Inde Navarrette plays Nikki in Obsession, the co-worker whose easy questions help set off the horror. In the film, Bear is a 20-something record-store employee who cannot bring himself to ask Nikki out, even after she asks him directly whether he likes her.
That hesitation is the wound at the center of Curry Barker’s feature debut, and it is why Navarrette’s role is drawing attention now. Obsession turns a painfully familiar dating standoff into a nightmare about what happens when a crush is left to rot in silence. Bear, played by Michael Johnston, snaps a magical tchotchke called a One Wish Willow in half and asks for Nikki to love him more than anything in the world.
From there, Navarrette’s character becomes the film’s sharpest shock. Nikki transforms into a woman possessed by jealousy, duct-tapes Bear’s front door shut, puts flesh from his dead cat into his sandwiches, and lurks in dark corners watching him sleep. The movie frames that spiral as a warning about fear of vulnerability, but it also leans into wish-fulfillment horror, turning the object of Bear’s desire into an extreme threat instead of a simple payoff.
That mix is what makes Obsession feel tied to the moment. The Atlantic described the film as dramatizing a particular kind of Gen Z anxiety spiral, where avoiding confrontation can become its own punishment. Barker, who is 26 years old, built that idea into a story that keeps returning to the same blunt lesson: a wish is not a substitute for a conversation.
Sarah, another co-worker played by Megan Lawless, sharpens that point in a later pivotal scene when she is about to tell Bear that she actually likes him. By then, the damage is already done. Navarrette’s Nikki is no longer just the person Bear could not ask out; she is the nightmare he created by trying to skip past the risk of being known, and the film leaves that as its cruelest joke.
