It’s entirely possible that this past weekend at the box office will go down in history as a pivotal change for the film industry.
Twenty-year-old filmmaker Kane Parsons shattered box office records with his theatrical feature debut “Backrooms” to the tune of $81 million domestic take against a $10 million budget, becoming the youngest director ever to top the box office. Twenty-six-year-old filmmaker Curry Barker’s horror thriller “Obsession,” meanwhile, thwarted historical trends and went up at the box office for the second weekend in a row, turning a $17.1 million opening weekend into a once inconceivable $26.4 million third weekend on a $1 million budget.
Both movies beat Disney’s $165 million-budgeted “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” which cratered 70% from opening weekend to stand as the No. 3 release of the weekend despite playing in more theaters, defeated by two YouTubers who drew Gen Z and Gen A to the box office in droves.
Two relatively fresh films shot by Gen Z directors toppling the largest franchise in the world underscores the drastic change cinema is going through, and should have Hollywood questioning all of its assumptions right now.
Like the explosion of auteur-driven films in the 1970s or the indie wave that found filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson taking the 1990s by storm, this is a moment. The next generation of moviegoersare wholeheartedly embracing original, confidently made horror films by filmmakers who didn’t graduate film school or spend years working the festival circuit. Instead, they honed their craft on YouTube, the largest direct-to-consumer platform in the world, for all to see.
Here’s a quick snapshot of just how big of a deal this was:
- 86% of the opening weekend audience for “Backrooms” was under the age of 35.
- An astonishing 44% of that audience was under 21.
- “The Mandalorian and Grogu” — with a near-identical opening box office last weekend – had an under-25 audience share of just 27%.
The success of “Backrooms” and “Obsession” show that not only does Gen Z respond enthusiastically to horror films they deem authentic and original, but the next generation of filmmakers is thriving on YouTube. Just as music videos and commercials paved the way for filmmakers like David Fincher and Michael Bay to explode in the ‘90s, YouTube is the creative playground for Gen Z directors. They’re not coming, they’re already here. Making videos, fine-tuning their craft and, crucially, directly fostering relationships with their audience.
“I get a perfectly adequate level of financial security from YouTube and a perfectly fulfilling level of creative gratification from it,” Parsons told the New York Times, arguing that he’s not planning on leaving the platform behind. “Trying to jump mediums on certain projects will take away something intrinsically valuable about the original idea.”
“Backrooms” was the culmination of the last four years of Parsons’ life, which he spent making creepy short films about the “backrooms” on YouTube, an endless series of liminal spaces in which his characters get lost. A24 backed the feature film, for which Parsons recruited top talent like Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve to star.
“Obsession,” meanwhile, was a departure for Barker, best known for making comedy videos on YouTube and TikTok. But after finding his filmmaking voice with hit social media videos and his $800 found footage directorial debut “Milk & Serial” that he released on YouTube in 2024, he wrote and directed “Obsession” for Focus Features about a guy whose wish that his best girl friend would fall in love with him — with horrifying consequences.
And the crowd went wild.
Why “Backrooms” and “Obsession” hit
There are key differences between the successes of “Backrooms” and “Obsession.” “Backrooms” is ostensibly a big screen continuation of an IP that Parsons has been making on YouTube for years, offering fans the ability to see the next chapter on a larger scale with movie stars in the lead roles. The fandom of both Parsons and the “Backrooms” brand fueled the monster opening weekend.
“Obsession,” meanwhile, was more of a slow burn. It actually debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall where Focus Features bought the $1 million-budgeted indie for $15 million. Its opening weekend was good but not spectacular – it’s not like Barker’s fans showed up in droves, which is understandable given that he’s largely known for comedy, and he’s not even onscreen in “Obsession.”
But the film’s growing box office shows that it’s a true word-of-mouth hit, with Barker’s critically acclaimed horror thriller appealing to both fans and critics to create a “you’ve gotta see this” mentality. All after Barker honed his skills on YouTube.
“YouTube is just the modern platform for discoverability,” Barker told Massive, arguing that his and Parsons’ journeys aren’t too dissimilar from Steven Spielberg’s or Christopher Nolan’s or Ari Aster’s paths. “The only difference between me and someone like Ari [Aster] who went a more traditional route is my discovery was just on YouTube. But I still just made shorts and made films and kept honing my craft until someone finally said, ‘Hey not too bad, let’s make a feature.’”
Both films are firmly in the horror genre, which has become a reliable draw for Gen Z at the box office between films like “Sinners,” “Weapons” and the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” franchise. Horror has been a reliable hit-maker for decades, but that Gen Z has found solace in the spooky and unsettling certainly offers a preview of what this generation of filmmakers might offer in the years to come.
What’s notable is that despite the heavy overlap both in genre and core audience, “Obsession” was not affected by the addition of “Backrooms” to the marquee. According to Focus insiders and exhibition sources, the audience demographics for “Obsession” remained consistent this weekend to the previous two: heavily skewing towards the 18-35 demographic.
While “Backrooms” was more teen-skewing than “Obsession” thanks to the imageboard origins of its source material, Gen Z adults continued to turn out consistently for “Obsession” from a variety of paths. Some were moviegoers seeing it for the first time after hearing about it from friends, the press and social media. Others were coming back for repeat viewings with eager anticipations of the jumpscares, black humor and creepy moments they now knew were coming. Others still were a mix, with opening weekend attendees coming back with their uninitiated friends in tow to enjoy their horrified reactions.
It demonstrates how, with the right combination of films, horror has a greater carrying capacity than some other genres that have major demographic overlap, as there’s more than one way to scare an auditorium full of people. One theater owner told TheWrap that while the “Obsession”/”Backrooms” phenomenon isn’t on the level of “Barbenheimer” in 2023, there were indeed horror buffs at his Pacific Northwest theater that had made plans to see both as a double feature.
YouTube film school
It makes perfect sense that the first generation raised in an entirely online world would feel so connected to YouTube, and in fact Parsons is still quite chatty on Discord and Reddit where he interacts with fans regularly.
The immediacy of making and distributing their early works was part of what drew Barker to YouTube, where he and his creative partner Cooper Tomlinson made a name for themselves by writing, directing, starring in and editing comedy videos.
“Any aspiring filmmaker’s worst nightmare is being paralyzed and having some sort of script that’s been written for months and months and months and you’re like, ‘Oh, don’t worry, one day I’m going to do it,’ but you never do because it just becomes too overwhelming,” he told TheWrap. “We were writing things that we could do right then.”
Parsons and Barker are both self-made filmmakers – Parsons is a VFX wiz who rendered his animated characters and settings in Blender, while Barker’s knack for editing quippy comedy videos led to a steady handle on tension in “Obsession.”
What happens next
Given the shock of seeing two horror films with a combined $11 million production spend topple a $165 million “Star Wars” movie with Baby Yoda in it, it’s easy to see this as a sign that the days of Hollywood relying on spinoffs, sequels and revivals of pop culture from before the turn of the century may be numbered.
But the highest grossing film in May is still a biopic about a pop star from the ’80s who died 17 years ago. The film expected to be the highest-grossing June release and top $1 billion is the fifth installment of an animated franchise that began in 1995. A Disney remake and a “Spider-Man” movie are also candidates to reach $1 billion this summer. Long-in-the-tooth franchises aren’t suddenly on the endangered list, and a dormant IP, with the right filmmaker to provide undeniable quality and excitement, can be introduced to a new generation.
But what this does mean is that the threshold for those older IP titles to win over the 18-35 kingmakers, especially for IP that Gen Z has no mass childhood fondness for, is only going to get higher — Amazon MGM’s “Masters of the Universe” suddenly has to contend not only with millennials turning out for “Scary Movie” next weekend, but also these two horror films lighting up the box office. For older IP, just getting good reviews from critics and an older-skewing hardcore fanbase may not be enough.
This also means that YouTube, once seen as a competitor to theatrical, could become a new, dependable pipeline for talent like commercials and music videos were in decades past, and the filmmakers who are coming from that pipeline are not showing interest in coming off the paths they are paving for themselves.
It’s telling that neither Parsons nor Barker are publicly vying to direct a Marvel movie or begging Lucasfilm to craft a “Star Wars” spinoff. Barker has already shot his follow-up, an original horror comedy called “Anything but Ghosts” for Focus, and is signed to reimagine the “Texas Chainsaw” franchise for A24.
Parsons, meanwhile, seems keen on continuing the “Backrooms” franchise, perhaps in TV form — he counts the USA series “Mr. Robot” as a favorite of his.
“I feel like I’m going to go insane if I don’t get this out of my system,” he told the New York Times of the expanding lore and mythology for the “Backrooms” IP. “The reason I do ‘Backrooms’ at all is for stuff that hasn’t quite happened yet.”
With a $118 million global opening, “Backrooms” should blow past the $191 million global gross of “Marty Supreme” to set a new A24 record by the end of next weekend. And it’s hard to imagine the studio isn’t working to sign Parsons for a sequel in what would be their first ongoing franchise.
“Obsession,” with $104 million domestic, is already the highest-grossing Focus release ever in North America, and it will soon pass the $194 million global gross of “Downton Abbey” to take the top spot on the distributor’s global charts.
Every studio and agent in town now is scouring YouTube to find the next exciting voice. Big deals will be made. Some bets will pay off, some won’t. But the sea change is here.
The post The Future of Movies Is Here: ‘Backrooms,’ ‘Obsession’ Mark Turning Point for Hollywood | Analysis appeared first on TheWrap.
