‘Backrooms’ and ‘Obsession’ May Signal a Sea Change, but Major Studios Won’t Go Quietly

Obsession director Curry Barker and Backrooms filmmaker Kane Parsons are making headlines for how their horror films are dominating at the box office. In a month where Disney had an embarrassing flop with Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, it’s easy to see a David-and-Goliath tale where a couple of scrappy filmmakers, who honed their skills on YouTube, took a young audience with them to forge a new direction where Hollywood will have to sit up and take notice of a fresh generation of storytellers. This is a nice story, and it would be great if someone who cared about the movies more than corporate consolidation and how to best stream “content” came along to shake up Hollywood. But I’m not sure we’re at that moment.

To be sure, Barker and Parsons have done something remarkable, and I don’t mean to diminish their accomplishment. Regardless of how you feel about the movies on their own merits (I liked Obsession but not Backrooms), the box office success is undeniable. In less than a week, Backrooms is A24’s highest-grossing film domestically. Obsession’s box office grew in its third weekend, a feat Hollywood hasn’t seen since E.T. in 1982. The buzz among the filmmakers’ YouTube fans, savvy marketing campaigns, and the need to see horror in a theater rather than at home have made these films far bigger hits than expensive blockbusters. While I enjoyed Masters of the Universe, I wouldn’t be surprised if it has to settle for third place on its opening weekend behind these two movies. 

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