By any metric, the horror film Obsession has been one of the most extraordinary Hollywood success stories of 2026.
Made on a budget of around $750,000 and released in May, it went on to earn $488 million worldwide, catapulting 26-year-old director and screenwriter Curry Barker—originally known for his YouTube sketch comedy—to the top of the industry’s “it” list.
So why, you might ask, are people creating a stink over Universal Studios, the international distributor of Obsession, adding its lead female character, Nikki, to the cast of the Halloween Horror Nights event at its Hollywood theme park? Even though the actor who plays her seems very much on board? To answer that, one has to review three months of fierce and enduring debate.
Since the movie hit theaters, fans and critics have been at odds over a thorny question: Who is the victim in Obsession? The plot concerns an awkward, painfully insecure young man, Bear (Michael Johnston), who yearns to be in a romantic relationship with his friend, the seemingly unattainable Nikki (Inde Navarrette). In a moment of frustration, he snaps something called a “One Wish Willow”—believing it to be a whimsical and harmless novelty gift—and voices his desire that she love him more than anyone else in the world.
From that moment forward, Nikki is an unnatural version of herself, moving as if controlled by another consciousness. Her need to be with Bear around the clock is marked by increasingly alarming performances of total devotion that finally escalate to murder. Bear recognizes almost right away that something is wrong but cannot resist acting out his fantasy with the helpless and brainwashed woman who has taken to his bed.
As a consequence, there’s been a lot of hand-wringing as to whether viewers understood that Nikki was not the true villain or monster of the story, regardless of the acts she was cursed to commit. “Nikki was the victim and only Nikki,” insisted one representative X user in a viral post in June, adding that it would be “delusional” to apply the same label to Bear.
Whether anyone did try to defend Bear (as, for example, a guy who had no idea he was casting a real magic spell) seemed beside the point. Commentators wanted to hammer home that Nikki was robbed of her autonomy and that she was effectively raped due to her inability to consent to sex. Again and again, they invoked some theoretical viewer who saw her as the monster in the situation, decrying this reading of the film.
Then, on Monday, Universal Studios Hollywood officially announced that an actor portraying Nikki would haunt the park during its upcoming Halloween Horror Nights, which will run from late September 3 to November 1 and will also feature attractions like a haunted house based on Sinners. Mentioning the addition of Nikki to the event in a press release, Universal teased that “guests may find themselves face-to-face with the latest victim of the One Wish Willow’s terrifying curse,” apparently agreeing with the consensus that the character is at the mercy of a paranormal force rather than intentionally malicious.
It didn’t matter. X users called it a “catastrophically bad idea,” said it was in poor taste to portray “a victim of sexual assault” as a frightening figure, and worried about the actor’s safety as they interacted with park guests. A few argued that it should be Bear wandering the park, overlooking the problem that the character has no distinguishing visual shorthand, whereas Nikki, as in the climax of the film, will be “all bloody,” with tattoos scribbled on her body, according to John Murdy, the creative director and executive producer of Halloween Horror Nights.
