Shawn Van Horn is a Senior Author for Collider. He's watched way too many slasher movies over the decades, which makes him an aficionado on all things Halloween and Friday the 13th. Don't ask him to choose between Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees because he can't do it. He grew up in the 90s, when Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, and TGIF were his life, and still watches them religiously to this day. Larry David is his spirit animal. His love for entertainment spreads to the written word as well. He has written two novels and is neck deep in the querying trenches. He is also a short story maker upper and poet with a dozen publishing credits to his name. He lives in small town Ohio, where he likes to watch professional wrestling and movies.

One YouTube creator after another is finding success in feature films by directing horror: Danny and Michael Philippou, Markiplier, Chris Stuckmann, and Kane Parsons have all broken through, but none have hit the box office heights that Curry Barker has. The YouTuber, who had already made a name for himself with his short comedy and horror films, has has broken records as his first feature, Obsession, amassed $400 million worldwide on a $750,000 budget.

Next up for Barker is Anything but Ghosts, which he will also star in. After that, he's facing an immense challenge: reviving The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for A24. But while the franchise has disappointed fans for years, there's no need to worry. Obsession has shown us that Curry is more than prepared to revive one of horror's most iconic movie series.

Image via Vortex Inc.

Over 50 years after its release, the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is still considered one of the best and scariest horror movies ever made. Directed by Tobe Hooper in 1974, that original film did include the classic tropes of a masked villain and a final girl, but it's so much more than just a simple slasher. For starters, Leatherface isn't operating on his own — he's part of the Sawyer family, a clan of cannibals with wild mannerisms and facial expressions, who can also be quite easy to empathize with. As crazy as they are, they're just trying to survive in a harsh world.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is also filled to the brim with death and violence, yet it does so with minimal gore. It's like watching a documentary you can't escape. There have been few horror movies so effective.

But after the high of that first film (which, like Obsession, was an indie that made millions despite its tiny budget), it was mostly downhill for the emerging franchise. The first sequel, 1986's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, with a returning Tobe Hooper at the helm, is a fun horror comedy. After that, though, Hooper was gone, and the sequels fell apart. 1995's Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, which is best known for featuring early-career appearances by Renee Zellwegger and Matthew McConaughey, is absolutely bizarre. 2013's Texas Chainsaw 3D has one of the worst lines in horror history (and that's really saying something), and Netflix's Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2022 was a dismissed dud. Sure, the 2003 reboot was stellar, but it turned Leatherface into an angry masked man and gave his character too much explanation. Now at nine films, the franchise is full of sequels and prequels. It's time to reimagine it all. Lucikly, Curry Barker has already shown that he knows exactly how to do it.

On paper, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, with its silent, masked killer chasing a group of young people, is one of the first in a long line of predictable slashers. But its story, along with Hooper's direction, make it so much more compelling than the rest. The same thing goes for Obsession. On the surface, it's another adaptation of The Monkey's Paw. But with Barker's directing talent and a script which goes in new directions and asks hard questions, it's a deeply challenging film. Just like we don't get to know too much about why Leatherface and his family are so demented in that first film, we also don't learn a lot about Wish Nikki (Inde Navarrette). The audience knows why she is this way and how she can break free, but there is no built-in lore. What we see is what we get, and there is immense terror in the film's unknown.

Just from those aspects alone, Curry Barker is an ideal choice to take on this legendary series — you can bet that his Texas Chainsaw Massacre won't be a simple stalk-and-slash with cookie-cutter characters and over-explained baddies. But there are a few other reasons the series should thrive in Barker's hands. Due to Barker's script, along with his on-screen filmmaking choices, Obsession is a masterpiece of pacing and tension building. The film's focus is on Bear (Michael Johnston), yet the viewer meets the real Nikki and gets to know her just enough to feel invested in this strong, independent woman. When her autonomy is taken away from her, it's heartbreaking.

We're also given a complex character in Bear, who goes from being the shy nice guy to a villain who refuses to act — a slow reveal that isn't obvious straight away. The pacing of these two characters goes hand-in-hand with the building tension. Wish Nikki starts off more confused, a newborn entity trying to figure out what to do. As she evolves and is desperate to be loved back, she becomes more and more terrifying. She doesn't have to kill to accomplish this. Simply standing in the shadows or hiding in a corner is chilling long before the third act explosion of blood.

This is exactly what's needed from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In so many of the films, the characters in the franchise have been tropes that exist soley to get chased by Leatherface. Barker would instead craft compelling leads who the audience is scared to lose — which immediately makes the villains more terrifying.

The franchise's more recent entries are also currently missing the unnerving tension of earlier films. The original's villains Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), the Hitchhiker (Edwin Neal), and Drayton Sawyer (Jim Siedow) are unhinged and become scarier as we spend more time with them. That original film is all about the build-up of meeting the Hitchhiker, followed by the build-up of going to the house. The horror is found in the slow-building dread of the story, not the violence. The violence must certainly happen, but The Texas Chain Saw Massacre earns it. Obsession does the same. Wish Nikki is scary as hell because we’ve seen her slow spiral.

Because of all this, the next Texas Chainsaw Massacre finally has a chance at being great. Curry Barker has already proven himself as deft with the exact elements the franchise desperately needs — which are also the elements that made the film a classic in the first place.

Obsession

Release Date May 15, 2026

Runtime 108 minutes

Director Curry Barker

Writers Curry Barker