Why Curry Barker is Hollywood's newest horror movie 'Obsession'

When he was 11, Curry Barker had a life-changing moment watching the opening sequence of 2003’s “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” And one that created a new obsession.

A disturbed hitchhiking girl gets picked up by a group of friends in a van, she shoots herself in the head, and the witnesses scream, freak out and wonder what to do next. Watching his first horror movie was an adrenaline rush that “affected me so much,” says Barker, now 26. “Like, that really messed me up, but for some reason, I liked it and wanted it again.”

Barker will likely mess up the next generation of youngsters, now that the writer and director has been tapped to direct a new “Texas Chainsaw.” But before that, he’s got an original work to frighten audiences: “Obsession” (in theaters May 15), a modern and completely unsettling take on the “monkey’s paw” tale, that’s been picking up buzz since premiering last fall at Toronto Film Festival. Focus Features bought the independent movie out of the fest, and horror tastemaker Jason Blum joined as an executive producer a couple of months later.

“I can't believe people are like already so in love with this movie without seeing it,” Barker says. He’s already been sent a picture of one person sporting a tattoo of the One Wish Willow, the throwback trinket that’s a character in itself. “It’s crazy. The movie hasn't come out yet!"

The film stars Michael Johnston as Bear, an awkward young guy who’s long harbored a crush on his coworker Nikki (Inde Navarrette). But instead of actually telling her how he feels, Bear uses the mysterious One Wish Willow and says, “I wish Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone in the f------ world.” It gets granted, she shows him a whole lot of love, yet Nikki quickly turns from super-clingy girlfriend to an unhinged, slightly demonic figure.

The first tease of the supernaturally chilling happens when Bear wakes up in the middle of the night, and Nikki’s in the shadows, talking but unable to be seen. The scene Barker really loves, though, is the one set the next morning.

“He’s like, ‘Don't do that anymore.’ And she's like, ‘OK, I promise, I'll never be weird again,’ ” Barker says. “Even though we've seen the movies millions of times, characters are always so secretive about what's happening, or they don't want to tell their friends about what's happening, or they can't talk about the thing. It's like some weird, unspoken rule in horror movies that you can't talk about the thing. But in that scene, he talks about it right to her face. I love that type of stuff.”

Even though he’s still early in his career, with three movies to his credit – “Obsession,” “Milk & Serial” (streaming on YouTube) and the upcoming “Anything But Ghosts” – the director already thinks he’s cracked what makes a “Curry Barker film.”

“My sensibilities are putting ordinary people in extraordinary situations, and pushing them past the boundaries of their comfort level,” says Barker, who made his first horror shorts growing up in Mobile, Alabama. “I gravitate toward stories that ask the audience, what would you do in this situation?”

All his favorite filmmakers have a distinct look, voice and feel to their work, yet Barker also wants something more out of his career: He wants to act, too. He has appeared in episodes of FX’s “Dave” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” and found internet success as part of the horror-comedy sketch duo That’s a Bad Idea with Cooper Tomlinson. Barker says he has “more lines than anyone” in “Anything But Ghosts,” his upcoming film about ghost-hunting con artists who run into real phantoms that also stars Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard.

Horror filmmakers Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger are also actors who "don't really act anymore, and it's their choice," Barker says. “Jordan Peele could have easily put himself in any of [his] movies, and we would have loved that. Jordan Peele is awesome. I want to see Jordan Peele. But my path is just a little bit different.”

Heck, maybe he could play one of Leatherface's victims in the future. Barker was at the premiere of the football horror flick “Him” last September when Barker got the fateful call from his manager: Would he be interested in writing and directing a new “Chainsaw”? “I was like, ‘Uhhh, yeah?’ It was literally like that,” Barker recalls.

While he was first turned onto horror by the 2003 movie, for Barker, there’s a “tonality” in Tobe Hooper’s original 1974 “Massacre” that's "unmatched,” he says. “It's raw, and it feels like if you went on a road trip with your friends and you went down the wrong road, this could happen to you guys. That to me is something that I want to capture.”

Barker’s also excited about exploring Leatherface, his eerie family and “the nonchalantness of them killing,” he adds. “It means nothing to them. It's so mundane and normal. There's something really disturbing about that.

“All I want to get right is the tone. And making it feel really uncomfortable.”