‘I never thought people would be scared of us’: YouTuber Curry Barker on his dangerous ride | Horror movies

Things have been going well for 26-year-old filmmaker Curry Barker.

The past 18 months have seen him rise from YouTube comedy to $800 dangerous short spread In a series that took $15m to be awarded the title of one of Hollywood’s most famous crimes. It’s almost too good to be true.

Fittingly, Barker’s big show Emotionswhich is out this week, is all about what happens when a wish comes true. The film, which premiered at last year’s Toronto film festival, currently sits at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, the best review of the year so far.

“Luckily for the project, it’s been really good,” Barker tells me on Zoom a week before the release. “I haven’t seen a lot of bad things that can be scary because then the bad things you see stick out like a sore thumb and that’s what you think.”

Will they continue watching even as the film nears its release? “I feel like I’m going to look,” he confesses. “If it starts to hurt me mentally or emotionally I will probably try to stop it.”

Barker would do well to be a little nervous. The festival’s favorite horror films are struggling to turn good original stories into audience delights – recent disappointments include Shelby Oaks, Undertone, Bone Lake, Together and Dangerous Animals – plus he’s made a film about what really happens when your dreams turn into nightmares. But Obsession, one of the most impressive films I’ve seen in recent years, should continue to do well at the box office and beyond. Built for less than $1m, with a target to add more.

Some inspiration is the Simpsons episode about Bart based on a horror short story monkey paw, Obsession is a very old but persistent myth of a man who creates his own desires. Bear, played by newcomer Michael Johnston, is interested in fellow employee Nikki, who left Yes Navarrette, but he can’t do anything about it. He said: “I feel good if I’m attracted to someone but don’t know how they feel or don’t have the courage to tell someone how I feel,” he says, but that’s when things get difficult to understand.

When Bear’s courage is restored, he uses a mysterious “one-wish willow” bought at a local thrift store and utters words he will regret: I wish Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone else in the world.

To her surprise and joy, it works and Nikki transforms into a devoted friend at once, a passionate, insatiable desire for sex and the closeness she longs for. But Barker’s little tale invites us to revisit Bear’s cursed words – more than anyone else in the world – and show us what this kind of love looks like. Spoiler: it’s not pretty.

In fact, things got so bad that Barker got into trouble with the labels, his film initially received an NC-17 in the US, a dangerous rating known as the kiss of death at the box office. Effective head breaking was necessary for the film to have an R rating.

“That was a really scary time for me as a director,” he tells me. Especially when I had just seen the film in Toronto with a crowd that was very impressed with the scene. Hearing the news that I had to cut it off was very painful at first.

The violence in the film is well done but it is the action between the gender and the film that will give you nightmares. The emotion may be refreshingly more straightforward than so-called “elevated” horror flicks but there’s something fun about releasing it. Bear is a good guy on paper – apologizing a lot, frustrated with his words, taking care of his cat – but the reality of what he wants turns him into an unexpected villain, tying Nikki in an uneasy relationship that robs him of any agency. When we see what happened to the real Nikki, trapped under the type she wants, she is in a terrible state, screaming to be freed and hurting herself to try to get free (in this very interesting film, she asks the Bear to kill her). But her response fluctuates between frustration and frustration (“Is being with me so bad?”) and has led to the use of the term “incel horror” on the Internet, the behavior summing up a certain type of male entitlement that has become popular on the Internet.

“I didn’t think like that when I wrote it,” he admits. They just make bad decisions but I think it starts from a really innocent place. What they decide to do next is terrible. The embarrassing thing is, I didn’t even know the word incel until someone pointed it out to me.

He’s quick to point out that Bear is far from a hero, however, and Nikki, who has a violent streak, is far from an ordinary person, a strange victim. It’s a journey that makes Navarette tough, the kind of fiery performance that will make you remember his name, and Barker knew he was “asking a lot” of him.

“It was a great game,” he said. “I think the best time to have it is when it’s fun and silly and we can all laugh so the distractions don’t feel like they’re ruining it.

It’s one thing to direct an actor with a limited reputation but Barker has managed stars who have worked with everyone from Clint Eastwood to Ridley Scott. He recently finished production on the follow-up, the comedy Anything But Ghosts starring Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard as con artists who pretend to be alien investigators (he says it has a Scooby Doo vibe but is “mainstream”).

He said: “At first I was very scared. “I remember telling my father that I was scared to direct these stars who have a specific way that they are used to doing things, what if they don’t like the way I run the set or something? He said that you will disappoint them if you do not lead them. You will disappoint them if you don’t give them feedback. That really touched me.”

Both Paul and Howard proved to be easy to work with. “They had no ego, like they were ready to go out and play,” he says.

It’s Barker’s later work that’s been causing a lot of discussion online, with the story of him shepherding a new way to tell the 70s slasher The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. He is “very happy” but is already learning the hard way that his fans are fans. He said: “I opened my mouth a lot about what I was planning to do but I didn’t even write it down. “People just listen to whatever you say and criticize you.”

He points to a comment he made, referring to Tobe Hooper’s original as “good for its time” which was criticized “absurdly” he says. He is now trying to keep his head down, “soft prepping” and rewatching all five movies and trying to avoid discussing the Internet. He said: “I feel that this can be the killer of any art if I get too involved in these things.”

Barker is one of a new generation of internet horror filmmakers, whose film was released two weeks ago Back rooms from 20-year-old Kane Parsons and four months later Iron Lung from Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach, both of whom started their careers on YouTube. I wondered how the old guard would take this new generation of gen Z upstarts. “Everyone is welcome,” he tells me. “I mean, they’re right in front of me… I never thought people would be intimidated by us.”

For his application to the Directors Guild of America, he needed three signatures and had the opportunity to invite Osgood Perkins of Longlegs, Zach Cregger of Zida and Ari Aster, who “has been very helpful”.

One thing that the old guard seems to be very mixed on is the use of AI in their work. There have been others like Guillermo del Toro who would say “but to die” than using and then others like Steven Soderbergh who have it has already started public acceptance of new technology. Barker shows which side he is on.

“I’m scared of AI for sure,” he says. “I don’t think it’s going to replace us as quickly as people think and I’m not an expert but I just go from my gut, I feel like there will be content with AI and there will be content within us and it will be good, where is the need?”

Worries about whether AI will kill Hollywood have slowly changed if we can all just go to the movies enough. Last year could have been another year that failed to bring sales back to pre-pandemic levels but so far 2026 is off to a great start, thanks in large part to gen Z, who have been shown to be. people who love movies according to a recent study. Barker praises it as a “zero effort” alternative.

“I think we’re sick of the calls,” Barker said. “A movie is a great escape for me, especially in a world where we’re on our phones a lot. You put your phone down for an hour and 45 minutes and hopefully you can escape to the movies with whatever friends you want to go with.