The first time I watched the horror film Obsession earlier this year, I left the theater feeling a potent mix of being thoroughly unsettled and deeply entertained. Following its breakout global box-office success over the summer months, it is safe to say that plenty of other moviegoers enjoyed the ride as well. As someone who eagerly looks forward to planning elaborate Halloween costumes every year, I initially saw the film as a fun, timely excuse to dress up as Inde Navarrete’s hit character, Nikki Freeman. After all, Nikki quickly emerged as the third most-searched Halloween costume of 2026, according to Google’s Frightgeist rankings, an annual comprehensive analysis of trending television and film costume searches.
One of Navarrete’s most popular and instantly recognizable looks from the movie features long, dark hair, a striking red zebra-print halter top, short leather shorts, and rugged black boots. Searches for Nikki’s signature top reached an all-time high right after the movie made its theatrical debut in May. Fast-fashion and apparel websites like Dolls Kill and Princess Polly quickly moved to stock and sell replicas to meet the sudden consumer demand. With my own brunette hair and roughly half of the outfit already sitting in my closet, I figured it would be an easy and fun look to pull off. Furthermore, paying homage to one of the year’s most prominent and successful Latina actresses felt like a cool and supportive choice.
However, as I spent more time putting together my plans for Halloween, I ultimately decided that dressing up as Nikki simply wasn’t worth the risk of inadvertently perpetuating the persistent "toxic Latina girlfriend" trope. I did not want to dismiss valid, growing concerns about how the character’s controlling, manipulative, and jealous behavior played directly into an old, damaging stereotype—one that ultimately overshadowed her genuine experience as a victim of supernatural forces beyond her control.
By now, film enthusiasts and internet commentators largely agree that, despite serving as the primary source of terror on screen, Nikki was never truly the villain of the story. Instead, she was systematically stripped of her free will and left to suffer immensely. Bear, the film’s actual antagonist and the only person who intimately knows what Nikki is truly going through, is persistently portrayed as a helpless casualty of her behavior. That specific narrative framing painfully mirrors the lived experiences of countless Latina women in real life who are routinely written off, dismissed, and labeled as tóxicas.
The plot of the movie follows Bear, a young man harboring an obsessive, unrequited crush on his coworker, Nikki. When he loses his nerve while trying to properly express his romantic feelings, he turns in desperation to a novelty toy known as a "One Wish Willow" and makes a wish that Nikki would love him more than anything else in the entire world. Unbeknownst to Bear, his supernatural wish unleashes a dark, inescapable curse, and Nikki instantly becomes possessed by an otherworldly, increasingly deadly obsession with him.
Nikki wears the heavily searched red-and-black outfit during several of her most memorable and chilling scenes: her infamous eerie pout, her uncanny backward walk away from Bear, and the startling moment she mutters the words "Freaky Nikki"—a derogatory nickname that her actual, conscious self deeply hated. She remains completely possessed during the vast majority of these terrifying sequences. In fleeting, frightening moments, her true conscious self desperately breaks through the supernatural fog, only for the malevolent wish to forcefully take over once again.
The longer I considered putting together the costume, the more uneasy I felt about the implications. Nikki was unequivocally the victim of a man who was dangerously obsessed with the mere idea of possessing her. To be entirely clear, the movie itself never explicitly identifies Nikki’s cultural background or heritage through direct exposition. The only scene that might subtly allude to her roots occurs when the possessed Nikki meticulously creates an altar on the kitchen floor, arranging a red cloth, a traditional prayer candle, and cempasúchil flowers and petals around Bear’s recently deceased cat. It closely resembles a traditional Mexican ofrenda, which is typically created to honor deceased loved ones for Día de los Muertos. Even if this was intended merely as a brief throwaway scene, utilizing a deeply traditional Mexican custom within a dark horror plot undeniably feels intentional. Nikki’s character drives a massive portion of the film’s horror elements—ranging from blood and gore to supernatural activity and murder. Yet, the complex motives behind her cursed actions complicate her connection to the long-standing toxic Latina girlfriend trope.
Across television, movies, music, and social media platforms, Latinas have historically been pigeonholed and portrayed as jealous, controlling, hot-tempered, obsessive, and inherently manipulative in their romantic relationships. Importantly, Latinos themselves also frequently perpetuate this stereotype in popular culture. In an interview with Navarrete conducted just a few weeks after the movie’s May 2026 release, video producer Alex Canales openly referred to Nikki as a "total tóxica," prompting Navarrete to nod quietly and say, "uh huh." Doubling down on the characterization, Canales added that there are "so many girls" he personally knows "in real life that don’t need a magic wish to be like [Nikki]."
This pervasive stereotype remains equally rampant within the music industry. Consider, for instance, Romeo Santos and Prince Royce’s hit 2025 bachata song "Lokita por mi," the lyrics of which romanticize a love interest described as "stubborn, paranoid, sarcastic, high-strung, feisty, possessive, and jealous," while awkwardly attempting to turn the phrase "my crazy bitch" into a term of endearment. Similarly, listeners can look to the numerous hit songs titled "La Tóxica" released by various prominent artists such as Farruko, Mariah Angeliq, and Anitta—different performers, different tracks, yet all ultimately reducing Latinas to the exact same flat, one-dimensional caricature.
Even in instances where a Latina character’s cultural identity is not central to her narrative arc, the broader entertainment world has persistently made these negative traits seem Latina-coded. That implicit, ingrained connection is difficult to unsee once you notice it, particularly in the case of Nikki. Navarrete herself addressed this ongoing discourse during an interview with "De Los," the Los Angeles Times’ Latinidad vertical publication. She candidly shared that many people had used the "tóxica" label to reduce Nikki to a tired stereotype based entirely on her own identity as a Mexican American woman—and admitted that the reductive commentary deeply hurt her.
"Whenever I first saw that, I kind of cried because it made me really sad that people took my pride in being Mexican and saw it as, ‘Let’s degrade this person’s experience,’" Navarrete told De Los during the interview. "There’s this idea that Latina women are just so intense and so crazy. But let’s look a lot deeper than that. It did hurt my feelings. But I can understand where they’re coming from. It’s a surface-level thing to say, and sometimes jokes are just that."
And therein lies the fundamental problem with cultural stereotypes: they persistently spread and endure, regardless of the original intentions behind them. Many individuals find themselves boxing themselves into these narrow definitions simply as a mechanism to survive until something better or more authentic comes along. Obsession itself was initially a modest, small-budget production that miraculously transformed into an overnight box-office success, providing Navarrete with her major feature-film breakout role. In many ways, she functioned as Obsession’s "final girl"—a classic horror film trope in which one resilient female character manages to survive the carnage. In that sense, her on-screen survival mirrored the very real resilience and coping mechanisms that many women labeled as tóxicas must rely on to endure the heavy, compounding pressures of patriarchal power structures in everyday life.
