How YouTube creator Curry Barker turned his filmmaking dreams into Obsession

Days before Obsession opened in cinemas across the US, its 26-year-old director, Curry Barker, made a bet with his manager and agent. They said if the film opened with more than US$20 million at the box office, they would all get tattoos.
Obsession fell just short. It debuted with US$17 million. They were still thrilled. Barker made the horror film with just US$750,000. It was enormously successful. But then something unexpected happened. The following weekend, Obsession easily cleared US$20 million. And then it did again and again and almost a fourth time.
“It was just like: holy cow. I didn’t think that was an option,” Barker says. “Now we’ve said if it hits US$300 million, we’ll all get the tattoo. We had to make a new milestone. And I think we’ll reach it.”
Over the last month, Obsession has sent shock waves through Hollywood. Barker’s microbudget thriller has now indeed crossed the US$300 million mark worldwide, and it is still going. The film is scheduled for release in Hong Kong on July 1.

Barker, who built a following making sketches and short films on YouTube, is living the dream of every aspiring filmmaker.
“My day-to-day is pretty much the same. It’s just that when I go out in public, it’s a lot different,” he says, laughing. “I actually feel a little unsafe sometimes.”
In Obsession, Bear Bailey (Michael Johnston) wishes on an antique toy called a One Wish Willow that his crush Nikki (Inde Navarrette) will love him. The spell – loosely inspired by an old Simpsons Halloween episode – works disturbingly well.
The astonishing success of Obsession has been hotly debated throughout the industry. Coupled with the A24 hit Backrooms, by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, it has been a coming-out party for YouTube as a breeding ground for the next generation of filmmakers.
It has also brought waves of Gen Z film-goers – who already make up a promisingly robust percentage of frequent ticket buyers – into cinemas. Summer has historically been dominated by legacy franchises, but Obsession may represent a sea change.
“If there’s a lesson from Obsession, I think it’s about audiences,” says Peter Kujawski, chairman of Focus Features, which acquired Obsession after it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year.
“We have a generation that grew up online, approaches culture with enormous curiosity and playfulness, and is far less concerned with where a filmmaker comes from than whether the story connects. They’re engaged, incredibly film-literate and eager to champion new voices and original stories.”

Barker, who grew up in Mobile, Alabama, before moving to Los Angeles at 18, feels as though he is writing for his generation. The response to Obsession, he says, taps into a collective need.
“I get it because I think we’re a little tired of being at home. Our generation is the Covid generation,” says Barker. “I was fortunate enough to have all four years of high school. My brother, Riley, lost two years of that. We’re sick of the phones.”
Barker wanted to be an actor before he wanted to be a filmmaker. And while his early exposure to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, at age 11, helped set him on a horror path, he did not begin that way.
“I was a huge Harry Potter fan growing up. Huge. I was obsessed,” Barker says. “I had all the wands. I would dress up.”
Barker attended film school in Los Angeles for a year, where he met Cooper Tomlinson, a co-star and producer on Obsession. The two soon forged their own path on YouTube and TikTok. Their comedy sketch series, That’s a Bad Idea, found a footing online.
Toronto Film Festival premiere and a bidding war
Obsession was selected to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, giving it an enviable platform. After a bidding war, Kujawski and Focus acquired it for US$15 million.
“What stands out about Curry is that he isn’t working from an inherited playbook,” Kujawski says. “Whether you look at his earlier work or Obsession, there’s a consistency of vision and a confidence in his storytelling that immediately sets him apart. He knows exactly what he wants to say while being absolutely committed to making every minute of his work as entertaining as possible, and he’s willing to take real risks in service of that vision.”
Barker is now one of the most in-demand filmmakers in Hollywood. He has already shot his next feature, Anything But Ghosts, starring Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard, for Blumhouse Productions. Two months ago, A24 announced that he would write and direct a reboot of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
An Obsession sequel is, naturally, a certainty.
“A sequel isn’t hard for this movie,” Barker says. He sketches out how new wishes by other characters on One Wish Willows could lead to entirely different stories, all revolving around some new vice: greed, fame, whatever.

But as much as it is tempting to see Obsession as the product of Barker’s own wish, it is more like the opposite.
In the film, Bear’s profound mistake is putting off confessing his feelings to Nikki, thinking there is plenty of time to do it. (The film immediately cuts to a dead cat.) Barker, on the other hand, had no timidity about realising his dreams. He wanted to make films, so he did.
“Anyone that asks what advice you have for young filmmakers, I always say the same thing,” Barker says.
“I went to a film school for a year out in LA and I watched people paralyse themselves with the pressure of: ‘I’ve told people I’m a director so now I have to direct something that has to be good. If it’s not good, everyone’s going to judge me.’ The result of that thinking is two years on one short film.”
“You can’t put too much pressure on an idea,” Barker says. “You’ve just got to make it.”