‘Obsession’: Curry Barker On His Twisted Wish-Fulfillment Horror Breakout, Inde Navarrette’s Wild Performance, ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’ & More [The Discourse Podcast]

Be careful what you wish for, sure. But maybe be even more careful what you confuse for love, because Curry Barker’s “Obsession” takes one of horror’s oldest tricks and turns it into something queasy, funny, tragic, and deeply uncomfortable. It is the kind of movie that starts with a premise simple enough to fit on a cursed greeting card, then keeps tightening the rope until everyone in the room starts laughing from sheer discomfort. 

Written, directed, and edited by Barker, “Obsession” follows Bear (Michael Johnston), a music store employee, as his crush on his childhood friend and co-worker, Nikki (Inde Navarrette), leads him to buy a strange object called the One Wish Willow. He wishes for Nikki to love him more than anyone else in the world. The wish works, which is exactly the problem. The film also stars Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, and Andy Richter, and opens in theaters on May 15 from Focus Features.

Barker joined The Discourse to discuss the new horror film, which arrives after his micro-budget YouTube breakout “Milk & Serial” and his acclaimed short “The Chair.” The conversation covered the film’s uncomfortable festival reactions, the dark emotional machinery behind unearned love, Navarrette’s knockout performance, the possibility of more One Wish Willow stories, and his upcoming work on “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Anything But Ghosts.”

READ MORE: ‘Obsession’ Review: Curry Barker’s Twisted Horror Debut Turns Toxic Love Into A Grotesque Nightmare

For Barker, the film finally clicked once the wish element entered the story. He had been circling an obsession with a story for a while, but the supernatural hook unlocked the whole thing.

“It was the wish element,” Barker said. “I had already had this idea for a while about obsession. I hadn’t cracked it, but I knew I wanted either a movie where a guy was obsessed with a girl or a girl was obsessed with a guy, and how far that could go. But there was no story, and I couldn’t figure it out. But then once I unlocked this wish element to it, it all flew in my head all at once.”

That premise also gave Barker a way to treat magic as something terrifyingly mundane. Instead of building out a massive mythology around the One Wish Willow, he wanted to explore what a regular person might actually do if the impossible suddenly happened.

“I wanted to approach it like, what if this happened in real life? What if we took magic and put it in a world where magic doesn’t exist?” Barker explained. “Would you tell your friend right away? Your first thought wouldn’t be that it’s magic. Your first thought would be that she probably took a drug, or now she’s telling me that her dad is dying, maybe I should cut her some slack. Going through the process of emotions, that’s really fun for me.”

The horror, Barker said, comes from how innocent the fantasy can look before the movie strips away the romance. A love spell sounds cute until the question becomes consent, control, and emotional ownership.

“There was a theme of unearned love and how it’s such a dark thing to think that you could force someone to love you, and there’s nothing that they could do in this scenario with such a concept that feels on the surface kind of innocent and playful,” he said. “We’ve seen love potions. Even in Harry Potter, there’s a love potion moment, and it’s kind of this innocent thing of teeheehee, but no, it’s a pretty dark concept, and no one had really tapped into that.”

Still, Barker was not interested in making Bear a monster from frame one. The film works because his weakness feels recognizable before it curdles into something poisonous.

“I wanted Bear to be kind of relatable at the beginning,” Barker said. “We’ve all had a crush on a person, a guy or a girl, that we don’t know how they feel about us back, and desperately hoping or wishing that they did. It’s kind of a selfish way to feel, but we all do it. When you’re thinking about that, you’re not thinking about the other person. You’re thinking about what would be better for you.”

If Bear is the movie’s bad-decision engine, Navarrette is its live wire, turning in what might be the best horror breakout performance of the decade. Barker said the goal was never to have Nikki feel like a broad possession performance. She had to be frightening, funny, wounded, overwhelming, and still recognizably human.

“Indy and I watched different movies together, and we even watched references to things,” Barker said. “I specifically would show her clips of things and say,’ You see this? This is what not to do. Because it was so specific what I wanted to do. Mostly just not playing the demon, but more playing a crazy, clingy girlfriend.”

Barker’s YouTube background also shaped the film’s restraint. Even after “Milk and Serial” broke through and “Obsession” moved into a larger system, he wanted to preserve the scrappy instincts that taught him how little a horror filmmaker sometimes needs to show.

“That scrappiness is really integral to my creative process because a lot of the storytelling that I was telling when I had no money was kind of forced upon me because of my lack of resources,” Barker said. “A lot of sound design that’s just off-screen creepy stuff is because you don’t have the money to show it. But the biggest lesson I learned is that sometimes not showing it and just hearing it off-screen is better. Just because I can doesn’t mean I should.”

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As for whether the One Wish Willow could return, Barker sounds excited by the possibility. The concept can bend in several directions, but he already sees selfishness as the connective tissue.

“I always strive to make something new that’s sticky,” Barker said. “So if the One Wish Willow becomes sticky, awesome. There are so many stories that could be cautionary tales about being careful what you wish for. But to me, the theme is selfishness because I almost feel like every wish that a person can make is based on what’s better for themselves and not necessarily what’s better for everyone else. So another story about selfishness is begging to be told with the One Wish Willow.”

The conversation also turned to Barker’s upcoming “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” film that was recently announced, a franchise that comes with a rusty meat locker full of expectations. Barker would not reveal much, but he did name the emotional pressure points that interest him.

“Dread, guilt, emotion, and weirdness,” Barker said. “The originals are weird, especially one and two. There’s an eerie weirdness. People forget that Leatherface is a tool for the family. He’s not always used, but when he is, they mistreat him and treat him like a tool. I haven’t even written this thing yet, and I don’t want to put myself in a box, but to set people at ease, I’m not going to tell the movie from the perspective of the Sawyers.”

Barker has already shot his “Obsession” follow-up, though. The film is called “Anything But Ghosts,” starring Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard, and he teased that it shares DNA with “Obsession” while moving into a different tonal lane.

“I’m so excited for that thing. It’s so different from ‘Obsession’ in so many ways, but it’s also set in the same world,” Barker said. “My thing is ‘what if this happened in real life?’ It’s more funny, and it means more comedy, but only because the premise itself naturally leans that way. It’s about two guys who are con artists, and naturally, there’s some funnier stuff that happens, but it’s still set in a grounded world. The stakes are real, the danger is real, and I can’t wait for people to see what we did. Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard were amazing. They brought their A game for this.”

“Obsession” opens in theaters May 15. Listen to the full conversation with Curry Barker below.

The Discourse is part of The Playlist Podcast Network, which includes Deep Focus, Bingeworthy, and more. We can be heard on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, and most places where podcasts are found. You can stream the podcast via the embed within the article. Be sure to subscribe and drop us a comment or a rating, as we greatly appreciate it. Thank you for listening.

Mike DeAngelo

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