‘Obsession’ and ‘Backrooms’ Are Rewriting Horror’s Box Office Playbook, and Jason Blum Says It Feels Like the 1970s All Over Again
Something genuinely seismic is happening at the multiplex right now, and it has very little to do with franchises, sequels, or nine-figure budgets. Two low-budget horror films helmed by directors who built their audiences entirely online are rewriting the rules of theatrical success, and the industry is scrambling to make sense of what it is watching unfold in real time.
‘Obsession,’ written and directed by 26-year-old YouTuber-turned-filmmaker Curry Barker, cost a mere $750,000 to produce and has earned north of $68 million domestically in under two weeks. The supernatural horror film earned $23.9 million from 2,655 North American theaters in its second weekend alone, marking a 39% increase over its opening, a virtually unprecedented jump for a film already in wide release and particularly extraordinary for horror, a genre notorious for sharp second-weekend drops.
At the centre of this cultural moment are two of the genre’s most powerful producers. Jason Blum and James Wan opened the Produced By Conference at Universal Studios on Saturday, where they spoke with enthusiasm about their Blumhouse-Atomic Monster studio riding high on the success of ‘Obsession’ and A24’s ‘Backrooms.’ Speaking at the Producers Guild event, Blum declared the film business to be strongly rebounding from the post-COVID doldrums, calling the current moment “really exciting.”
Blum drew a striking historical parallel, saying the films feel “edgy and weird” and that “there’s almost this feeling of the ’70s, of this new generation of young people who are making edgy movies that are connecting in theaters in a crazy way.” He went further, pointing to both directors as products of a new pipeline, explaining that what is “so incredible” about ‘Obsession’ and ‘Backrooms’ is that “they’re made by non-traditional directors, directors who really honed their skills as creators online.”
‘Backrooms,’ the A24 horror film adapted from Parsons’ viral YouTube short-film series, earned $38 million domestic on Friday alone from 3,442 theaters, and is projected to gross between $85 million and $90 million across its opening weekend, more than tripling A24’s previous record set by Alex Garland’s ‘Civil War.’ Wan revealed that Atomic Monster first reached out to Parsons when the director was just 16 years old, and that their initial Zoom meeting even required his father to be present for parental permission, describing Parsons as “a really smart kid, really brilliant” whose “maturity is way beyond his years.”
‘Obsession’ is also making a different kind of history, becoming the first film outside of the Christmas corridor since 1982 to grow in both its second and third weekends. Audiences have been enthusiastic, awarding the film an “A-” CinemaScore and a 94% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with only five other horror films achieving an “A-” or higher since 2019.
Looking ahead, Blum outlined the long-term ambition for the merged Blumhouse-Atomic Monster studio, stating that the five-year goal is to become nothing short of “the Disney of horror.” The pair also teased a forthcoming Blair Witch Project reboot involving another online-native creator, Dylan Clark, signalling that the pipeline of internet-bred talent is far from exhausted. With two YouTube filmmakers simultaneously reshaping box office expectations, the question Hollywood cannot stop asking might be the one worth putting to readers: do you think ‘Obsession’ and ‘Backrooms’ signal a lasting generational shift in how horror gets made and who gets to make it, or is this a lightning-in-a-bottle moment that the industry will struggle to replicate?
