Curry Barker was once pulling shifts at a Starbucks counter while posting horror and comedy shorts to YouTube on the side. Today, at 26, he’s the writer, director and editor behind one of the most profitable independent films ever made. Here’s the story of the man behind Obsession (2025).
A Mobile, Alabama kid who loved horror early
Barker, born September 22, 1999, grew up in Mobile, Alabama, in a household that leaned towards the arts since his mother works as a graphic designer. His father left a career as a psychiatric nurse practitioner to become a professional screenwriter. He has two younger brothers, Riley and Jeffrey, who’ve both worked on his films.
By his own account, Barker’s love of horror took root at age 11, after watching the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He wasn’t a standout student whatsoever. He’s described himself as a “straight-C and D student” at Baker High School, however, he wasn’t inactive as he’d joined the marching band, began his own rock band, and ran a YouTube channel with his friends.
Building an audience from nothing
At 18, Barker left Alabama to study acting at the New York Film Academy’s Los Angeles campus. During his first week there, he met Cooper Tomlinson, and the two hit it off. They began making videos together almost immediately in what they later called ’our film school outside of film school’. They soon dropped out, moved in together, and began posting comedy sketches on TikTok and YouTube under the channel name “that’s a bad idea,” which has since grown to roughly 1.2 million subscribers. Barker supported himself by working at Starbucks in the meantime and picked up occasional acting roles, including guest spots on Dave and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia in 2023 as their YouTube career grew.
That same year, Barker wrote and directed a horror short called The Chair and uploaded it to YouTube, where it racked up more than 10 million views. The short caught the attention of producer James Harris of Tea Shop Productions who reached out about turning it into a feature. This in a sense, was Barker’s first ever real shot at a true film career.
Milk & Serial and the pivot to Obsession
Rather than adapt The Chair, Barker used the opening to pitch Harris something else entirely: a story about a man’s wish forced upon the woman he loves that becomes a nerve-rattling exploration of love, control, and unintended consequences, later titled Obsession.
Before that project came together, Barker released Milk & Serial which was a found-footage horror feature made for around $800. He’d spent nearly a year trying and failing to land distribution, so he simply put the whole thing on YouTube in August 2024. It deservedly went viral and racked up buzz across the press, it landed on several year-end best-horror lists, including Variety’s. The momentum led to a representation deal with United Talent Agency in early 2025 which was Barker’s formal move from internet creator to a professional filmmaker.
Barker then shot Obsession in Los Angeles in October 2024 on a budget of $750,000.
From TIFF to record-breaking blockbuster
Obsession premiered in TIFF’s Midnight Madness lineup in September 2025 and sold to Focus Features for a reported $14–15 million which is the highest price ever paid for a genre film in the festival’s history, a staggering return on a film shot for less than the cost of a house down payment.
Released theatrically on May 15, 2026, Obsession became one of the year’s biggest word-of-mouth hits. It shattered one box-office record after another, becoming Focus Features’ highest-grossing release ever, the highest-grossing horror film of the decade, and eventually crossing $500 million worldwide. That makes it one of the highest-grossing independent films of all time and, per its unadjusted lifetime gross, the fifth-highest-grossing horror film ever made.
The pay controversy
The film’s success came with friction as successes like these usually do. In June 2026, art director Sally Choi went public on Instagram about her pay on the production which was $300 a day, which came out to roughly $6,741 after taxes, with no mileage reimbursement, this sparked a wider industry-wide conversation about under-compensation on breakout indie hits.
Barker addressed it directly in a Hollywood Reporter cover interview later that month. He didn’t dispute Choi’s account, instead he pointed out that he wasn’t the one setting pay on the production; he praised the art department’s work and stated he hoped the film’s success would open doors and better opportunities for everyone who worked on it, the same way it had for him.
What’s next
Barker’s momentum hasn’t slowed. He’s already shot his second feature, Anything But Ghosts which is a horror-comedy he directed, co-wrote, and co-stars in alongside Cooper Tomlinson, produced through Jason Blum’s Blumhouse and distributed by Focus Features. In June 2026, he landed a separate deal to write, direct, and produce an original horror film for Universal Pictures, again produced through a Blumhouse banner. In a full-circle twist, he’s set to write and direct a new take on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for A24 which was the very franchise that hooked him on horror in the first place as a kid in Mobile.
Written by : Tamo
Edited by : Anjitha
