Curry Barker Wants to Recapture the “Rawness” of Tobe Hooper’s ‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ for His Take
Curry Barker‘s Obsession continues to smash records, already becoming one of the most successful indie horror films of all time. His Monkey’s Paw tale of a guy who wishes for a crush to love him more than anyone is frightening, surprisingly funny at times, and very, very raw in the way it approaches the horror. That gives me hope that the filmmaker’s comments about his Texas Chain Saw Massacre film for A24 may actually be achievable.
While sitting down with THR, Barker was asked about his new take on Tobe Hooper’s classic and his vision for it. “I wouldn’t be interested if I didn’t think I could find a way in that feels fresh and new, while still respecting the original,” said the filmmaker. “The canon itself is all over the place, so there’s not much to stay loyal to other than the original. I want to make a new generation of people scared and give them this feeling of: “What if you went on a road trip with your friends and this happened to you?” I want to capture the rawness and the grounded-ness of the original.“
That’s a tall task, no doubt. Tobe Hooper’s movie is a flat-out masterpiece of sunbaked madness and primal horror that has never been topped. But, if you’ve seen Obsession, there’s plenty of reason to believe that Barker is capable of capturing that sort of raw descent into those core emotions of fear and horror that Hooper tapped into all those years ago.
At the very least, the bar for making a good Texas Chain Saw shouldn’t be all that hard to climb.
Said Barker, “Some of those movies just turn out to be a guy with a chainsaw chasing a person around. It doesn’t work to just have a chase movie. They’re hiding in a barn. It gets old. And I don’t buy it — a chainsaw is loud but they don’t hear it? I hate when you’re watching a movie and you’re thinking, “Just do this [instead].”
Some fans may dispute that claim. But no one can deny that none of the Texas sequels have captured the rawness of Hooper’s original. With any luck, Barker may finally be the one to do it. And if he can, well, a whole lot of Texas Chain Saw fans are going to rev up their chainsaws and dance in the hot sun like Leatherface.
I still say Obsession‘s Inde Navarrette needs to be in Barker’s Chain Saw for an even better chance of that happening, but maybe that’s just me.
Obsession is now playing in theaters. Do not miss the film that has more or less become the Jaws of dating. Bring a date. I’m sure it won’t be awkward in the slightest.
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