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Elijah is a freelance news writer at Polygon. He was an associate editor at The A.V. Club and Paste, and has been featured in outlets like Game Informer, Fanbyte, Unwinnable, and more. He loves media in all forms, from fighting games and horror flicks to slow cinema and visual novels. He's from the Greater Boston area.
Seth Rogen has already seen Barker's next movie Anything But Ghosts, and he's a fan
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Curry Barker has quickly become a name to watch among cinephiles thanks to the stunning success of his recent horror film, Obsession. Thankfully, his next movie isn't far off. By the time Obsession hit theaters, Barker was already working on his next project, a horror-comedy distributed by Focus Features called Anything but Ghosts. It seems that his next picture has at least one big fan.
According to Seth Rogen, Barker’s next movie is even better than his last. Rogen described the movie in his write-up for Barker’s spot on Time’s 100 Most Influential Rising Stars list. “I’ve seen Curry’s next film, Anything but Ghosts—and for those of you who, like me, are uncomfortable with this amount of talent in a person so young, I have bad news ... it’s even better, and, to add insult to injury, he’s just as good an actor as he is a director.”
While some might be tempted to write off Rogen as “that dude with the laugh who’s typecast as a stoner,” he’s proven himself a skilled filmmaker over the years. That's culminated in Apple TV’s brilliantly shot cringe-comedy series, The Studio, which he co-directed alongside Evan Goldberg. Rogen previously co-directed This Is the End and The Interview with Goldberg. We’ll have to wait until Anything but Ghosts releases on May 7, 2027, to see how the film fares. But Rogen’s praise is certainly an encouraging first sign.
What is Anything but Ghosts about?
Anything but Ghosts is a comedy-horror film directed by Curry Barker. It follows a pair of fake paranormal investigators who get in over their heads when their bogus business encounters real supernatural happenings. Barker co-stars alongside Obsession actor Cooper Tomlinson, who also co-wrote the film. Tomlinson previously described the movie as “if Key and Peele walked into Hereditary” on the Raiders of the Lost podcast.
Barker and Tomlinson are long-time collaborators. They started a sketch comedy YouTube channel, “that’s a bad idea,” in 2016, before releasing their first feature-length film, Milk & Serial, in 2024. Between the success of Obsession, Kane Parsons’ Backrooms, and plenty of other horror movies, we’ve clearly entered a new era where making films on YouTube can be an effective entry point into Hollywood. Given how great many of these flicks have been, it’s hard to complain.