It’s not controversial to say that Obsession has been one of the biggest movie and pop-cultural hits of the year, though there has been some controversy in the aftermath, with the memorable Freaky Nikki character becoming a presence at Halloween Horror Nights. Is it fair to treat her like a movie monster, when so many viewers consider her toxic friend Bear the real monster of the film? Does she belong in a similar category to The Exorcist‘s Regan, another innocent corrupted and made evil by a possessing force? Regardless of where anyone stands, the fact that we’re still discussing this character proves above all that people care a lot about the movie, and their own reads of it.
Actress Inde Navarette has moved up in the world to costar in Marvel’s X-Men reboot as Rogue, while director Curry Barker has apparently already finished his next feature film — his third, if you count the YouTube-distributed, 62-minute Milk & Serial to be his first. The new one, entitled Anything but Ghosts, already has a celebrity fan. In Time magazine’s special issue on the world’s most influential rising stars, Seth Rogen writes about Curry Barker, and in doing so, reveals that he has seen the director’s next movie. “[F]or those of you who, like me, are uncomfortable with this amount of talent in a person so young, I have bad news … it’s even better,” he writes.
Rogen then speaks to readers who might be wary that Barker is casting himself in this follow-up to his biggest hit — perhaps fearful that he’ll be a new Quentin Tarantino, overrating his own screen presence. In fact, Rogen says, “to add insult to injury, he’s just as good an actor as he is a director.”
Prior to directing horror features, Barker had a sketch comedy YouTube channel with partner Cooper Tomlinson, dubbed “that’s a bad idea.” The two costarred in Milk & Serial, as social media pranksters Marshall and Steven, whose pranks on each other escalate to a deadly degree. Tomlinson starred in Obsession as Bear’s best friend Ian; Anything but Ghosts is, according to Barker, set in the same reality as Obsession, but Tomlinson will play a different character this time. He and Barker play Eddie and Mouse, two fraudulent ghost hunters who have to simultaneously have to deal with the consequences of their lies, and, as one might expect, real ghosts. Tomlinson has described it as a mix of Hereditary and Key & Peele.
Rogen knows a bit about directing, having co-helmed The Interview and This Is the End with regular partner Evan Goldberg. In both cases, he directed himself playing characters pretty similar to his public persona, and in both cases he was good — good enough to even make North Korea feel threatened, apparently. So if he says Barker does it well, he is the right guy to assess it. We’ll all get a better idea when Anything but Ghosts opens on May 7th of next year, 2027.
Do you trust Rogen’s judgment? Is Barker the real deal as an actor too? Let’s obsess over the possibilities in comments.
