Three Reasons Why 'Obsession' Makes Me Happy

And What Hollywood Could Learn From It

Let’s put aside Inde Navarrette’s generation-defining performance, Michael Johnston’s electric fear, and a directorial debut that rivals John Carpenter. If we must, let’s put those things aside.

Hollywood (meaning the studios) are taking notes right now. But I can tell you without hyperbole they are absolutely taking the wrong notes.

So I’m going to spell it out for them. The ingredients that can breathe new life into Hollywood are also the reasons I love this movie.

1. Story. It should be clear by now that audiences want stories, not IP. Or if they do want IP, they want the IP to have a good story. And that doesn’t mean plot. It means story. Humans dealing with humans about human stuff. That’s what we want. You can drape that in $200M of FX if you want, but you don't have to, and increasingly, audiences don't want you to.

2. Realness. Practical effects. Real people in real locations. Physical sets. Blood, dirt, and sweat. Real expressions coming from real human eyes. We don’t want AI. We don’t want cheap and unmotivated CGI. We want real people doing real things in real places. Forget the polished, clean, and muted look of contemporary movies. We want it to be cracked, dirty, with harsh lights in a messy world.

3. People. Not celebrities. Not household names. Not millionaire entertainers play acting. We want actual people that look like actual people that remind us of ourselves and people we know, going through stuff that we can relate to.

Which brings me to Curry Barker, who understood all three of these things before he ever made a feature.

I first started watching him I think a year or two ago on TikTok. Next to Key and Peele he and his team were putting the best skits out on the Internet. When I found out he was making a feature movie I literally lost my shit.

Comedians, sketch comedy comedians, and TikTok creators know more about grabbing attention and telling good stories then any Hollywood executive. Not because they are super geniuses, but because they live in the trenches with their audiences. They find, in real time, what works and what doesn’t. They don’t hypothesize in an ivory tower boardroom what audiences want based on decades old trend data from surveys representing no one.

Of course Curry Barker makes great movies and for the same reasons that sketch comedian Jordan Peele makes good movies.

We saw several small budget horror indie hits this year, just five months in. Obsession cost $750k and hit $100 million on the first weekend, Iron Lung cost $3 or 4 million and hit $50 million, and Undertone hit $20 million with a $500k budget. They all have these three things in common. And they are all made by people who understand audiences.

If Hollywood is going to take notes, they should look to finance the Curry Barkers of the world on the Obsessions of the world and if they do that, people will come to the theater. They should want to do this. These movies are cheaper with a very juicy profit margin—the one thing that everyone seems to care about so much.

So instead of obliterating creative teams, green lighting ancient IP, and using AI to paint the roses red (or replace real flowers with fake ones I guess), they could just spend $1 on original stories with people who know how to tell them and make $100.

Or they can keep dropping $200 million into movies like Masters of the Universe and wonder why they can’t see a profit.

Well, to be fair. It looks like Blumhouse, Neon, and A24 have already figured this out.