Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for Obsession, currently in theaters.
26-year-old director Callie Barker began her filmmaking career by posting short videos on TikTok, YouTube, and other social media platforms. That led him to shoot a meandering, hour-long horror film called “Milk & Serial,” which shot to fame after being released for free on YouTube. Barker will be releasing his first feature film this weekend with Focus Features’ Obsession.
“Obsession,” which received rave reviews at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, follows a simple premise. In other words, a man wants his childhood friend to fall in love with him. However, things soon take a supernaturally dark turn. Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette play Bear and Nikki, a couple who fall victim to the One Wish Willow, a wish-granting toy with dire consequences. After Bear grants her wish, Nikki becomes unhealthyly obsessed with Bear. She watches him while he sleeps, barricades the door so he can’t leave, and threatens to commit suicide so he can be with her. In a shockingly gory scene, after Nicky becomes jealous, she kills Bear’s female colleague by banging her head on the steering wheel.
Bear, fearful of Nikki, learns that there is no way to reverse his wish unless Nikki dies. Eventually, he ends up overdosing in Nicky’s arms when she breaks his wish and realizes the horror around him. As dark as that may sound, Barker originally prepared for an even more morbid ending, with Nikki committing suicide in the film’s final moments. Barker spoke to Variety about his theatrical debut, alternate endings, and his next two films, Anything But Ghost and A24’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, co-starring Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard.
©Focus Features/Courtesy of Everett Collection
Where did you first come up with the idea for “Obsession”?
I’ve been thinking about this idea called “Obsession” for a while. I was intrigued by the idea of guys being crazy about girls and girls being crazy about guys, which can be totally crazy. But I hadn’t fully deciphered the story yet, and once I discovered that there was an element of wish in it, I realized that it was my path. It’s about a guy who makes a wish so that a girl becomes attached to him, then she goes crazy and things go from bad to worse. In some ways, I was shocked that so little of that was actually done.
It’s still down to earth, but has more supernatural elements than “Milk and Cereal.” Why did you want to explore that?
It’s exciting to dive into more supernatural elements, but what excites me about it is doing it from a different angle. I like to use real-world settings to put ordinary people in extraordinary situations that would never occur in real life. I’m so excited because the possibilities are endless. What if you made a ghost movie, but it was set in the real world? In this case, it’s a movie about wishes not coming true, but set in the real world where the results and characters feel real. It was an angle I had never seen before. I want to do something fantastical, but I just want it to be grounded in the real world. Please continue to apply the rules of life. If I were to make a superhero movie, it would be very grounded. The response should feel very sincere. If you’re learning how to fly, what does that actually feel like? What psychological things go through your head when you figure it out? How many friends do you call? That’s exciting for me.
Is filming a superhero movie on your filmmaking bucket list?
I mean, we’re not competing to do that. If the right opportunity comes along and it’s something I’m really committed to, I’ll do whatever it takes. It also matters how much they allow me to do that. What would my creative control be like? I just want to be a storyteller and tell a good story where the characters change, they learn something, and maybe we learn something too.
Was it always your goal to go from making short videos on the internet to directing a feature film? Was there a pinch moment after you finished filming?
Yes, it was a dream come true. I have always admired the traditional world. When we first moved in, we just wanted to get our feet wet. I’m doing it now. It’s totally unbelievable how quickly it happened to me, because at least at TIFF it was like an overnight thing, and my life has never been the same since. One of the moments that really hit me recently was when I was walking down the street and saw a sign that said “Obsession” next to the car wash where I usually get my car washed. After TIFF, I remember my agent, someone who has had successful clients and knows what this industry is like, looked at me and said, “Your life will never be the same. Your life just changed.” I was listening to him and accepting it, but at the same time I was thinking, “Let’s take another look.” This was incomprehensible to people at the time.
Is there an explanation of how One Wish Willow works and what actually happened to Nikki?
As a writer, all you need to do is keep in mind the details that are important to your story. All I need to know is what will help move the story forward and what is important for the audience and characters to know. Other than that, it’s kind of fun to live in this ambiguous world. And what I’ve learned a lot from working with internet content is that people will give you the answers. If you leave it to them, they will do the work for you. People are coming up with so many theories about my short film, The Chair, and I’m like, “Yes, I will.” If it’s in the movie, it’s relevant to the story so you can probably tell them the answer, but the moment you start asking questions about things that the movie never explores in depth, the lore becomes less important. But I understand that because it’s important to people. I think you can come up with all the rules one day if you want to. I don’t know where Nikki is. She’s in a kind of purgatory. She’s tied up somewhere and it’s not good.
Is that the ending you always had in mind? Safe to say, it was never going to be a happy ending for Bear and Nikki, right?
Yes, certainly. Bear and Nikki get their own endings, and everything comes together in the end. The only difference is that there was an alternate ending where Nikki committed suicide.
Why didn’t you use that ending?
It was in the script, it was supposed to happen. Just like in the movie, she originally woke up with a gun already in her mouth. She woke up and saw this gun and thought, “Oh my god, where am I? What was I trying to do?” She looked around and saw the bear and pushed him away from her. She found herself in control for the first time in a while. She put the gun in her mouth again and put an end to all the horrors she had experienced. We just decided it would be more cruel to leave her alive.
What did you learn from your short film Milk & Cereal to directing this feature film?
This is the first feature I edited. This is a bigger project than short story editing. Telling a story and holding an audience’s attention for that long is a different beast than holding an audience’s attention for 10, 20, 30 minutes. I was growing those muscles. This movie felt like a bunch of kids getting together and doing something and hoping the adults wouldn’t come home and tell us we should stop. I really felt like I was getting away with murder. I thought someone was going to tell us we have to tone it down or that there are rules we have to follow. We were all really happy that never happened. We built a house and wallpapered it. The schedule was very different, Monday through Friday, and the 12-hour day was very different from “milk and cereal.”
I once read that the only rule to follow is to reduce the number of head smashes in car scenes to avoid an NC-17 rating.
Well, at first I was very upset about it and was scared that it would change the integrity of the scene. I was afraid to touch it because I had seen the reaction at TIFF. I didn’t want to spoil the good things going on here. But it was okay. I think the health of the scene is still there. Whatever we could do, it worked.
Were there any other changes you needed to make?
Just notes from the producer, such as runtime. The movie was a little long, so we cut some parts. I’d like to do a director’s cut version someday. There’s a lot we haven’t seen yet, so that could add up to a longer cut of this movie. That would be really exciting.
A complete head smash cut is required.
Bring them back and put a different ending. We shot it, and that was how it was supposed to end. Back to her monologue in the car about love and romance. Let’s breathe some more life into this movie. It can be fun to experiment and create new cuts.
The next film, “Anything but Ghosts,” has an even more impressive cast than this one. What stage is the movie at?
It feels like only two weeks ago, even though we just finished. It was like a roller coaster. I haven’t had a day off for the past four months. It was a mess, like a non-stop train, but I love it. This is what my agent meant when she looked at me and said my life would change. I’m really excited about “Anything but Ghosts.” It’s very different from Obsession, and it’s exciting for me as a director to create something that’s not quite the same, but shares a tonality. It is still set in the terrestrial world. You’re probably thinking, “What would you do if you found out that ghosts are real?” How do you react and what emotional impact does it have on you? These guys are scammers and don’t even believe in ghosts. They call themselves ghost hunters, but they are just glorified magicians.
You’ve worked with talented people before, and “Anything but Ghosts” features the star power of Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard. What was it like directing them?
I was nervous at first because I have a very specific idea of what the scene would be like for me. We didn’t know what the process was going to be for Aaron Paul or Bryce Dallas Howard. I told my dad that I was nervous about directing these really respectable actors, and he said, “They want to direct, and if you don’t give them direction, you’re going to disappoint them.” That really meant a lot to me. They want to be guided by Me. They said yes because they liked me and “Obsession.” After meeting Aaron and Bryce, they were literally the sweetest people I have ever met in Hollywood. They were very easy to work with and gave us feedback and notes. They were so talented and I found myself saying less because they read the material and really understood it on a very deep level.
He also appeared in that. Do you think you will continue to appear in films directed by yourself?
Cooper and I are the two main characters in this work. This photo shows a lot of my face. It was quite a challenge to be in front of the camera and behind the camera. But I’m not going to force myself to appear in a movie just for the sake of it. If I find a character that I think I could play really well, I might try it out, but the movie will always be the most important thing to me.
Can you say anything about the future development of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”?
It’s going to be down-to-earth, brutal, and graphic. It must be very, very uncomfortable. I just want to set the tone. I want you to cherish the characters who are traveling with you. I would like to share a deeper story with those who will be joining me on this road trip. Like Bear, Nicky and Sarah are characters I didn’t know about before. I mean, everyone knows about Leatherface and the Sawyer family. But what are the characters that I can invent, that we can be interested in? If they died a brutal death, we would actually grieve their passing. This is something I expressed to the team and was really excited about. I knew A24 had just acquired the rights to it, but I was like, “As far as intellectual property goes, that’s something I would love to work on.” It was a match made in heaven and all the stars aligned at once for me to get it.
