If you saw Obsession, there’s a good chance Inde Navarrette has been on your mind ever since.
Curry Barker’s breakout horror movie became one of the year’s biggest surprises, turning a deceptively simple story about a young man’s wish for the woman he loves into a deeply unsettling possession thriller. At the center of it all was Navarrette, whose terrifying performance as Nikki helped make the movie such a standout. Since then, fans have been wondering where the actress would show up next. There have been plenty of hints, including reports that she had met with directors attached to major projects like Marvel’s upcoming X-Men movie and Heat 2. Now, we finally know about one of her next big roles.
Navarrette is set to star in The Waffle House Index, a new sci-fi thriller from Apple Original Films, with Plan B Entertainment producing. She’ll also be an executive producer on the movie, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
What is The Waffle House Index about?
Despite the seemingly mundane title, The Waffle House Index sounds anything but ordinary.
The Waffle House Index is a real-world measure used as an informal indicator of how severely a hurricane has affected an area, based on whether a local Waffle House is operating normally, serving a limited menu or closed altogether. The movie takes that idea and sends it in a much stranger direction.
Navarrette will play a Waffle House waitress whose already terrible night gets considerably worse when a stranger armed with a gun walks into the restaurant. From there, things escalate into a story involving a massive flood, killer crocodiles, a nuclear explosion, a mysterious bunker beneath the Waffle House and, yes, aliens.
For Navarrette, the project represents another intriguing move following Obsession. She also has Invertigo, a thriller about teenagers trapped on a roller coaster, already filmed, while her reported involvement with Marvel’s X-Men makes her increasingly busy.
The Waffle House Index is the latest collaboration between Plan B and Apple, with the production company — led by Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner — previously teaming with Apple on Pitt’s racing drama F1. Plan B also recently produced the horror film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and is preparing to shoot The Bell Jar, a drama directed by Sarah Polley.
For an actress coming off one of the year’s biggest horror hits, The Waffle House Index is certainly an unexpected next stop. But between killer crocodiles, nuclear explosions and aliens, it sounds like Navarrette may have found another suitably strange project to sink her teeth into.