Curry Barker needed something creepy for his debut horror feature, so he turned to his father. Playwright Jeff Barker, who plays a small role in his 27-year-old son’s new movie, Obsession, was already considering a career pivot into screenwriting when the opportunity came up to write a short passage that’s recited about halfway into the movie. So he accepted the challenge, and delivered something truly bloodcurdling.
“My dad has a mind that lends itself well to that type of creepy stuff,” Barker tells Polygon. “Like father, like son.”
Written, directed, and edited by Curry Barker (whose previous credits include short horror films The Chair and Milk & Cereal), Obsession combines the classic be-careful-what-you-wish-for trope of a Monkey’s Paw story with the demonic scares of The Exorcist. The result is one of the most unnerving films of the decade. It’s hard to compare Obsession with anything, but watching this movie tied my stomach in knots in a way I hadn’t experienced since Hereditary. (Both films also riff on the idea of possession, so maybe there’s something to that connection.)
Obsession stars Michael Johnston as Bear, an insecure twentysomething who spends most of his time pining after his coworker Nikki (Inde Navarrette). When Bear makes a wish on a “One Wish Willow” novelty toy for Nikki to love him more than anyone in the world, he finally gets the girl of his dreams — even if his friends Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) and Sarah (Megan Lawless) think their sudden coupling is weird. Barker ultimately cranks up the drama to pure horror as Nikki’s love transforms into violent obsession and it becomes clear that someone (or something) else has taken control of her body.
To understand how Barker crafted such a uniquely terrifying movie, Polygon spoke to the filmmaker about his inspirations, the stories behind some of Obsession‘s most memorable moments (including the one his dad wrote), and whether he has any plans for a sequel (spoiler alert: he does).
[Ed. note: This article contains light spoilers from Obsession.]
Polygon: Obsession mixes a few different horror tropes i— you’ve got a Monkey’s Paw story and a possession story all in one. How did you wind up combining those ideas?
Curry Barker: I’d done this short film called The Chair that had this character in it called Julie, and she would snap into different emotions. I really had fun playing with that. And so I was kind of like: Oh my gosh, I could make a movie that’s kind of all about that. I could make a movie where the main villain is that.
But then I wanted it to feel really real. I wanted to come at it from a grounded and raw angle, and then having that in my back pocket to punch some horror up if she ever pops back into her body.
Inde Navarrette is absolutely incredible in this movie, and some of the faces she makes are terrifying. How did you accomplish that? Was it all her or were you using makeup or CGI?
When you’re in the shadows, there’s stuff that you can do to enhance certain elements of a person’s face. You can add makeup — it’s not a lot, I think they call it contour in the makeup world, but you can kind of just accentuate things. The goal was never to make her look too demon, because if you go demon, then you’re just making her eyes really dark and her mouth really dark, and then you’re in that uncanny valley. We wanted her to still look human but not quite human. But also, it was 90% her.
One of the wildest scenes in Obsession is when Nikki stands up at a party and reads a a freaky short story she’s written about Hansel and Gretel being romantically involved. Where did that come from?
I had the bones of it. I knew I wanted it to be about Hansel and Gretel. I knew that I wanted it to be about brother and sister because the kind of thing I was doing there is that if you remember Nikki tells Bear in the beginning of the movie that she kind of sees him as a brother. And so that’s kind of that, like brother and sister being together. It’s not right and it’s not supposed to happen, but it is. And that’s kind of the movie
Nikki’s a writer in this movie, so I wanted the voice to be slightly different from my voice. And my dad had just started his screenwriting journey and I was like, “Yeah, if you want to give it a stab.” So I let him write it and he did some really creepy stuff.
I don’t know how I would react if my father handed me that story.
It was a little weird, but I also know my dad’s been a writer for a while. My dad writes novels and stuff, and now he’s a full-time screenwriter. And my dad has a mind that lends itself well to that type of creepy stuff. So I guess like father, like son.
Another visual I loved in Obsession is when Nikki covers the entire front door of Bear’s apartment with duct tape so he can’t leave. How did you pull that off?
What was really important to me, that I had to fight kind of hard for, was not cutting to the door right away. I wanted to just stay on Bear’s face. You’re looking at him and you see that he sees something, but you stay on him and you’re kind of like, What is he looking at? And then it finally cuts to the door and you’re like, Oh! But that was kind of hard because I had some people around me being like, “You just need to cut to the door.” And I’m like, “No, you don’t get it. It’s the opposite.”
But the door itself, I was so impressed with the art department to see what they did with that. What’s funny is we were shooting so out of order that sometimes we had to take that duct tape down to shoot one scene and then put the duct tape back up to shoot another scene. So what the art department did to make it really easy is, 90% of that duct tape is not taped to the door. It’s like a big sheet. So there’s a big sheet and then tons of tape. And so the only tape that’s attached to the wall is on the outskirts. Once you remove that, you can kind of remove this big piece that they had designed. It was really smart.
Alright, one more great scene I have to ask about: When Bear calls the One Wish Willow customer service line to cancel his wish, it’s a hilarious conversation that really provides some comic relief. I couldn’t find this info online, but whose voice is that acting as the customer service guy?
It was me. I recorded that dialogue in my room, way after we shot the movie. I was editing in my room so I was able to just do whatever I wanted with it. I just got my phone out and I was just like, “Hey, what’s up?” It was written dialogue, but I just changed it up because I was the writer, editor, director.
At the end of the movie, we find out that Ian and Nikki had actually been hooking up before everything else happened. Was there more to that plotline that was cut from the movie?
It’s funny you asked. There were so many different versions of that scene with Sarah. There was a version where Sarah tells Bear that Nikki admitted to her that Nikki actually had feelings for Bear. I thought that was really heartwrenching if it turns out that Nikki liked Bear along and then this happened, but that obviously didn’t make it in. But yeah, there’s more going on as far as Ian. The whole thing is that Ian has actually been hooking up with Nikki for a long time and kind of being this asshole friend for not telling him like, “Bro, me and her have a thing,” and kind of just leading him on and being like, “Go for it, man.” I don’t know if there’s more going on than that. It’s not like he has some sort of vendetta. I think he’s just a guy that doesn’t like Nikki enough to date her. It’s not like he has something out for Bear. He genuinely means, “Go for it.”
But it’s true that Nikki was going through something. No one ever has picked up on this, but there’s this line in the beginning that says Nikki was crying in the break room. You can hear it at the trivia bar. They talk about, “Why was Nikki crying in the break room?” And Ian’s like, “I don’t know, maybe she…” But really it’s because Ian had told her that he wanted to cut it off.
Have you thought about making a sequel to Obsession or turning it into an anthology?
I would definitely do that. It wouldn’t have these characters, but it would have the One Wish Willow. It would be that same selfishness of a person who wants something that’ll only benefit them and not really thinking about other people. The horror would come out of what happens when you wish for something that you think is going to be good, but it’s not. That’s the theme, and so there’s so many different stories.
