‘Obsession’ Director on Alternate Ending, Texas Chainsaw Massacre

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for “Obsession,” now playing in theaters.

Twenty-six year-old director Curry Barker started his filmmaking career by posting short-form videos on TikTok, YouTube and other social media platforms. That led him to shooting an hour-long, twisty horror movie called “Milk & Serial” that put him on the map after he released it for free on YouTube. Now, Barker is bringing his first-ever full-length film to theaters this weekend with “Obsession” from Focus Features.

“Obsession,” which received rave reviews out of the Toronto Film Festival last year, follows a simple premise: a guy wishes for his childhood crush to fall in love with him. However, things quickly take a supernaturally dark turn. Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette star as the main couple, Bear and Nikki, who fall victim to the One Wish Willow, a wish-granting toy with terrifying results. After Bear makes his wish, Nikki becomes unhealthily obsessed with him. She watches him while he sleeps, barricades her door so he can’t leave and threatens to kill herself so he’ll stay with her. In a shockingly gory scene, she kills Bear’s female co-worker by slamming her head into a steering wheel after Nikki grows jealous.

Terrified of Nikki, Bear learns that there’s no way to undo his wish unless he dies. In the end, he overdoses in Nikki’s arms as she snaps out of her wish and realizes the horror around her. If that sounds dark, Barker originally had an even more morbid ending where Nikki kills herself in the final moments of the movie. With Variety, Barker discusses making his theatrical debut, the alternate ending and his next two movies “Anything but Ghosts,” with Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard, and A24’s “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

Where did you first get the idea for “Obsession”?

I was toying around with this idea of “Obsession” for a while. I was intrigued by the idea of of a guy being obsessed with a girl, or a girl being obsessed with a guy, and that going absolutely bonkers. But I hadn’t cracked the story really yet, and then once I discovered the wish element of it, I realized that was my way in. It’s about a guy who makes a wish that the girl was obsessed with him, and then she becomes crazy and it gets worse and worse. I was kind of shocked at how little that had actually been done.

This is still grounded but has more of a supernatural element than “Milk and Serial.” Why was that something you wanted to explore?

It’s exciting to dive into a more supernatural element, but the thing that excites me about it is to do it from a different angle. I like to put ordinary people in an extraordinary situation that couldn’t possibly happen in real life set in our real world. That excites me because then the possibilities are endless. What if you did a ghost movie, but it was set in the real world? In this case, it’s a wish-gone-wrong movie, but you set it in the real world where the consequences and characters feel real. That was an angle I hadn’t really seen. I want to do fantastical things, but I just want to ground them in the real world. I want the rules of life to still apply. If I were to do a superhero movie, it would feel so grounded. The reaction should feel very genuine. If you’re learning to fly, what does that actually feel like? What psychological things are going through your head when you figure that out? How many friends would you call? That’s exciting to me.

Is shooting a superhero movie on your filmmaking bucket list?

I mean, it’s not like I’m racing to do it. If the right opportunity presented itself and it was something I could really sink my teeth into, I would do anything. It also would matter how far they would allow me to go with it. What would my creative control be? I just want to be a storyteller and tell good stories where characters change and they learn something, and maybe we learn something too.

Was it always your goal to go from making short-form videos on the internet to directing a feature? Was there ever a pinch-me moment for you once you wrapped shooting?

Yeah, it’s a dream come true. I always aspired to be in the traditional world. When we first moved out, we just wanted to get our foot in the door. Now, I’m doing it. It’s absolutely insane how quickly it happened to me because it was kind of an overnight thing with TIFF at least, and my life has really not been the same since. One of the pinch-me moments was recently when I’m walking down the street and I see the “Obsession” billboard next to the carwash that I always get my car washed at. I remember my agent looking at me after TIFF — this is someone who’s had clients that have made it and who knows this industry is like — saying to me, “Your life is never going to be the same. Your life just changed.” I was hearing him and taking that in, but also being, like, we’ll see. It’s too much for a human to comprehend at that time.

Do you have an explanation for how the One Wish Willow works and what actually happened to Nikki?

As a writer, it’s only important to keep in mind the details that matter for the story. I only need to know as much as what will help me push the story forward and whatever is important for the audience and characters to know. Everything else, it’s kind of fun that it lives in this ambiguous world. What I’ve also learned from doing internet content from a lot is that people will tell you what the answers are. It’s almost like they’ll do the work for you if you let them. With my short film “The Chair,” there are so many theories people have come up with, and I’m kind of just “yes and-ing” it, because why not? If it’s in the movie, I could probably tell you the answer because it pertains to the story, but the moment you start asking questions for things that the movie never really dives into, the lore doesn’t matter too much. But I get it because it does matter to people. I think one day, if I wanted to, I could come up with all the rules. I don’t know where Nikki is. She’s in some sort of purgatory. She’s being held somewhere, and it’s not good.

Was that always the ending you had in mind? Safe to say, it was never going to be a happy ending for Bear and Nikki?

Yeah, definitely. Bear and Nikki get their endings, and everything’s kind of wrapped up at the end. The only thing that is different is there was an alternate ending where Nikki does kill herself.

Why didn’t you use that ending?

It was in the script, that’s what was supposed to happen. She originally woke up, like she does in the movie, with the gun already in her mouth, because you can see that she’s about to do it. She wakes up and sees this gun, and she’s like, “Oh my God, where am I? What was I about to do?” She looks around, sees Bear and pushes him off of her. She realizes this is the first time she’s had any control over herself in a while. She puts the gun in her mouth again and ends it all because of the horror that she’s been through. We just decided that it was more brutal if she stays alive.

What did you learn going from your short film “Milk & Serial” to directing this feature-length film?

This is the first feature that I ever edited. It’s a bigger project than editing shorts. Telling a story and holding the audience’s attention for that long is a different beast than holding the attention of an audience for, 10, 20, 30 minutes. I was growing that muscle. This movie felt like a bunch of kids getting together and doing something and hoping that the adults don’t come home and tell us that we have to stop. I really felt like we were getting away with murder. I thought someone was going to tell us we have to tone it down or there were rules we had to follow. We were all really happy that never happened. We built the house, we put wallpaper up. Having a schedule was very different, like Monday through Friday, 12-hour days was so different than the “Milk and Serial.”

I was reading that the only rule you had to follow was to cut back on the number of head smashes in the car scene to avoid an NC-17 rating.

Yeah, I was so upset about that at first and scared that it was going to change the integrity of the scene. I was scared to touch it, because I had already seen the reaction at TIFF. I didn’t want to mess up whatever good is happening here. But it was fine. I think the integrity of the scene is still there. Whatever we were able to do, it works.

Were there any other changes you had to make?

Just things that were either notes from the producers, like runtime. I think this movie was running a little long, so I cut some things down. I would love to one day do a director’s cut. There are so many things that have not been seen that that could add to a longer cut of this movie. That would be really exciting.

We need the full head-smash cut.

Put those back in. Put in that alternate ending. We shot it, that was the original ending. Put back in her monologue at the car, where she talks about love and romance. Let this movie breathe just a little bit more. It would be fun to experiment and do a new cut of it.

Your next film, “Anything but Ghosts,” has an even bigger cast than this one. What stage is that film at?

We just wrapped, seems like only two weeks ago. It’s been a roller coaster, man. I haven’t had a day off in, like, four months. It’s been insane, like a non-stop train, but I love it. This is what my agent meant when he looked at me and said my life is going to change. I’m so excited about “Anything but Ghosts.” It’s very different than “Obsession,” and that’s exciting for me as a director to do something that’s not exactly the same, but it does share tonality. It’s still set in the grounded world. It should feel like, what would you do if you discovered ghosts were real? How would you react, and how would that emotionally affect you? These guys are con artists, and they don’t even believe in ghosts. They call themselves ghost hunters, but they’re just glorified magicians.

You’ve worked with talented people before, but “Anything but Ghosts” features Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard, which is some big star power. What was it like directing them?

I was nervous at first, because I have very specific ideas of what the scene looks like for me. I didn’t know what Aaron Paul’s or Bryce Dallas Howard’s process was going to be. I told my dad I was nervous to direct these really respectable actors, but he said, “They want to be directed and you’re going to let them down if you don’t give them direction.” That really meant a lot to me. They want to be guided by me. The reason they said yes is because they liked me and “Obsession.” After meeting Aaron and Bryce, they’re literally both the most sweet people I’ve ever met in Hollywood. They were so easy to work with and giving feedback and notes. They’re so talented that I found myself having less to say because they had read the material and really understood it on such a deep level.

You’re also acting in that one. Do you see yourself continuing to act in the films you direct?

Cooper and I are the two main characters of this. You’ll see a lot of my face in that one. It was quite a challenge to be in front of the camera and behind the camera. But I’m not going to force myself into movies just for the sake of it. If I see a character that I think I could play really well, then I might give it a go, but the movie is always going to be the most important to me.

What can you say about your upcoming take on “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”?

It’s gonna be grounded, brutal, raw. It should be very, very uncomfortable. I just want to nail the tone. I want to make you care about the characters that we’re on the journey with. I want to give a deeper story to whoever is on this road trip. Just like Bear, Nikki and Sarah are characters that you never knew before — I mean, we all know Leatherface and the Sawyers — but what are the characters that I can invent that we can grow to care about. If they do die brutally, we’ll actually be sad that they died. It was something that I had voiced to my team that I was really excited about. I knew A24 had just gotten the rights to it, and I was like, “As far as IP goes, that’s something I would love to tackle.” It was a match made in heaven and all the stars aligning at once for me to to get that one.