Things have been going scarily well for 26-year-old film-maker Curry Barker.

The past 18 months have seen him level up from lo-fi YouTube comedy skits to an $800 horror short that went viral to a breakout feature picked up for $15m to being handed the reins of one of the most legendary franchises in Hollywood. It’s almost too good to be true.

Fittingly, Barker’s big-screen debut Obsession, out this week, is all about what happens when a wish gets granted. The film, which premiered at last year’s Toronto festival, currently rests at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, the best-reviewed horror of the year so far.

“Luckily for this project, it’s been really, really positive,” Barker tells me over Zoom the week before release. “I haven’t seen very many negative reactions which can also be scary because then the one negative that you do see sticks out like a sore thumb and all you think about is that.”

Will he keep looking even as the film edges toward release? “I feel like I’m going to look,” he confesses. “If it starts to hurt me psychologically or emotionally maybe I’ll try to stop.”

Barker would be right to feel a little scared. Festival-loved horror films have increasingly struggled to convert positive early buzz into audience interest – recent disappointments include Shelby Oaks, Undertone, Bone Lake, Together and Dangerous Animals – plus he’s also made a film about what actually happens when your dream curdles into a nightmare. But Obsession, one of the most impressive horror debuts I’ve seen in recent years, should continue its run of good luck all the way to the box office and beyond. Made for less than $1m, it’s tracking to make a great deal more.

Partly inspired by a Simpsons episode involving Bart based on the horror short story The Monkey’s Paw, Obsession is a conceptually classic yet grounded fable of a guy who makes a wish. Bear, played by newcomer Michael Johnston, has feelings for his co-worker Nikki, a barnstorming breakout turn from Inde Navarrette, but can’t bring himself to do anything about it. “I can definitely relate to having a crush on someone and not knowing how they feel back or not having the courage to tell someone how I feel,” he says, but that’s when things get a little harder to relate to.

When Bear’s courage once again fizzles, he uses a mysterious “one-wish willow” purchased at a local boutique and utters words he will live to regret: I wish Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone in the entire world.

To his shock and then joy, it comes true and Nikki transforms into devoted girlfriend in an instant, all the intense passion, insatiable sexual desire and physical closeness he’d been craving. But Barker’s grim little fairytale invites us to revisit Bear’s cursed choice of words – more than anyone in the entire world – and shows us what that kind of love really looks like. Spoiler: it’s not pretty.

In fact things get so ugly that Barker ran into trouble with the censors, his film initially receiving an NC-17 in the US, a dreaded rating that’s known as the kiss of death at the box office. A horribly effective head-smashing was in need of a few fewer smashes to get the movie an R rating.

“That was definitely a scary moment for me as a director,” he tells me. “Especially as I had just watched the movie in Toronto with a crowd that really reacted to that scene. Hearing the news that I might have to cut it down was quite devastating at first. But we cut it down and I feel like the integrity of the scene is still there … I’m actually surprised at how much they let us keep in.”

The violence of the film is effectively jolting but it’s the gender dynamic at the film’s centre that will really give you nightmares. Obsession might be more refreshingly straightforward than the majority of so-called “elevated” trauma horrors but there’s still something interesting to unpack. Bear is an on-paper nice guy – apologising too much, stumbling over his words, caring for his cat – but the reality of his wish turns him into an unlikely aggressor, trapping Nikki in a non-consensual relationship that robs her of any agency. When we do see what’s happened to the real Nikki, trapped underneath the version wished upon her, it’s in frightening glimpses, screaming for release and injuring herself to try to break free (in the film’s most chilling scene, she begs Bear to kill her). But his response alternates between shock and offence (“What’s so bad about being with me?”) and it’s already led to the term “incel horror” being used online, the character summing up a certain brand of male entitlement that’s become more and more familiar online.

“I didn’t think of it that way when I wrote it,” he admits. “He just makes some bad decisions but I think it starts from a really innocent place. It’s what he chooses to do after that that’s bad. Embarrassingly, I wasn’t even familiar with the term incel until someone brought it up to me.”

He is quick to point out that Bear is far from a hero, though, and Nikki, as the violently possessed obsessor, is far from a villain, more of an unusual victim. It’s a journey that puts Navarrette through the wringer, the kind of all-guns-blazing performance that’ll have you making a mental note of her name, and Barker was aware he was “asking a lot” from her.

“She was such a good sport,” he says. “I really think that the best kind of atmosphere to have on set is one that’s playful and kind of silly and we can all kind of laugh so mess-ups don’t feel like they’re devastating. If her voice cracked or if she said a line kind of weird, like not not putting too much pressure on that one take.”

It’s one thing to direct an actor with only a handful of credits but Barker has just had to manage stars who have worked with everyone from Clint Eastwood to Ridley Scott. He recently finished production on his follow-up, darkly comedic thriller Anything But Ghosts starring Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard. The film centres on con artists pretending to be paranormal investigators (he refers to it having a Scooby Doo vibe but “grounded”).

“I was really scared at first,” he says. “I remember telling my dad that I was nervous to direct these stars that have a very specific way they’re used to doing things and what if they don’t like the way I run a set or whatever? He said that you’re going to disappoint them if you don’t direct them. You’re going to disappoint them if you don’t give them feedback. That really resonated with me.”

Both Paul and Howard proved to be easy to work with. “They had no ego, like they were just ready to go and play,” he says.

It’s Barker’s project after that which has been sparking the most conversation online, with the news that he will be shepherding a new take on defining 70s slasher The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. He’s “so excited” but already learning the hard way that its fans are passionate. “I opened my mouth a lot about what I’m planning on doing but I haven’t even written the script yet,” he says. “People will latch on to anything you say and turn it against you.”

He points to a comment he made, referring to Tobe Hooper’s original as “good for its time” which was criticised “out of context” he says. He’s now trying to keep his head down, “soft prepping” by rewatching all nine films and trying to avoid online discussion. “I feel like that could be the killer of any creativity if I dive into that stuff too much,” he says.

Barker is among a new generation of young horror film-makers with online origins, his film released just two weeks before Backrooms from 20-year-old Kane Parsons and four months after Iron Lung from Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach, both of whom started their careers on YouTube. I wondered how the old guard would be taking this new group of gen Z upstarts. “Everyone’s very welcoming,” he tells me. “I mean, at least they are to my face … I never even thought that people might feel threatened by us.”

For his Directors Guild of America application, he needed three signatures and was lucky enough to call on Longlegs’ Osgood Perkins, Weapons’ Zach Cregger and Ari Aster, who has been “really supportive”.

One thing the old guard seem a little more mixed on is the use of AI in their work. There have been those such as Guillermo del Toro who would “rather die” than use it and then others like Steven Soderbergh who have already started to openly embrace the new technology. Barker makes it clear which side he’s on.

“I’m scared of AI for sure,” he says. “I don’t think it’s going to replace us as quickly as people think it is and I’m not an expert but just based off of my gut, I feel like there’s going to be AI content and there’s going to be our content and it’s going to be well, where’s the demand at?”

Concerns over whether AI will kill Hollywood have slowly replaced those over whether we all might simply by not going to the cinema enough. Last year might have been another year that failed to take the industry back to pre-pandemic totals but so far 2026 has been off to a bumper start, thanks largely to gen Z, who have been shown to be the most frequent moviegoing demographic according to a recent study. Barker praises it as a “zero effort” alternative.

“I think we’re getting sick of the phones,” Barker says. “The movie theatre is such an escape for me, like especially in a world where we are on our phones so often. You put your phone away for an hour and 45 minutes and hopefully can just escape into a movie with whatever friends you want to go with. So I actually think the theatre is going to stick around.”

• Obsession is out in Australian cinemas on 14 May and in the US and UK on 15 May