It’s officially hot indie horror movie 20-something summer
Welcome to the month at the box office nobody saw coming.
Just. Wow.
I’ve been covering TV and film for… well, longer than I care to admit at this point. And I can honestly say I’ve rarely if ever seen anything like the horror run we have going on right now in theaters.
High-concept horror movies from young, 20-something directors are dominating the box office — and outperforming (in some cases, massively) a new Star Wars movie and a broad, family-friendly comedy from the hottest comedian on the planet right now (Nate Bargatze’s The Breadwinner, which I completely forgot opened this weekend).
This isn’t just a hot month for horror. It’s a testament to the next generation of young filmmakers who cut their teeth making original content on YouTube and shoe-string budget indies. Studios are looking for the next roster of horror filmmakers, and they’ve found at least two of them with Obsession’s Curry Barker and Backrooms’ Kane Parsons.
It’s something that seems to happen every generation, with a new wave of filmmakers breaking through and taking over. I think you could make an argument we’re watching it happen in real-time, right now.n
Barker, 26, made Obsession on a shoestring budget of just $750,000 after an indie studio rolled the dice and bought into his pitch — but after honing his craft on zero-budget indie shorts and projects — that $750,000 felt like a fortune to bring his idea for a creepy little “wish gone wrong” story to life. The result was one of the creepiest, most unsettling hits of the year. The film has made over $100 million at the U.S. box office, and just keeps rolling and growing its haul as great word of mouth continues to spread.
Parsons, at just 20-years-old and barely out of high school, spent the past few years building up his own original horror franchise with a series of Backrooms shorts on YouTube, drawing in millions upon millions of views and building up a story and world that all started with a simple, creepy image that spawned a creepypasta following that just kept growing. That led to a bidding frenzy, landing him a deal at A24 (and Backrooms is now officially A24’s biggest opening ever).
With Obsession still going strong in theaters, Backrooms managed to still blow the doors off even the more generous estimates for its box office debut. Backrooms opened to a staggering $81 million this past weekend, with Backrooms and Obsession beating out the recently-opened The Mandalorian and Grogu — kicking the first Star Wars movie in seven years down to third place behind two indie horror flicks made by 20-somethings.
That’s… essentially unheard of in Hollywood. By all traditional thinking, those horror flicks should be doing a fraction of their hauls, and The Mandalorian and Grogu should be gobbling up all the screens on the slow start of summer. Not to even mention Bargatze’s big screen debut, The Breadwinner, which opened at an anemic $7.5 million. Reviews have been pretty terrible on that one, and it does look like a bad Netflix original comedy, but still — Bargatze is the biggest comedian in the world right now.
Two non-traditional horror flicks dominating the start of summer? That’s a flex no one could’ve seen coming.
Of course, these might be the most successful indie horror projects of the year, but they’re not the first. YouTuber Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach, 36, self-financed a live action adaptation of the sci-fi horror video game Iron Lung, which he made for around $3 million that legged out to earn around $50 million at the box office. That is an incredible haul for a film that cheap, but all the more impressive considering he actually self-released it into theaters through his own independent production company.
He tapped into his personal audience of fans, and fans of the video games. He bet on a passion project he wrote, directed and starred in himself. And won. Yes, critics were a bit mixed, but fans liked it and it made a great profit. That’s an undeniable win.
It all speaks to the larger trend of a next generation of filmmakers cutting their own paths into Hollywood. They’re making their own franchises, and reimagining classic horror tropes for the modern era in ways that connect for younger viewers. And despite all the naysaying, theaters aren’t dead. The average age of all those folks who went to theaters this week to see Backrooms? Around 25. Which is pretty remarkable. Those 20-somethings who are “abandoning theaters for streaming”? They’ll go to the movies — it just has to be for something they actually want to see.
It’s just that not as many folks are turning out for what studios are keen to keep rolling out on the assembly line. Movies like Obsession and Backrooms? They’re a blinking billboard that audiences, and young audiences, will show up when it’s something they want to see.
And looking forward, both Parsons and Barker have a ton of runway to start their careers. Barker’s next movie, Anything But Ghosts, is already in the can with A-list stars Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard in the cast. Parsons doesn’t have his next project lined up, but has teased an interest in continuing with Backrooms (rumor has it a film sequel could be fast-tracked) — be it a TV spinoff, new movie or (gasp) more YouTube installments. Whatever he decides, you have to think plenty of studios will be more than willing to roll the dice on it.