‘Obsession’ Interview: Curry Barker On His Twisted Wish-Fulfillment Horror Breakout, Inde Navarrette’s Wild Performance, ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’ & More [The Discourse Podcast]

Following up on a cultural phenomenon like “Yellowstone” is no easy task. Any spin-off has to balance honoring what made the original series a hit while finding its own fresh ground. With “Dutton Ranch,” especially after the letdown of “Marshals,” that challenge falls on Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler, who leave Montana behind for Texas in hopes of building something new, only to discover that new beginnings come with familiar dangers. Maybe they’re magnets for this kind of thing.“Dutton Ranch,” the new “Yellowstone” spin-off that follows Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler as they gamble everything on a new life in Texas. Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser return as the fan-favorite couple, with Finn Little back as Carter. This time, the Dutton orbit expands to include Annette Bening as Beulah Jackson, a formidable Texas rancher whose power, control, and family legacy put her directly in Beth’s path. The series also stars Ed Harris, Jai Courtney, J.R. Villarreal, Marc Menchaca, Juan Pablo Raba, Natalie Alyn Lind, and more.READ MORE: ‘Dutton Ranch’ Review: Beth and Rip’s Texas Reset Is Mostly A ‘Yellowstone’ Rehash With Fewer Culture-War DetoursOn this episode of Bingeworthy, host Mike DeAngelo speaks with Reilly, Bening, and Hauser about carrying the “Yellowstone” legacy into a new chapter. The conversations cover Beth and Rip’s move from Montana to Texas, Beulah’s dangerous grip on power, the show’s darker Episode 4 turn, and how the creative team approached evolving characters that fans already know inside and out.

Some shows walk into the room with a genre label pinned neatly to their shirt. They wear it like a badge of honor and adhere to all rules therein. “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” kicks the door open, knocks over the lamp, checks its phone (Where's my phone?!), spirals emotionally, and somehow still has time to become a murder mystery. It's part divorce drama, part paranoid thriller, part loneliness comedy, and part “please stop making that decision, Paula” anxiety machine. Better yet, it knows exactly how messy that cocktail should taste, and, boy, does it taste good.The new Apple TV+ series stars Tatiana Maslany as Paula, a lonely single mother caught in the meat grinder of divorce, custody fights, work stress, and modern connection. When she reaches out through her computer for something that looks like intimacy, or maybe just proof that she still exists outside everyone else’s demands, she tumbles into a voyeuristic thriller that writer David Rosen described as a “modern day Rear Window.” The series also stars Jake Johnson as Carl, Paula’s ex-husband and co-parent, a man who often looks like the reasonable adult in the room until reason starts feeling a little too much like the wrong kind of control.On this episode of Bingeworthy, host Mike DeAngelo speaks with Maslany, Johnson, Rosen, and director David Gordon Green about building the show’s live-wire tone, turning a broken relationship into a suspense engine, and finding humor inside a life that already feels like it has 19 browser tabs open.

Be careful what you wish for, sure. But maybe be even more careful what you confuse for love, because Curry Barker’s “Obsession” takes one of horror’s oldest tricks and turns it into something queasy, funny, tragic, and deeply uncomfortable. It is the kind of movie that starts with a premise simple enough to fit on a cursed greeting card, then keeps tightening the rope until everyone in the room starts laughing from sheer discomfort. Written, directed, and edited by Barker, “Obsession” follows Bear (Michael Johnston), a music store employee, as his crush on his childhood friend and co-worker, Nikki (Inde Navarrette), leads him to buy a strange object called the One Wish Willow. He wishes for Nikki to love him more than anyone else in the world. The wish works, which is exactly the problem. The film also stars Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, and Andy Richter, and opens in theaters on May 15 from Focus Features.Barker joined The Discourse to discuss the new horror film, which arrives after his micro-budget YouTube breakout “Milk & Serial” and his acclaimed short “The Chair.” The conversation covered the film’s uncomfortable festival reactions, the dark emotional machinery behind unearned love, Navarrette’s knockout performance, the possibility of more One Wish Willow stories, and his upcoming work on “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Anything But Ghosts.”

The town on “From” has always felt less like a place and more like an emotional pressure cooker with monsters hiding in the walls. Every season cranks that pressure a little higher on the survivors, then asks them to keep pretending they can still function as leaders, parents, lovers, or even just regular people. Season 4 somehow makes all of that feel even more unstable. Hope is not dead in this show. It’s worse than that. Hope is absolutely exhausted.The hit MGM+ horror mystery returned recently for Season 4 and continues through the end of June, once again following the trapped residents of a nightmarish town where escape seems impossible and the creatures outside only scratch the surface of what’s really wrong here. Season 4 stars Harold Perrineau, Catalina Sandino Moreno, David Alpay, Elizabeth Saunders, Scott McCord, and more, as the series continues pulling at threads that somehow only create bigger knots.On this episode of Bingeworthy, host Mike DeAngelo is joined by Harold Perrineau to discuss Boyd’s deteriorating mental state, the exhausting psychology of the series, wild fan theories, the legacy of “Lost,” and even why making “The Matrix” nearly short-circuited his inner fanboy.‘The Boys’ Season 5: Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Karen Fukuhara, Jensen Ackles, Erin Moriarty, and Laz Alonso On Ending The Series, and Potential Spin-Offs [Bingeworthy Podcast]Yes, season 4 finds Boyd in especially brutal shape, something Perrineau immediately acknowledged when discussing where the character is emotionally this year.

Director Damian McCarthy really loves to hit that dread button, and in “Hokum,” he absolutely wears that thing out. Not with loud shocks or cheap jolts, but with the kind of slow, creeping unease that just sits there, staring back at you. The longer you watch, the more it feels like the movie isn’t escalating so much as tightening, quietly, deliberately, until there’s nowhere left to go. Then he slaps you across the face for good measure.READ MORE: ’ Hokum’ Review: Adam Scott Is Haunted By A Hotel Full Of Scares, Death, & Secrets [SXSW]Written and directed by McCarthy, “Hokum” stars Adam Scott, Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, and Austin Amelio. The film follows novelist Ohm Bauman, who retreats to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes, only to become consumed by stories of a witch tied to the hotel’s honeymoon suite. Disturbing visions and a sudden disappearance begin to fracture whatever control he has left, forcing him to confront a past that doesn’t stay buried.On this episode of The Discourse, McCarthy joins the podcast to break down how “Hokum” came together, why he stripped the story down rather than build it out, and how he balances supernatural horror with something far more immediate and human. The starting point was as simple as it gets.

Lots of action shows begin with some no-nonsense badass fully in charge of their faculties, but “Man On Fire” starts with a man who just plain isn’t. Before anything even happens in the story, Creasy is a suicidal, messy shell of his former peak CIA agent self. But, as with other iterations, that lack of stability is the hook. This isn’t "Reacher," and a muscular heroic soldier boy doesn't blow into town to set things right. "Man on Fire" is about a once-capable man on the brink of collapse forced into a heroic situation, which is far more emotionally compelling. The new Netflix series based on the A.J. Quinnell "Creasy" book series and the 2004 Tony Scott action film, revisits John Creasy, an ex-agent pulled back into danger to protect a young girl while dealing with emotional damage that doesn’t switch off just because the job demands it. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II takes on the role, and Steven Caple Jr. (“Creed II,” “Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts”) directs the first two episodes, setting a tone that stays rooted in character even as the scale expands.

When networks spin off popular series, it's easy to come at them with arms folded and write them off as cash grabs. A "Stranger Things" animated spin-off really could have failed. A version of this show exists, in another reality, as something like a Saturday morning cartoon with “Stranger Things” as a disguise: bright colors, low stakes, perhaps Dustin and a sweet monster learning to be friends. Luckily, “Stranger Things: Tales From ’85” appeared from a different portal.This version remembers that Hawkins is a town where children don't tell their parents the truth, quarrel with their friends, and then, from time to time, confront something that really shouldn't be there.The animated series is placed between the second and third seasons of "Stranger Things", fitting into that odd, in-between period when things should be calm. They aren't, though. Instead, the show manages to feel like a lost season that just happens to be animated - the same tension, the same complicated feelings, and the same sense that one poor choice is about to cause five even worse ones, along with some new mysteries.‘The Boys’ Season 5: Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Karen Fukuhara, Jensen Ackles, Erin Moriarty, and Laz Alonso On Ending The Series, and Potential Spin-Offs [Bingeworthy Podcast]On this episode of Bingeworthy, host Mike DeAngelo is joined by showrunner Eric Robles to discuss entering the wider world of the Upside Down and finding ways to have fun with the characters and story without ruining them.

We’ve all probably been incredibly annoyed with our partner at one point or another, and thought (just for a second!) “I could kill them,” then went and made dinner as a perfectly functioning adult. The comedy thriller “Over Your Dead Body” from director Jorma Taccone (“Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping,” “Macgruber”) starring Jason Segel, Samara Weaving as the warring couple, asks what would happen if you didn’t let that thought go. What if you actually planned it… and it was a really, really awful plan?And that’s what the film is about. It’s not about professional killers or brilliant criminals. It’s about a couple in a relationship that’s on the rocks who think they are clever enough to get away with murder, and almost immediately show that they absolutely are not.What happens next isn’t a neat and tidy thriller. It’s more like a series of awful choices triggering each other, poorly thought-out plans, and doing things in a panic. The film’s style changes as it goes along, beginning as a sharply funny look at a failing relationship, becoming a farcical murder attempt, and then becoming far more chaotic than you’d anticipate.

Some films are just…films. Others feel as though a hugely skilled group of people were challenged to beautifully suffer in front of the camera. “Apex,” the new survival thriller on Netflix on April 24th, absolutely falls into that second category. It’s stark, pared-back, and wonderfully, not-so-slightly crazy. There are two people, a seriously awful predicament, and a huge number of bad choices about to be made. There’s no unnecessary explaining, no safety net, simply nature & some creepy guy slowly asserting dominance."Apex" is directed by Baltasar Kormákur, and is about two strangers (Charlize Theron & Taron Egerton) trapped in a brutal, increasingly desperate battle for survival across harsh land. It's deliberately simple, almost to an extreme. A Man hunts a woman. Both are pushed to their limits. Who comes out on top?!On this episode of The Discourse, Charlize Theron, Taron Egerton, and Baltasar Kormákur talk about creating a film that, at times, sounds less like a typical film production and more like a carefully managed survival test. And “managed” might be overstating it, depending on who you ask.

The comedy “Balls Up” isn’t messing around. Yes, the title is a dick joke. The plot is a dick joke. And yes, the script is packed with dick jokes. It’s as immature and as dumb as they come, and yet, it oddly works because it just commits so hard and earnestly to the bit. Directed by Peter Farrelly—who knows a thing or two about immature, purile comedies with lots of dick jokes like “Dumb and Dumber,” “There’sSomething About Mary,” etc. — “Balls Up” does not ease you into its insanity. It sprints straight at you with it and keeps building, stacking absurdity on top of absurdity, until it becomes this weirdly impressive feat of endurance. And thanks to the sure hands of its director and stars, it somehow works.The film follows two condom marketing executives/salespeople, Brad (Mark Wahlberg) and Elijah (Paul Walter Hauser), who pitch a bold full‑coverage condom sponsorship with the World Cup. After their drunken antics in Brazil spark a global scandal, they must outrun furious fans, criminals, and power-hungry officials to salvage their careers and make it home alive.On this episode of The Discourse, Mike DeAngelo is joined by Mark Wahlberg, Paul Walter Hauser, and director Peter Farrelly (“Green Book”) to break down how you even begin to make a movie like this, why commitment is everything in comedy, and how something this dumb can actually be smart.