Five months after “Obsession” became one of the most profitable horror movies ever made, Curry Barker released his next project the way he released his first ones, for free on YouTube.
“Mama Bear,” a five-minute short he wrote, directed, and edited, went up Thursday on “that’s a bad idea,” the sketch comedy channel he started with collaborator Cooper Tomlinson in 2017.
The short is surreal and hard to summarize, with the same unsettling tone and look that made “Obsession” a word-of-mouth hit. It’s also sponsored by Windows, a reminder that even with studio deals lined up, Barker still runs part of his career like a creator.
Few directors have a résumé that looks like his. “Obsession” cost less than $1 million and grossed more than $500 million worldwide, and it’s now the highest-grossing film ever acquired at a film festival. Barker has since signed on to write and direct a “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” reboot for A24, set up an original horror film at Universal with Blumhouse and Atomic Monster, and finished “Anything But Ghosts,” a Focus Features comedy co-starring Tomlinson, Bryce Dallas Howard and Aaron Paul.
YouTube is how he got all of it. Before “Obsession,” he made “Milk & Serial,” a found-footage thriller with an $800 budget. It sat for a year without a distributor, so he posted it free on YouTube. It went viral and landed him a deal with United Talent Agency in early 2025. An earlier short, “The Chair,” caught the eye of producer James Harris, who helped get “Obsession” made.
Most creators who break into Hollywood treat YouTube as the door they walked through. Barker keeps using it as a place to experiment, test ideas and stay in front of the audience that found him first, and the internet rewarded him for it.
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“Mama Bear” is streaming now on YouTube, just in time for Halloween.
