The four movies Inde Navarette couldn’t live without: “Just beautiful and amazing”
If you had to pick one movie that defined the changing shape of the film industry this year, you’d do well to pick Curry Barker’s breakout horror hit, Obsession.
The movie, shot by the YouTuber and his team for the minuscule budget of $750,000 all-in, has raked in nearly $300million at the box office, and is only drawing in more fans as time ticks on through the most invaluable marketing mechanism there is: Word of mouth.
Though Barker’s effective, sometimes humorous directorial decision-making is often discussed, it’s the mind-blowing performance of the 25-year-old star, Inde Navarette, that is most talked about when wide-mouthed theatre-goers leave post-credits, popcorn half-eaten.
In Obsession, Navarette plays Nikki, the music shop clerk whose personhood is thrown into agonising pseudo-possession after her friend and colleague, Bear, makes a wish that she loves him more than anyone else in the world. By some unnamed supernatural force, the real Nikki and the Nikki of Bear’s wish contend with one another beneath the surface of her subjectivity.
She yells, shrieks, laughs and barks for attention in a doomed spiral only death can break. It’s a haunting paranormal performance in one of the most original horrors this decade, so it might come as a surprise to you that most of Navarette’s favourite movies are on the softer, happier side. In conversation with Letterboxd, the American actor was asked to name her top four favourite films, and right off the bat, she named Princess Mononoke, the historical fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, gushing, “Miyazaki films are just beautiful and amazing”.
Continuing to spotlight the world of animation, Navarette then gave a nod to the 2004 classic, Shrek 2, stating matter-of-factly, “I think it’s one of the best cinematic experiences ever, and I also think it has the best soundtrack as well”, with a cheeky smile.
Long preferred by fans over the first instalment for songs on the soundtrack like Counting Crows’ ‘Accidentally in Love’, Jennifer Saunders’ energetic cover of ‘Holding Out for a Hero’, the second ogre offering is both playful and poignant, two modes that Navarette shifts through so gracefully in the suspenseful opening of Obsession. Still, the reception to the new Shrek 5 trailer has been quite the opposite.
Four years before the release of Shrek 2, another action-packed epic hit the big screen in the form of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, featuring Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix. Born in 2001, Navarette couldn’t quite catch the official release, but she reminisced, “I think it was my earliest memory of watching a movie, watching Gladiator with my mum. Ridley Scott just did a phenomenal job with that movie”.
Her last choice was, perhaps, the closest to Obsession, in both year and temperament: “I can’t stop talking about it publicly,” Navarette confessed of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, “So why not take this opportunity again just to shout it out? That film was beautiful and amazing, and the aspect ratio changing constantly, and also just the Imax experiences…. Insane. Please keep doing what you’re doing. I’m a huge fan!” Same goes for us to you, Inde!
Inde Navarette’s four favourite movies:
- Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997)
- Shrek 2 (Andrew Adamson, Conrad Vernon, and Kelly Asbury, 2004)
- Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000)
- Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025)
