By: Raven Santos
While movie theater box offices have been slowly recovering from the 2020 pandemic season, no year has been as powerful in the growth process as the 2026 box office season.
Many movies such as “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” and “The Odyssey” both made over a billion dollars globally, attracting both the domestic and global audiences back to theaters.
Topping the summer’s top 10 highest-grossing films are “Obsession” and “Backrooms.” Both are being hailed by many as a new era for independent cinema. However, the success of “Obsession” and “Backrooms” can be attributed to what makes a high-budget franchise film profitable: a pre-established audience and heavy marketing, both of which help the film become ingrained in the cultural conversation.
“Backrooms” originated as a post on the online forum website 4chan,, describing an infinite series of rooms with peeling yellow wallpaper, moldy carpet, and buzzing fluorescent lights.
A cult following developed, inspiring a slew of “liminal space” content, with the “Backrooms” having its own growing subculture of internet content.
This became the point of inspiration for Kane Parsons to make his YouTube series in 2022, which blew up.
When the film’s trailer was released, it became A24’s highest-viewed trailer. The marketing, which included behind-the-scenes and pop-ups along with the built-in audience of backrooms, helped the film jump to an opening of $81 million.
The other film of interest is “Obsession,” made by Curry Barker, who is best known for his YouTube channel, “that’s a bad idea”, where he makes comedy skits with his writing and acting partner Cooper Tomilson. He has made many short horror films on his channel, like “The Chair” and “Milk & Serial”, which he starred in alongside Tomilson.
A producer had reached out to Barker to create a feature-length adaptation of “The Chair”, but Barker instead pitched the idea for “Obsession.”
The film made its debut at the Toronto Film Festival, which was where Focus Features acquired it for $15 million, showing a significant investment in a film that had received critical praise for its initial screening.
“Obsession” had an initial weekend gross of $17 million; however, it was able to gross above $10 million for 7 weeks. In comparison, “Backrooms” had a 67% drop in box office weekend revenue after its initial week.
“Obsession” is what box office analysts call a “movie with legs”; a film that is able to maintain a high box office revenue week after week.
This is typically representative of a movie with a good word of mouth, meaning that people are more likely to recommend the film to their friends and family. This was measured with an A- in CinemaScore (a survey for moviegoers across North America after watching a film), representing a highly positive reception by audiences.
“Obsession,” in initially portraying itself as a yandere story, reveals itself to be a complex tale of incel culture and toxic relationships. This complexity allowed it to be part of a cultural discussion that continues to act as a warning tale to women, as many men continually support the actions of the antagonist, with much backlash to it.
It is ingraining itself fittingly into the social media era, rife with a riff on controversial discussion, which allowed it to grow into continued cultural discussion.
On the other hand, “Backrooms” represents a movie with high initial draw but average word of mouth, with a 60% drop from week 1 to 2, typically average for a horror film. This is corroborated by a B- in CinemaScore, which represents a slightly below-average reception to the film.
Many casual fans of “Backrooms” made up a significant portion of the opening crowd and liked the wider world of internet horror beyond Kane Parsons’s series. Many disliked the film for not being as exciting as the wider world of Backrooms represented. Many also complained about the slower pace of the film, which tends to not be a good draw for a wider general audience. (! fix link)
A big draw for the film was its $10 million physical set depicting the titular “Backrooms”. Drawing on a niche of people who enjoy liminal space, as well as a growing love for practical effects, this has been continually said to be a highlight of the film.
In comparison, much of the story and character work has been described as its low point. “Backrooms” has also been turned into jokes, or memes, on social media, similar to “Obsession”, especially taking the protagonist Clark’s words of being an architect. But these undermine the story rather than furthering the themes of the story, taking dialogue that’s meant to be integral to the story and making it humorous.
What is certain is that the factors in the writing and invited fanbase are what allowed both movies to dominate the box office. Film producers have taken this as a sign to invest more in films based on internet horror.
Plans to adapt Mandela Catalog movie, Siren Head film, and “V/H/S SCP”. This looks like a positive prospect to the creators of online horror, especially as the original creator of Mandela Catalog, Alex Kister, is attached to the project, while larger names in the industry like Steven Spielberg and Zach Cregger have their names in the film.
However, much of this investment looks like a shallow attempt to replicate the success of “Backrooms”.
Producers attempted to replicate the success “Barbenheimer” double feature by pairing “Saw X” and “PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie” to make Saw Patrol, or “Gladiator 2” and “Wicked: For Good” to make Glicked. These films had decent box office success, likely owing to being part of established franchises, but pairing contributed little to no success on the level of the original.
The main point is it’s difficult for film producers to predict the desires of a shifting market. But while the studios rush frantically to capitalize on a film trend that has long passed, what are the plans of the two creators in the spotlight?
Kane Parsons has recently signed a deal to make a sequel to the Backrooms project. Curry Barker has been signed to create “Anything But Ghosts”, a new original horror project with him and Cooper Tomlinson set to write and lead, as they did on “Milk & Serial”.
The growing favorability for independent creators, with the success of Backrooms and Obsession, is a road paved by many other films behind it.
What most viewers crave in modern-day movies is storytelling with intentional creative behind-the-scenes; what follows original creativity is the quality storytelling that makes movie magic.