'Obsession' Director Is Rebooting 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre'... From A Reboot?
The story of Leatherface’s power, brutality, and complexity is something that can and has been retold multiple times. After director Curry Barker’s success with Obsession (2026), he’s the latest director to take on the challenge of rebooting Texas Chainsaw Massacre for A24.
However, there’s a twist when it comes to Barker’s reboot. It’s not based on the original 1974 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It’s based on the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot, starring Jessica Biel and directed by Marcus Nispel. But why is Barker basing his sequel on the 2003 reboot? And what does the succession of Obsession tell us about the direction he’s going to take the TCM reboot? We break it all down!
What Is The 2003 ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, And How Will It Influence The New Reboot?
The 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre tells the story of five friends who find themselves stalked and hunted by a deformed chainsaw-wielding man after picking up a traumatized hitchhiker. It’s made all the worse by his family of equally psychopathic killers.
When it comes to the connection between the 2003 reboot and Barker’s new reboot, this is the version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre that he saw first… when he was 11 years old. According to an interview with Phantasmag, “I’ve seen the original multiple times, and I’m a huge fan of it as well, but just based off nostalgia, I think back at that movie and how it creeped me out as a kid.”
Barker admits that the Nispel reboot “doesn’t hit the same” rewatching it as an adult, but he wants to capture that feeling he had as a kid and bring it to a “modern horror audience.” If you watched the 2003 reboot, it’s expected that he’ll bring the atmosphere and gore of that film to his reboot.
Who Is Curry Barker, And What Does ‘Obsession’ Tell Us About His Reboot?
Director Curry Barker’s success with Obsession didn’t come out of nowhere. The 26-year-old has been working on his filmmaking craft for years. In high school, he acted in plays, founded a film club, and was even part of a rock band. All the while, his love for horror stayed with him. But it’s not until he went to New York Film Academy’s Los Angeles campus that things got more serious for him.
At the LA campus, he met Cooper Tomlinson, another student who would become Barker’s longtime collaborator. They started writing and starring in short films that echoed what we see today in Obsession, a movie that starts as a comedy before taking a darker turn with horrifying consequences. When COVID-19 happened, they quit school and kept diligently working on their channel: That’s a Bad Idea.
Now in 2026, Barker has a box-office success under his belt, a new film coming up with collaborator Tomlinson titled Anything But Ghosts, and people wondering what Obsession says about his Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot. If anything, it’s clear that Barker isn’t going to go for the endless cycle of jump scares. He’s going for character-driven stories with a mounting tension that is actually scarier than Leatherface himself. Because the unseen, or what your mind creates, is always scarier than whatever Hollywood does.
Then, there’s the comedy aspect. Even in Obsession, some moments toed the line between comical and horrifying. It felt familiar to audiences because that’s what we do. Even in the darkest moments, we find a reason to laugh or see the irony in things. So, it’s expected that Barker will bring that to his reboot of Texas Chainsaw Massacre as he did with Obsession.
What To Watch Before The New ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ Reboot
If you’re prepping for Curry Barker’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, obviously, you have to watch the 2003 reboot and the 1974 original. They’ll help you understand how horror has evolved since the ‘70s, but also why Leatherface is such an enduring bad guy that directors want to tell the story again and again.
As for all the other Leatherface movies, you don’t have to watch any of them except one: the 2022 Texas Chainsaw Massacre from Netflix. It’s a direct legacy sequel to the original 1974 film. Despite it generally getting a lot of negative reviews upon its release, it’s another example of the enduring legacy of Leatherface, but also how a different director can have a completely different take for a new audience.
Speaking about audiences, and to give you a little perspective, here’s how far apart these movies were made:
The 2003 reboot was made 29 years after the 1974 original.
The 2022 sequel was made 48 years after the 1974 original.
And the 2022 sequel was made 19 years after the 2003 reboot.
