{"id":46114,"date":"2025-09-05T22:11:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T22:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/46114\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T22:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T22:11:08","slug":"curry-barker-on-his-scary-movie-follow-to-milk-serial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/46114\/","title":{"rendered":"Curry Barker on His Scary Movie Follow to ‘Milk & Serial’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCurry Barker<\/a> made headlines at this very publication<\/a> by making a feature length slasher called \u201cMilk & Serial\u201d for $800, posting it to watch for free on YouTube and watching it become a viral sensation. A year later, a lot has changed. \u201cMilk\u201d never slowed in momentum, with over two million views in the year since it debuted. Meanwhile, Barker is opening his newest film at this year\u2019s Toronto Film Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cObsession<\/a>,\u201d in which a lovelorn guy named Bear (Michael Johnston) messes with the supernatural to get romantic attention from his friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette), is set to debut on Friday as part of the fest\u2019s Midnight Madness section. As can be expected, things don\u2019t go as planned, and a new spin on the classic monkey\u2019s paw \/ \u201cbe careful what you wish for\u201d tale is born.<\/p>\n

\n\tBarker admits that inspiration struck from an unlikely time and place. A group of friends had come over to check out an episode of \u201cIt\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia\u201d that he had a part in, yet his mind started racing during the lead-in, an old \u201cSimpsons\u201d rerun.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBart gets a monkey paw and causes a bunch of chaos,\u201d Barker says. \u201cI was thinking that I\u2019ve never seen a straight crazy horror where \u2026 we\u2019ve seen \u2018Be careful what you wish for\u2019 tons of times. But we\u2019ve never seen my version of it. I instantly started thinking about what I could do with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe idea caught the attention of producer James Harris, who has worked on horror hits like \u201cFall\u201d and \u201c47 Meters Down.\u201d His Tea Shop Productions banner was soon on board for the film, and Barker was suddenly able to make his film with a more conventional crew, compared to the ultra-shoestring \u201cMilk & Serial.\u201d The ability to do things like build a set proved revolutionary for Barker.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis time around I had a way bigger playground,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve never had the resources to create a house. We found this tiny little house in Burbank and transformed it into Bear\u2019s house. It doesn\u2019t look anything like that when you first see it. It was a game-changer, for sure. I remember my first day on set and I saw the set being built by [production designer] Vivian [Gray] and people painting the walls. And then I went down into the camera department and everyone\u2019s setting that up, and I remember going, \u2018Oh wow, I\u2019m running the ship.\u2019 It hit me that this is much bigger than I\u2019d ever been a part of.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite the influx of help, Barker\u2019s specificity of vision inspired him to keep some of his many hats on, like choosing to edit \u201cObsession\u201d himself. Yet he says he found new joy in working with others on set to make his vision come to life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis movie taught me how to collaborate with more people,\u201d Barker says. \u201cI\u2019ve always been scared of letting too many people in because I\u2019m very precious about my vision. But I\u2019ve learned that if you can get your vision and passion across to them, they tend to give it back, and then it becomes a powerhouse of people that are passionate about the same thing. That\u2019s what we had here. The movie did not have to turn out the way that it turned out, but a lot of people put their heart into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat vision is certainly specific. Barker, along with his creative partner Cooper Tomlinson (who has a role in \u201cObsession\u201d), have a background in sketch via their online work as That\u2019s a Bad Idea. That dark sensibility often infuses itself with their horror projects, with key moments toeing the line between scary and funny.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat said, Barker is always focused on having the right look for the right medium, be it their flashy, funny viral sketches or the found footage creativity of \u201cMilk & Serial.\u201d For \u201cObsession,\u201d he worked with cinematographer Taylor Clemons to lens the film in a very specific way.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wanted to shoot this center-composed and have extra head space because I wanted it to feel uncomfortable in its loneliness,\u201d Barker says. \u201cThere\u2019s something about center-composed that forces you to look and pulls you in in a way that traditional composition may not. I\u2019ve seen a lot of horror filmmakers I look up to recently shooting in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEven though he\u2019s getting ready to debut \u201cObsession,\u201d Barker is already booked and busy with his next project, titled \u201cAnything But Ghosts.\u201d Barker is set to direct and star in the film, and co-wrote the script with Tomlinson, who will also star in the film. The project also has two of horror\u2019s biggest producers \u2014\u00a0Jason Blum and Roy Lee \u2014\u00a0signed on board. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhile keeping details close to the chest, Barker teases that it\u2019s about \u201ccon artists posing as ghost hunters,\u201d which feels like a perfect fit for the duo\u2019s scary-funny sensibilities.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for another \u201cObsession\u201d down the line? Barker says it\u2019s always a possibility, especially given how much he enjoys the \u201cbe careful what you wish for\u201d trope.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019ll ever see a movie with these characters again, but it would be cool to expand this world with different characters,\u201d he says, leaving the door open.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Curry Barker made headlines at this very publication by making a feature length slasher called \u201cMilk & Serial\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[31494,18,117,19,17,327,34433,13245],"class_list":{"0":"post-46114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-curry-barker","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-obsession","15":"tag-toronto-film-festival"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}