I am still deeply scarred by Toni Collette’s Oscar snub for Hereditary.
I didn’t necessarily expect her to win. That was never really the point. The point is that she deserved to be nominated, and the fact that she wasn’t felt like one of the clearest examples of how dismissive Hollywood could still be toward horror. For horror fans, it wasn’t simply about Toni Collette. It was about what her performance represented.
For years, we had been begging to be taken seriously. Horror had spent decades producing incredible filmmakers, incredible actors, and incredible films, only to be pushed aside whenever awards season rolled around. Then Hereditary happened. Whether or not you like A24’s style of horror, there was something undeniably important about that movie. It crossed over in a way horror films rarely do. Critics embraced it. General audiences embraced it. Hollywood embraced it.
And at the center of all of that was Toni Collette.
Ari Aster directed a phenomenal film and delivered one of the most important horror debuts of the last twenty years. But Collette elevated that movie to another level entirely. Her performance wasn’t just great for a horror movie. It was one of the best performances of the year, regardless of genre. She carried the emotional weight of that film on her shoulders and somehow made every second of it feel authentic. Grief, rage, guilt, despair, terror. It was all there.
Whether she would have won the Oscar is beside the point. The fact that she wasn’t even invited into the conversation remains one of the most frustrating award decisions I’ve ever seen.
Maybe that’s why this past awards season felt so satisfying.
For the first time in what feels like forever, horror wasn’t standing outside the room asking for permission to enter. Horror was the conversation. Horror performances were being recognized. Horror filmmakers were being celebrated. Horror films were competing across major categories and, more importantly, winning. Sure, there were still people doing mental gymnastics and calling everything a thriller, but horror fans knew exactly what was happening.
The genre had finally arrived.
Watching Amy Madigan stand on that stage and win an Oscar for Weapons didn’t erase the frustration of what happened to Toni Collette, but it helped. It finally felt like some of that bitterness had somewhere to go. Here was a brilliant performance in a horror film being recognized on the biggest stage in the industry. Not dismissed. Not ignored. Not treated like it belonged somewhere else.
Which brings me to Obsession.
The success story behind Curry Barker’s film is already remarkable. Focus Features saw something special in the movie when they acquired it out of Toronto and committed to giving it a real push. The film didn’t explode overnight. It found its audience gradually. Week after week, the numbers kept growing. The word of mouth kept spreading. Suddenly, what looked like a promising independent horror film became one of the biggest stories in cinema.
Years from now, people will analyze why Obsession worked. They’ll talk about Curry Barker’s screenplay. They’ll talk about his direction. They’ll talk about the editing. They’ll talk about Focus Features and one of the smartest acquisitions in recent memory.
They should.
But none of those conversations should happen without spending just as much time talking about Inde Navarrette.
Because what Navarrette accomplishes in this film is extraordinary.
One of the things that makes Nikki such a difficult character is that the performance has to constantly evolve. The audience has to love her, fear her, sympathize with her, root for her, feel uncomfortable around her, and eventually become terrified of her. Most actors would be lucky to convincingly pull off two or three of those emotional turns. Navarrette somehow manages all of them.
What impressed me most wasn’t any individual scene. It was the range. The confidence. The control. At no point does Nikki feel like a collection of traits designed to move the plot forward. She feels like a real person. That’s why the horror works. That’s why the emotional moments land. That’s why audiences have become so invested in the movie.
Much like Toni Collette elevated Hereditary, Inde Navarrette elevates Obsession.
And that’s why I’ve become increasingly frustrated by the growing conversation that she should be campaigned as a supporting actress.
I understand the logic behind it. Awards campaigns are often strategic. Studios look for the clearest path toward nominations and wins. Sometimes that means moving performers into categories where the competition is less crowded.
But every time I hear that argument applied to Navarrette, it feels like we’re immediately starting from a position that diminishes what she actually accomplished.
Nikki is not a supporting character. The movie belongs to her. The emotional burden of the film belongs to her. The audience’s connection to the story belongs to her. Everything that makes Obsession work ultimately runs through that performance.
So why are we already trying to move her out of the Best Actress conversation?
If horror fans spent years arguing that Toni Collette deserved to be treated like every other major actress in Hollywood, then we should be saying the same thing now. Not because Inde Navarrette is in a horror movie, but because she delivered one of the year’s best leading performances.
That’s the category she belongs in.
If she gets nominated, it should be for Best Actress. If she wins, it should be for Best Actress. And if she loses, she should lose while standing shoulder to shoulder with every other leading performance being celebrated this year.
Because after spending decades asking people to take horror seriously, the last thing we should be doing is minimizing one of our own accomplishments for the sake of improving the odds.
Let Inde Navarrette compete as what she is.
The lead of Obsession.
And one of the best actresses working in film this year.
