We’re in completely unprecedented territory.
If you would’ve told me a year ago that two original horror movies from Blumhouse and Atomic Monster would be climbing the list of the highest-grossing horror films of all time within weeks of each other, I would’ve laughed.
Yet here we are.
The obvious story is Obsession. Made for just $750,000 by first-time feature filmmaker Curry Barker, the film has now crossed $400 million worldwide, currently sitting at approximately $403 million globally. That incredible run has propelled it into the upper echelon of the highest-grossing horror films ever made, a feat almost nobody thought possible when Focus Features acquired it out of the Toronto International Film Festival for $15 million.
But Obsession isn’t the only story.
Sitting quietly in its shadow is Backrooms. After exploding out of the gate with a record-breaking opening weekend, the film suffered the kind of steep second-weekend drop everyone expected for such a front-loaded release. The good news? It stabilized. Rather than collapsing, audiences have continued showing up, pushing the film past the $348 million mark worldwide and putting it on pace to cross $350 million by tonight.
Under almost any other circumstances, Backrooms would be the biggest horror story of the summer.
Instead, it’s sharing the spotlight with a once-in-a-generation phenomenon.
Together, these two films have cemented themselves among the most successful horror movies ever released, and perhaps more importantly, they’ve done it with original ideas instead of recognizable IP.
Obsession is the feel-good Cinderella story. Curry Barker went from making YouTube shorts and independent features to directing one of the most profitable movies ever made. Meanwhile, Kane Parsons transformed a viral internet phenomenon into A24’s biggest theatrical success, proving that the next generation of filmmakers doesn’t necessarily come out of film school anymore. Sometimes they come straight from YouTube.
Both filmmakers took very different paths to Hollywood, but they arrived at the same destination: proving audiences are still hungry for bold, original horror. And judging by the numbers, this feels less like a lucky summer and more like the beginning of a new era for the genre.
