After “Obsession,” Curry Barker Is Ready to Haunt Audiences Again With “Anything But Ghosts”
Writer/director Curry Barker’s fascination with the supernatural continues. From the dastardly effects of a One Wish Willow in his breakout smash Obsession, Barker’s next film, Anything But Ghosts, will haunt theaters beginning on May 7, 2027. Focus Features and Blumhouse-Atomic Monster revealed the release date for what is sure to be one of 2027’s most anticipated films.
Barker co-wrote the script with longtime collaborator and Obsession actor Cooper Tomlinson (he played the smarmy friend to Michael Johnston’s Bear), and Tomlinson and Barker will also co-lead the film alongside Bryce Dallas Howard, Violet McGraw, Aaron Paul and Chris Reinacher.
While not much is known about Anything But Ghosts, we do have a logline: “When a group of fame-seeking wannabe ‘ghosthunters’ find themselves in over their heads, things spiral wildly and terrifyingly out of control.”
Barker has become a household name among movie fans thanks to his gangbusters twist on W.W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw,” in which a mystical talisman grants wishes that become inherently tragic. In Barker’s case, the Monkey’s Paw is the One Wish Willow that Bear finds at a novelty shop and uses to wish for Nikki’s undying love, played with incandescent brilliance by Inde Navarette. The One Wish Willow, as any good cursed talisman does, grants Bear’s wish literally, based on his exact wording, and it traps Nikki in an unasked-for, and crucially unfelt, state of increasingly psychotic adoration for Bear. The result was a film that became a cultural phenomenon, grossing an astonishing $519 million worldwide against a budget of under $1 million. Owing to its word-of-mouth success, Obsession also saw its box office rise 39% in its second weekend, an extremely rare feat.
Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / © 2026 FOCUS FEATURES LLC
Navarrette is now earning well-deserved Oscar buzz for her performance, and Barker is emerging as a leading voice of a new generation of horror filmmakers, alongside Backrooms’ writer/director Kane Parsons and fellow auteurs Zach Cregger, Ari Aster, Jordan Peele, Jane Schoenbrun, and Coralie Fargeat.
Anything But Ghosts is currently in post-production. Barker is editing the film himself.
Featured image: Director Curry Barker and actors Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston on the set of their film OBSESSION, a Focus Features release. Credit: Manny Liotta / © 2026 FOCUS FEATURES LLC
