Where the horror (and ironic) soul of "Obsession" comes from Curry Barker is the next talent to watch

Be careful about entering the world of Curry Barker, because you might never find your way out. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say "into the mind" of the director and screenwriter of Obsession, as the label that distinguishes all his work available for free on YouTube puts it. A Pandora's box that cannot be closed again, one that shows step by step the journey that brought the young filmmaker, born in 1999, into the spotlight with his original horror film. Not his debut, but the second feature of a career that began in the online space before making its way to cinemas. Much like his colleague Kane Parsons, equally young (born 2005), the one who organized and mapped out the world of the Backrooms on the internet, later turning it into a film.

Barker's mind, as we were saying, is an expansive and twisted universe. The stories he creates with his partner Cooper Tomlinson (who plays Ian in the film) share a creativity and a core idea so strong as to make them inevitably compelling. Because it shouldn't be forgotten: Barker is part of a duo that in recent years has become known through the channel That's a Bad Idea, which hosts both the director's debut Milk & Serial, their short films, and above all brief comedic sketches ranging from horror parodies to more brazenly and purely comic pieces. Which is precisely what Barker has infused into Obsession. A solid plot, terrifying horror undertones, and an unexpected irony that adds to the appeal of the title, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2025.

It is the theme that has contributed so much to the word-of-mouth and mythology surrounding Obsession. The heart of relationships and power dynamics within them, where the male figure tends to exert a form of control that defines the toxicity of a relationship. And indeed Barker offers a portrait of the contradictions a young person today might fall into — such as presenting oneself as an ally to women while still slipping into the patriarchal patterns that flatter him when the object of his desire completely erases herself to serve him, suffering the inevitable consequences. Obsession, however, works regardless of its themes because it possesses an idea so archetypal yet powerful that it can support any number of twists and inventions. A primal element, an object of magical power, which is used and with which the protagonist must reckon once it grants his desire.

Digging through Barker and Tomlinson's earlier work, it becomes clear that the key to their stories lies precisely in imagination — whether comic, splatter, thriller, or horror. Before Obsession, their short films include tales of deadly loops from which there is no escape (Warnings), an imminent apocalypse that drives people to choose suicide (Enigma), a cursed chair that shapes the protagonists' lives (The Chair, the work most similar to Obsession in both screenplay and atmosphere), leading up to the longer Milk & Serial, which is the summation of the two souls of the That's a Bad Idea channel. On one side, broad humor; on the other, the paradigms of horror/thriller cinema — blended together with ease.

That tone will likely carry over into the upcoming Anything But Ghosts, again directed by Curry Barker, who also writes and stars in it alongside Cooper Tomlinson. A horror comedy joined by Bryce Dallas Howard and Aaron Paul, in which a pair of fake paranormal investigators find themselves dealing with real ghosts. The budget for Barker's third feature is $5 million — more than (though still not far from) the $750,000 spent on Obsession, which has since more than quadrupled that figure with a worldwide box office of $404,401,180 million. It will be interesting to see how far it leans into comedy versus horror, given the genuine chemistry Barker and Tomlinson generate on screen when they have to play out the most absurd situations.

The hope is that such originality won't be lost if Barker does indeed take on the upcoming The Texas Chain Saw Massacre reboot for A24. Partly due to the growing skepticism the production and distribution company is beginning to inspire (despite its undeniable quality), and partly out of a reluctance to see a young filmmaker's imagination — one that seems to burst with creativity — prematurely flattened. That Barker has accepted such a challenge is understandable, given his stated devotion to the original film, which by his own account was the spark that introduced him to a world of shock and terror. May his film be a truly total reimagining of Tobe Hooper's work, then — a detour before we see the director and screenwriter return to something entirely his own. Whether that's pure horror, pure comedy, or a blend of both.