'Obsession' director surprised by reaction to film
Barker
Director Curry Barker knew his film "Obsession" had struck a nerve when fans started making their own T-shirts and posters.
"Then, people started getting tattoos and … holy cow! This was hitting the culture," he says.
The horror film became such an audience favorite that theaters were packed. Made for $750,000, "Obsession" has taken in more than $500 million worldwide and ranks as the fifth highest-grossing horror film of all time.
Now, it's being touted as an awards contender — for actress Inde Navarrette, in particular. She plays a woman who develops an unhealthy obsession with a co-worker thanks to a novelty item called One Wish Willow.
"I wasn't expecting the tattoos," Navarrette says of the film's reaction, "but they look so damn cool. It's just very surreal."
Because "Obsession" was filmed in 26 days, Barker didn't have time for reshoots or second takes. A brutal scene inside a car required breakaway windshields. But when those props were delivered to the set, all but one had shattered.
"She had to hit the fake glass with enough force that it broke," Barker says of Navarrette. "We only had one take." She wore a helmet with a wig over it and "it had to work. There was no special trick."
Navarrette says she tested out screams for other parts of the film and "spent a lot of late nights going over voices, faces and … vocal ranges. In order to really scare myself, I could not prepare those scenes at all. I didn't want to create this imagery in my head. That's where the fear and shock value comes from. I wanted that to seem as though I was shocking myself."
Barker says he has heard countless theories about the film and, initially, would give fans definitive answers about scenes' meanings. "I would see people get disappointed and I was like, wait a second, what am I doing?" he says.
"Why am I killing their thunder? They've got this cool theory."
He has ideas, too, about a sequel, but, thankfully, he filmed his follow-up "Anything But Ghosts" before "Obsession" hit the zeitgeist.
A "director's cut" with extended scenes is possible, he says, because the original cut clocked in at more than two hours. The one that hit theaters runs 109 minutes.
"I would love to put all that stuff back in and there are even a couple of scares that we took out that we could put back in," Barker says. "Who knows?"
Watching "Obsession" in theaters is essential, he says. "It's actually more important than it ever has been because there are so many distractions nowadays.
Watching a movie at home used to be a good experience. You could gather around the TV and watch a movie with your family. Now, you're going to get on your phone … and there are distractions. The theater promotes getting off your phone. You're committing to an experience with a group of people."
Creating a film that gets that kind of reaction requires a simple formula, Barker says. "Take something extraordinary, put it in the real world and let real people react to those circumstances.
"But don't do that," he cautions, "because I'm going to keep doing that."
"Obsession" is now available to stream.
