Inde Navarrette’s disguises let her sit through “Obsession” screenings unnoticed while she listens for which scenes scare the crowd. The 25-year-old says every viewing she’s had of the film has been with an audience.
“I hide really well, and they don’t see me,” she said. “I’ve worn many wigs.”
Across those screenings, she’s noticed that the scares land differently from crowd to crowd. Her exception: “But the dead-cat sandwich gets everybody,” she said.
That scene involves her character, Nikki, serving Michael Johnston’s Bear a sandwich made from his dead cat. Bear has used the One Wish Willow, a supernatural charm, to force his coworker Nikki to fall in love with him.
Playing Nikki could frighten Navarrette herself. She sometimes avoided mirrors during production and didn’t want to watch footage of her performance. “Oh, yes. I was definitely scared by a lot of Obsession,” she said.
On an Air Canada flight to the Toronto Film Festival, she thought a passenger near the front kept looking at her. When she walked past his seat, she discovered he was watching the part of “Obsession” where Nikki walks backward.
“Yeah, I would be horrified too, if I saw that woman on the plane!” she recalled thinking.
