i think you look like giants

wonderful news!! curry barker is one of my favorite (if not my favorite, hands down) short horror directors. as someone who has watched hundreds and hundreds of short horror films on youtube.

here are five of his films with the runtime and a quick summary of each. (sorry if i miss any, these are what i remember off the top of my head!) i've avoided spoilers beyond the basic premise, but every single one of these deals with Absolutely Haunting Thematic Shit:

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THE CHAIR - 25 minutes

when horror connoisseurs hear "curry barker," they usually think of the chair first. barker was approached to make this into a full-length film & pitched obsession instead... GREAT choice, as i don't think the chair would Work with extra runtime.

a man finds an old chair on the side of the road and brings it home to his girlfriend. strange events begin to unfold -- his girlfriend's behavior becomes increasingly erratic, he's losing time, he's unraveling at the seams....

if you enjoyed the fucked-up relationship dynamics in obsession then you will probably have a good time.

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MILK & SERIAL - 62 minutes

barker's other best-known horror film. a twisty found footage thriller about youtube pranksters whose pranks Go Wrong (TM).

i can't say much more than that.... if you watched obsession and thought "pretty good, but pretty predictable. i wonder how curry barker would handle a psychological thriller with more plot twists??"

boy, does this film have an answer!!

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ENIGMA - 20 minutes

this is a psychological thriller about a man dealing with the impending end of the world. explores how other people are also dealing with the end of the world.

i fear i'll give a skewed impression if i say this one is sort of a feel-good film..... but OF the films on this list, it's Certainly the most optimistic. my partner rafi (who really hates depressing horror) watched it with me and concluded, "oh, that was kind of sweet, actually!!"

this one's great if you want a palate cleanser after The Unrelenting Gutwrenching Horror of obsession.

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WARNINGS - 20 minutes

my personal favorite!! criminally underrated!! upsetting in a way that stuck to my skin for days!!

a man starts receiving strange written warnings on halloween. things around him begin to unravel.

similar to the chair in its unsettling surreality, but with a bit more supernatural influence imo. you'll recognize a lot of parallel imagery to obsession, especially with Strange Movement and Nightmare Experiences.

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HEAVY EYES - 5 minutes

the shortest one on this list if you just want to dip your toes in real quick... a pretty easy time investment if you've never watched short horror and aren't sure if you'll like it!

a boy's mom comes home unexpectedly at night.

the only problem?? she's still texting him from the hospital where she works.

carrie is almost explicitly about the cycles of abuse. it is almost explicitly about how women and girls are taught to reproduce the patriarchy. it cannot be isolated from either message.

it shows cruel teenagers not as a random whacky plot point but instead to highlight that we are taught to mock other girls for not being fuckable; lest we ourselves be considered not-fuckable. we will eat our own kind to survive. nobody helps her because to help carrie would be to turn against the patriarchy.

carrie's mother has experienced abuse at the hands of her husband and religion not as a "sad backstory" but instead because it lampshades her behavior when she then turns and abuses her daughter while citing that same religion. we are forced to ask the question: what is the difference between the patriarchy and religion? aren't they both systems of control? we often see mothers as being the "ultimate" in innocence and kindness - but this book challenges that narrative. abusive mothers exist, and and always have. abusive women exist and always have. white women, after all, love voting for donald trump.

men are almost absent from the book, but their presence lingers. it feels almost like the red mark made after a slap - the men do not have to be there; the women will continue to abide by the rules without question. it is a devastating, haunting condemnation of the notion of feminine fragility. it accurately asserts that women are cruel, are capable, are power-hungry - and often are hiding behind perceived innocence to mask that cruelty. the abuse carrie experiences rests in a doubled betrayal: it is because of another woman. the supposed "sisterhood" is revealed to be thin, a guise of equanimity that is only offered to the "right" type of girl/woman.

many of us were not the right type of girl.

to go back on these main and obvious themes of the book - to rewrite the mother as some caring and sad creature is... a curious choice. i can't explain it, but it feels almost like censorship to me. it refuses a deeper meaning of the book (and one that questions the patriarchy) in favor of the incredibly thin plot of "what if scary girl had scary powers." i literally don't even know what level of misogyny it is that we have to defang everyone around her in order to tell her story. i'm baffled by it.

in the era of trad wives endlessly posting abusive content of their children online - the adaptation had plenty of meat to modernize her mother. in the era of AI and revenge porn and social media - there's a huge amount of space for a competent writer to play around in. after all, if the abuse is recorded and posted to media - and as the audience we're watching it without interfering - the story is now about us. it asks us who we are comfortable bullying.

it's okay if you feel like you don't have the writing chops to talk about how many religions are abusive and tacitly enable domestic violence. it's okay if you feel like you couldn't write a believable teenage bully. it's okay if you're just interested in "scary girl has scary powers."