch him do everything that he’s doing. That scene in the film really shows how much it affects the quote-unquote real Nikki, how much damage she’s taking and how traumatizing this experience is for her. She just wants to end it all, because she doesn’t have another option.
When she becomes so much more violent as the film goes on, do you think that that’s because she has some deep resentment for Bear for making that wish?
I never thought about that, but I love it when things like that come up, because I mean, we never distinctly tell the audience how to feel. We allow them to feel what they’re feeling. And it’s great hearing the feedback, because it’s like, yeah, that makes sense. It makes complete sense, but also at the same time, Nikki’s always at a 10 from the second act on, so whenever you feel jealousy, what is a 10 version of jealousy look like? I mean, there’s crimes of passion, there’s murders that come out of passion and Nikki is just extremely passionate. (Laughs.) I think it was the dichotomy of both, but I don’t think the violence stemmed from resentment, because Nikki is so in love with Bear. She’s obsessed with him, so it’s just the heightened versions, and what does that heighten look like?
The film’s third act is already intense, but I know the TIFF cut was even more graphic before some material was removed to avoid an NC-17 rating. How different was that earlier version, and what can you share about what audiences didn’t end up seeing?
Honestly, it’s not that different. It’s just whenever I kill Sarah, we reduced the amount of head smashes because it was too long. I really loved the response at TIFF, because people really liked how long it is and how aggressive Nikki is. It shows how obsessed she is, what she’s willing to do for Bear and how far she’s willing to take it. It’s just really intense. Also, what was cut was the aftermath. Curry wanted to play with the idea of what does a human body do after that sort of smashes, like there’s gurgles come out, so there was gurgles, there was like human sounds that might have been too gruesome for an R rating, so they kind of downsized it. TIFF definitely got a really gruesome, gruesome version, but it sounded like they liked it. Yeah, they definitely got a sneak peek. (Laughs.)
What was your reaction to the ending and Bear’s decision to sacrifice himself to undo the wish? How did you process that for Nikki, and was there ever talk about her dying, too?
Whenever I first got the script, I tried not to read any scenes Bear had alone, because I really wanted to see this fully from Nikki’s perspective. So, the first time that I ever saw that scene was at TIFF, and I just started crying, because I was like, “Holy shit, he goes from this innocent boy to making a wish out of desperation, not knowing if it will work, and then it does work, and then he gets what he wants, but then he realizes how damaging it is to her, and that he doesn’t want it anymore, so he does make that decision. But what I thought was cool is Michael asked Curry if he could try and throw up the pills after he ingests all of them, because he’s too coward at the end of the day, he doesn’t want to die, he thinks of himself. So, the moment where he actually goes to throw all of them up, and then you hear Nikki making the wish that he would be more in love with her, that’s the reason why he dies, because he actually doesn’t have time to throw them all up, because then a wish overtakes him.
In terms of what potentially could have been my death scene in the ending, the original ending was that I was going to choose that I didn’t want to live that way anymore, after all of the trauma and pain. Last second, they were like, “Let’s just try this one thing,” and from other people’s perspective, which is high praise for me, and I really, really appreciate it, they did one take, they felt like it was magical and electric, and they knew that that was the ending. At the end of all of this, it was such a release to get all of what I felt like Nikki was experiencing out of my body. I’m really glad that she didn’t die. I’m really glad that she’s considered a horror final girl, that I think is the sickest title ever.
Do you have a horror icon or Scream Queen you look up to?
Oh my God. Well, I’ve never said this before publicly, but I’m a really big fan of Jennifer’s Body. Megan Fox’s performance in that film, I think, was groundbreaking, was so stark different than anything she had ever done before. I love her performance. She really twists it. Now that I’m thinking about it, the roles are kind of very similar to a certain extent. So, I would say Jennifer’s Body is a Scream Queen that I’ve definitely loved throughout time. A more modern day version of that is I am just in awe of Mia Goth. I think she is so wonderful in the horror genre, because she is so incredibly grounded and human, which adds just another layer to horror that I love.
Once Nikki returns to herself, she’s still left with extreme trauma and consequences, given that the possessed version of her murdered two people. Where do you imagine she goes from there?
I think she starts a grieving process. There’s jokes about her going to jail, because obviously, where else is she gonna go? (Laughs.) She’s kind of done it all, and nobody believes that the wish is real. But I think in her personal journey, she just starts grieving. I mean, we all go through traumatic events, and so I think, similar to Nikki’s, you just start the grieving process.
Because Nikki’s future is left so open-ended, it feels like there’s more story to tell. Could you see yourself revisiting this world for a sequel?
I absolutely would, but I really love the idea that it’s kind of left there. It’s like a memory, whenever you look back to yourself at like 24, 23, 22 those are all chunks, and they begin and end at a certain point. I think that’s kind of like this story. It begins and it ends, and then it’s new Nikki, if you will. (Laughs.)
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Obsession is now playing in theaters. Check out all of The Hollywood Reporter‘s coverage here.
