Curry Barker: the young YouTuber turned film-maker terrifying Gen Z audiences

Illustration Andy Bunday

The statistics for Curry Barker’s horror movie debut, Obsession, are a jump-scare in themselves.

The tale of unrequited love turned dark was made for $750,000 and has taken $225m (£168m) worldwide. Purchased by Focus Features at the Toronto International Film Festival for $15m after a bidding war, it’s the top-grossing festival acquisition of all time, beating Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), which took $222m. It’s the first movie to have higher-scoring second and third weekends since Steven Spielberg’s ET: The Extra-Terrestrial in 1982, and has garnered the biggest fourth-weekend audiences for a horror since 1999’s The Blair Witch Project.

The twist is that Barker, a “Gen Z auteur”, is only 26 years old and one of the latest major players in the YouTube-to-Hollywood horror film-maker pipeline. Kane Parsons is another: his film, Backrooms, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, is a “liminal” horror, a subgenre based on abandoned or familiar spaces. Costing $10m to make, and taking $135m in the US alone, it made Parsons, who turns 21 on 18 June, the youngest film-maker in history to open a film at number one at the US box office. Obsession and Backrooms, both relatively low-budget horrors, have beaten mega-budget franchise releases such as Masters of the Universe and Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu.

In Obsession, an infatuated young man called Bear (Michael Johnston) makes a wish on a cheap toy called One-Wish Willow for his crush, Nikki (Inde Navarrette), to love him. His dream comes true but evolves into Nikki’s derangement, evoking themes including incel culture, post-Covid isolation and the narrative of “lonely nice guy”.

Hannah Strong, digital editor of the film site Little White Lies, and author of the forthcoming book The Modern Prometheus: The Films of Yorgos Lanthimos, notes how Obsession has boosted cinema: “Anything that gets people engaged with movies is great.” Emma Kiely, film and horror critic for Little White Lies and the Collider film site, finds the film “fresh”, “uncanny”, “unsanitised”. “Art can be so cyclical, so repetitive,” she says. “Curry Barker, and also Kane Parsons, are champing at the bit, but it’s not just splatter and gore.”

“What Barker does is interesting,” says Nikki Baughan, reviews editor of the film magazine Screen International. “It’s not about monsters. He’s playing with real-world Gen Z themes. It’s very grounded, earthed, in this young reality.”

Some critics, including Strong, have observed elements of misogyny in Obsession – how everything, including Nikki’s derangement, is viewed from Bear’s perspective. More generally, Barker appears representative of the “New Hollywood”: seasoned, skilled YouTube creators bringing in baked-in audiences of millions. The trajectory isn’t new – previous YouTube-to-Hollywood powerhouses include Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach (Iron Lung) and Daniel and Michael Philippou (Talk to Me; Bring Her Back), known online as RackaRacka – but it signifies a shift in industry focus. Strong observes: “The studios are definitely out there hiring people to look on YouTube for the next Curry Barker and Kane Parsons.”

Backrooms, from A24, is based on Parsons’ YouTube series of the same name, itself part of a wider online trend. Barker raised the initial $750,000 to make Obsession from his YouTube shorts, including 2023’s The Chair and the hour-long Milk & Serial (2024), which went viral. “It’s audience-driven,” says Baughan. “The built-in YouTube horror genre fanbase gives these films validation for the studios… It’s not risk-free but it diminishes the risk.”

Jason Hellerman, screenwriter, journalist and senior copywriter at No Film School, the global online resource “by film-makers for film-makers”, founded by director Ryan Koo, is excited about what Barker’s breakthrough could mean for “democratising” the film industry. “Here’s an independent film people are going to movie theatres to see that’s dominating the cultural conversation,” says Hellerman. “And you can find this kind of person making films on YouTube… They could be from anywhere, doing anything, as long as they’re telling a story that people are connecting with.”

Barker was born in Alabama and is now based in Los Angeles. Does his gift run in the family? His father, Jeff, has a Youtube channel, the Screenplay Lab, in which he breaks down blockbusters; his mother, Amy Evans-Vega, a graphic designer, created the One-Wish Willow. Barker, a shades-wearing blond film geek, does not seem to be in a relationship. He’s revealed he has ADHD, describing himself as single-minded, “obsessed with one project at a time”. Early on, he dropped out of film school with his friend/collaborator, Cooper Tomlinson (who appears in Obsession), to build their comedy channel, That’s a Bad Idea.

This comedy crossover is a staple of modern horror. Jordan Peele (Get Out) and Zach Cregger (Weapons) both come from comedy. Hellerman says: “Horror is a genre where an audience will show up for a relatively unknown director as long as there’s a scary trailer and a big hook… And comedy and horror share a lot of the same beats. Instead of making someone laugh, you’re just making someone cry.”

It’s also noted that Gen Z audiences go wild for modern horror. “It’s been noticed since the pandemic,” says Strong – “the disappearance of third spaces, where people can hang out. Gen Z are very keen on having real-world experiences. The cinema is somewhere you can just hang out with your mates. With a horror movie, audience participation is almost expected. You’re allowed to shriek, laugh and gasp.”

Barker has teased about Obsession becoming an anthology. Regarding other upcoming projects: he’s helming A24’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot; he’s also directing, and co-writing and starring (with Tomlinson), in Anything But Ghosts, a horror-comedy about con-artist ghost-hunters, which has a cast including Aaron Paul.

Barker embodies modern cinematic promise: a young Gen Z creator perfectly in sync with Gen Z audiences. Though there’s concern about how transplanted twentysomething YouTubers such as Barker and Kane will protect their vision against the hype and churn of the Hollywood machine. “I’ve seen Barker called ‘the saviour of modern horror’,” says Baughan. “I’d be wary of putting that label – that pressure – on him at such an early stage.”

Kiely also sounds a note of caution: “All studios want to sanitise. They want the 12s/PG-13 ratings. They can really dull down people’s talent… These talents need protection,” she says. “These films are so exquisite. It’s a pipeline that should keep on flowing.”

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Photograph by Focus Features