Curry Barker and Cooper Tomlinson are stepping out of the ghost-hunting business and straight into something far worse. "Anything But Ghosts," the duo's upcoming horror-comedy, has been slated for a May 2027 theatrical release, USA Film News has confirmed.
Barker directs the film and stars alongside Tomlinson, with the pair playing a couple of small-time hustlers who run a phony paranormal investigation outfit. Their con goes sideways when they run into something that isn't a paying mark: a genuine dark entity that drags them into a waking nightmare. The premise trades on a familiar hook - fake ghost hunters meeting a real ghost - but the film's genre billing promises the laughs will sit right next to the scares rather than behind them.
The supporting cast is unusually stacked for a project rooted in the scrappy, DIY tradition both leads come from. Bryce Dallas Howard, Aaron Paul, and Violet McGraw are all on board. Matty Finochio appears as Scoot, Kristina Matisic plays a News Reporter, and Chris Reinacher rounds out the ensemble. Barker anchors the film as Mouse, with Tomlinson as Eddy.
Barker has spent the past few years building a devoted following through short-form horror, and "Anything But Ghosts" marks one of his most prominent swings at a feature. Pairing him with Tomlinson, a frequent creative partner, keeps the project in the same loose, handmade register that first drew attention to their work - even as the cast list grows considerably more famous around them. That combination of internet-native instincts and established Hollywood names is one of the more interesting experiments on the 2027 calendar.
A Busy Season for Horror Comedy
May 2027 places the film in a corridor that has lately treated horror comedies well, arriving before the summer's tentpole crush but late enough to catch audiences looking for something leaner. The genre has become a reliable performer in recent years, with studios increasingly willing to back filmmakers who arrive with an existing online audience rather than a conventional directing résumé.
"Anything But Ghosts" fits that mold almost exactly. Barker and Tomlinson built their reputations on short, punchy genre pieces that traveled well online, and a feature expansion of that sensibility is the kind of bet Hollywood has grown fonder of making.
For Barker, the jump also means directing performers with serious dramatic credentials. Howard and Paul bring awards-season resumes to a film whose central joke is about two grifters in over their heads. How that clash plays out - whether the bigger names are deployed for straight-faced tension or folded into the comedy - will shape the movie's tone more than any plot detail released so far.
Two Angles Worth Watching
The first is tonal. Describing the film as both horror and comedy is easy; landing the balance is not. The overview suggests a structure that starts loose and comic - a fake haunted house business is inherently a joke - before pivoting hard once the real entity shows up. That's a well-worn shape, and the film's success will likely depend on how convincingly it sells the turn from giggles to dread. The presence of a character literally credited as a News Reporter hints the back half leans into a more conventional horror staging, the sort where the outside world starts paying attention to what the con artists have unleashed.
The second is Barker's dual role. Directing yourself is a particular strain, especially in a film that also asks you to carry the comic lead. Barker playing Mouse while running the set puts a lot of the movie's momentum on one person's shoulders, and how he manages that split will be a talking point among the fans who have followed him this far.
The Details Still Missing
What exactly the entity is, how the con artists stumble onto it, and what happens after they do remain under wraps. The film's runtime has not been disclosed, and no rating has been announced - a meaningful question for a movie that will need to decide how much gore and how much profanity it wants to spend.
Marketing has yet to begin in earnest. No trailer, teaser, or first-look imagery has surfaced, and a May 2027 date leaves a comfortable runway for a campaign to build. For now, the project exists largely as a premise, a release window, and an intriguingly overqualified cast.
That's often enough to get a genre film moving. Barker and Tomlinson have spent years proving they can deliver scares and laughs in tight packages. The question "Anything But Ghosts" poses is whether they can stretch that trick to feature length while sharing the frame with actors who usually work at an entirely different scale. Audiences will get their answer in May 2027.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
