Obsession director Curry Barker has made many short films for virtually no money and a wildly successful feature film (which he released for free on YouTube) for less than $1,000. Barker’s feature directorial debut Milk & Serial has racked up more than 2 million views since its release one year ago.
Now the director is scaling up with Focus Features producing his brutal new horror feature, Obsession. “There was a lot riding on this for me. I knew from the get that this was kind of my chance to show the world that I could be a filmmaker,” Barker shared. “But we also didn't know how far this movie could go. I knew what I wanted, and I knew, and I could only dream of what it has become. That was my goal from the get-go, a huge wide theatrical release obviously. You don't know that that's going to happen, but I treated it as if this was my chance.
“It also didn't feel that different than what I've done before. Especially because we were working with a lot of young people our age. The energy felt really young on set, and everybody there was there because they wanted to be, it was a very passionate group of people.”
“It was the youngest set I've ever been on. It was really fun,” Obsession star Michael Johnston added.
When it comes to ramping up that pressure, Barker seems to have a good hold on it. Barker has already been tapped to direct A24's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre reimagining along with another one for Focus Features, Anything But Ghosts.
“It's the same pressure that I've had for a while,” the director admitted. “I have this pressure now with Texas Chainsaw, I have this pressure with Anything But Ghosts. Now I've got to live up to this. So each film is a new pressure, and you just have to push it away and forget about it because pressure is the killer of creativity. I really believe that. I kind of have to put myself in a box when I'm writing this thing and just try to go back to the days when I made those shorts. Because when I made those short films, I was untouchable, right? I could fly. It could suck, but it wouldn't matter. I had no one to answer to. I wrote a movie about a chair, and I put it on YouTube, and there's no pressure for it to be good. Now there's like, ‘Okay, Curry, this better be good. This is your next movie, and this is your next movie.’ But you just have to forget about it.”
Barker’s riff on The Monkey’s Paw warns viewers to be careful what they wish for, while also cleverly dealing with issues of autonomy and consent. Perhaps a happy accident that Michael Johnston’s golden retriever, gentle-on-the-surface character is named “Bear.”
Obsession features plenty of body horror and a cornucopia of bodily fluids. When asked about the most disgusting day on set, Barker and Johnston both knowingly looked to star Inde Navarrette, who was reluctant to relive the… nauseating… experience.
“There was a moment where I threw up, and there are two different ways to do it. You can put things in your mouth, or, because they wanted a projectile, we had a hose that was taped. The thing is, the tape came off, and- Somebody else mind telling this story? It shot in my mouth, and I'm over Michael, and I might actually throw up, because the feeling of it's not fun.”
“It would have been awesome,” Johnston grins.
So what did the fake puke taste like? Well, that depends on who you ask. Barker said bananas, Michael explained that it was made of bananas, sugar, and chocolate. “And oatmeal,” Barker added.
But for Navarrette, who had a whole mouthful of the stuff, it doesn’t exactly sound like a tasty protein smoothie. More like “dry milk water” as she described it, with a grimace to indicate it was definitely not an enjoyable flavor. In the end, zero actual puke made it onto Johnston because, Navarrette pointed out, she is “Super professional. I was very lady-like in this whole movie.”
As for the other faux bodily fluids on set, Johnston was doused in plenty of blood, which he said is “very sweet” but also gross and kind of minty. He also had plenty of it in his eyes.
Navarrette’s role as the increasingly unhinged Nikki is very physical; she manages to manipulate her movements and facial expressions with the slightest nuance, turning something totally normal into something absolutely terrifying, then back to normal again, in a way that is both effective and deeply unsettling.
Barker shared that they “watched a lot of references. We watched entire movies together. We also just watched certain clips from certain movies. We even watched things where I told her, ‘This is what this movie is not.’”
“He did a really good job with kind of showing me as well, and he would [adjust] like a little muñeca [doll],” Navarrette said. “He would move my face and move the eyes and hold it for this long. I felt very much like a little marionette.”
“We would literally test out different voices and stuff,” Barker added. “We would try different smiles. We would try different frowns. We would do takes where I'm like, ‘This time smile this way, this time squint your eyes, this time do that.’ Just because you find out later what you want, but also just in even the rehearsal of it, experimenting and seeing what works.”
Johnston was, for the most part, on the receiving end of Nikki’s antics and admitted, “They didn't show me until the day, until we started a lot of the time,” which definitely worked in their favor as his on-screen reactions to Navarrette’s disturbing expressions and physical manipulation are wonderfully authentic, shocked, and horrified. Obsession is in theaters May 15.
