At a moment when seeing any original idea come out of Hollywood feels like a small miracle, one of the freshest genre films of the 2020s starts with the simplest premise you could possibly imagine. A young man named Bear (Michael Johnston) makes a wish that his crush Nikki (Inde Navarrette) would become obsessed with him, and it goes horribly, horribly wrong.
That’s both a deliberate oversimplification and a technically accurate summary of “Obsession.” The fact that the update on the age-old Monkeypaw trope is so consistently surprising and compelling is a testament to Curry Barker. Best known as one half of the YouTube comedy duo “that’s a bad idea” with Cooper Tomlinson, Barker turns the saga into a fascinating and darkly hilarious exploration of perspective in what is effectively his feature debut. (He previously directed the feature-length horror film “Milk & Serial” for a budget of less than $1,000, paving the way for his introduction to the mainstream on “Obsession.”) After premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall, he landed a splashy , old-fashioned acquisition deal before taking the rest of the genre festival circuit by storm. In the process, Barker turned into one of the hottest horror filmmakers in Hollywood.
During a recent Zoom conversation with IndieWire, Barker walked us through the movie that changed his life and his current slate of projects, including the recently-wrapped sophomore outing “Anything But Ghosts” starring Aaron Paul and his upcoming “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” reboot for A24. As he tells it, the whirlwind of success all started with his own simple obsession with… obsession itself.
“The genesis was the idea that we as humans can obsess over things,” Barker said. “Movies like ‘Misery’ inspired me… ‘Oh, this is about a woman who’s obsessed with an author that she’s fantasized in her head what this type of man is and she has an idea of who he is and she captures him.’ That was the general idea. And then, when I came up with the wish part of it, it all started to click for me.”
The catalyst of all the tragedy that Bear incites is the One Wish Willow, a kitschy antique toy that promises to grant one (literal) wish for whoever snaps it in half. There’s a delightful irony to such a dark series of events starting with such an innocent-looking toy, and Barker knew that the movie needed a new addition to the wish-granting-objects canon.
“I guess it started with the Monkeypaw and I thought about that, but I didn’t want to use the Monkeypaw because it was too recognizable,” he said. “And so then I went down this rabbit hole of trying to find things that you could make a wish off of. You’ve got the wishing well, you have shooting stars, a wishbone you break in half, but nothing really worked well for the movie. So I just said, “Screw it. I’m going to make something up.”
As I detailed in my TIFF review last fall, much of the film’s brilliance lies in Barker’s decision to portray a heinous series of events from the perspective of the perpetrator rather than the victim. The result is a film that’s far more complicated than its premise suggests, forcing audiences to consider the idea that being the person who did something horrible can end up seeming (almost) as scary as having it done to you.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m going to point the camera and tell you how you’re supposed to feel as far as if you’re supposed to feel bad for Bear or if you’re supposed to be angry at Bear,” he said. “But whether you feel bad for him or not, the story is told from the perspective of Bear.”
Barker joins the likes of Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger in an elite club of filmmakers who transitioned from sketch comedy to directing scary movies. Unsurprisingly, “Obsession” contains its share of laughs, but Barker explained that his secret to not overpowering the horror is never letting a joke be the focal point of a shot.
“I don’t like to point the camera at the comedy,” he said. “That’s a trick of mine. I don’t want to point the camera at the joke. You can almost have the joke happen, but the moment that you make the whole thing about the joke, it could overcome some of the horror.”
The release of “Obsession” will introduce Barker to legions of new horror fans, but he’s already been in the headlines in recent weeks with the news that A24 tapped him to direct a new “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” movie. Barker acknowledged that the multitude of sequels and reboots of Tobe Hooper’s legendary slasher film might have watered down demand for the franchise, but he still sees an opportunity to bring back the original characters and premise that subsequent films have ignored.
“It’s definitely one of those that has been done,” he said with a laugh. “It’s not one of them that hasn’t been done in 30 years and it’s totally fair for it to be rebooted and reimagined. But it’s also, to me, if you just think about the 1974 one, it hasn’t been done in a very, very, very long time. You know what I mean? And then the 2003 one really feels like they tried to completely reboot it. They even changed the names of the family, so they really went full tilt on trying to completely reimagine it. But other than that, it feels like the rest of them are just legacy stories or origin stories. I’m really excited to go back to basics and tackle it from what everyone enjoyed about the originals.”
Barker describes the initial response to “Obsession” as “the changing point of my life.” He’s currently promoting one film, deep in post on another, and gearing up to direct a major piece of I.P. We’ll all be seeing a lot more of him in the near future, due in no small part to the excessive work ethic that might have inspired “Obsession” in the first place.
“I’m one of those one project at a time kind of guys,” he said. “I really sink my teeth into a project and I get obsessed with it and I go full throttle. So right now, it’s ‘Anything But Ghosts.’ We were shooting for three months in Canada and I’m allowing myself to not focus on anything but that. And then, after that, I’ll go into ‘Texas Chainsaw,’ I’ll put my head down and I won’t think about anything but that. It’s a one step at a time kind of attitude for me.”
Barker’s current slate is heavy on horror (far from the worst business move in today’s climate), but he also made it clear that it’s not the only thing he can do. He sees a future telling authentic human stories in multiple genres, with the common denominator being the kind of entertainment value that draws audiences to multiplexes.
“I could see diving into any sort of genre, really,” he said. “I don’t want to put myself in a box, but I also really enjoy horror and I love the commercialness of it. I want to make movies that I would be excited to go see at the theater. That just happens to be what I’m excited to go see right now.”
A Focus Features release, “Obsession” opens in theaters on Friday, May 15.
