Inde Navarrette Reveals The Tragic Love Story To Watch After 'Obsession' [EXCLUSIVE]

Inde Navarrette, star of the 2026 smash horror hit Obsession, recently told JustWatch that the movie shares some similarities with 2009's 500 Days of Summer. While it might initially seem like an odd comparison, both films carry an identical emotional undercurrent, centered on men who believe they are in love, only to find themselves unraveling when that feeling is not returned.

Revisiting 500 Days of Summer through the lens of Obsession reveals a much less romantic parallel than one would expect from a film billed as a romantic comedy-drama. The film follows Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a greeting card writer who becomes fixated on his co-worker Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) after realizing they have a few things in common.

From the beginning, Summer is completely honest with Tom when it comes to what she wants. She does not believe in love, and she isn't looking for a serious relationship. Tom agrees to those terms, while secretly holding onto the expectation that she will eventually change her mind. That disconnect becomes the foundation of everything that follows.

Tom Hansen's Version of Events Is Not Neutral

At no point in the story is Tom confused about Summer's intentions. He simply chooses to reinterpret them to suit his internal narrative and treats every moment of closeness as evidence that she will come around, while ignoring every contradiction. The movie's nonlinear structure and Tom's selective memory after the breakup are often read as heartbreak in its purest form.

Meanwhile, Summer is framed as the bad guy when she ultimately moves on. Even the folks on the JustWatch Podcast say "she's a little mean," like the character needs to minimize herself to make her ex-fling feel better. That logic makes absolutely no sense at all since Tom's sad boy act is essentially a kind of subtle resentment that manifests as self-sabotage.

Quitting his job, isolating himself, and fixating on what he has lost are framed as emotional responses, but they are still adult choices. The film just allows those choices to exist under the guise of heartbreak, which makes it easier to overlook how much agency is involved in Tom sustaining his downward trajectory. In that sense, Tom's behavior echoes Bear's in Obsession.

In case you missed it, Obsession focuses on Baron "Bear" Bailey (Michael Johnston), who is secretly in love with his friend Nikki Freeman (Navarrette). Instead of telling her how he feels and risking rejection, he uses a novelty occult item called the One Wish Willow to force her to reciprocate his feelings. Bear only starts to feel uncomfortable with his choice when Nikki's behavior becomes violent.

When Disappointment Becomes Blame

Looking at Tom through this lens wipes out the romanticized version of 500 Days of Summer and challenges the instinct to treat him as a victim of unrequited love. Instead, he just comes across as someone who contributed to his own outcome. That does not make his feelings irrelevant, but it does complicate how those feelings are directed, since Summer was never deceptive or ambiguous.

The thing that bothers me is how Summer's choice to find happiness elsewhere becomes the source of Tom's pain. That pattern is also evident in Obsession, where Bear feels so hard done that he opts to override Nikki's autonomy for his own selfish needs. In both cases, the woman's choices are treated as flexible, while the man's desires are treated as the driving force of the story.

The difference is that one is framed as horror, and the other as romance, which is even more horrific if you really think about it. By the end of 500 Days of Summer, Tom meets someone new, which comes across as hopeful on the surface. But it also suggests that his underlying behavioral pattern has not been fully addressed.

The conditions that defined his relationship with Summer remain intact throughout, despite his defeatist confession about his shortcomings on the park bench. Unless Tom experiences some kind of personal growth off-screen, all we get is another woman for him to fixate on. And this is sold to us as just another day in the quest for "true love."