The YouTube-to-prestige-horror pipeline looks very strong this weekend.
Taking first place at the box office is “Backrooms,” a feature film expansion of Kane Parsons’ YouTube video series featuring shocking images that captured the image of a mysterious office space (taken from a 4chan thread) that defies physics.
Directed by Parsons, “Backrooms” will bring in an estimated $81 million at the domestic box office this weekend alone. That’s the biggest opening for indie studio A24 — the previous record was held by “Civil War,” which made $25.7 in its first weekend of release.
The best film, “Obsession,” pulls off something arguably even more impressive. True, its weekend total is estimated at $26.4 million – but the film (about love gone wrong) already made more money in its second weekend than in its first, and now its third weekend will grow another 10 percent.
In context, most films in wide release usually fall between 50 and 70 percent in their second weekend; Last year’s “Sinners” was considered an unusual word-of-mouth success because it dropped below 5 percent. Except for the Christmas release (which has a lot of staying power, because of the holidays), growth from weekend to weekend is unheard of – according to the Hollywood Reporter, “Obsession” is the first film since 1982 to grow in both its second and third weekends.
And like “Backrooms,” “Obsession” is a horror film directed by another YouTuber — Curry Barker, whose YouTube filmmaking culminated (for now) with the hour-long horror film “Milk & Serial” released in 2024. Barker has already shot his next film and is set to direct a new remake of “The Massaw Texas Chain.”
These two releases follow the surprise success of “Iron Lung,” the video game adaptation released earlier this year. Directed by Mark Fischbach — better known by his YouTube account name Markiplier — “The Iron Lung” grossed nearly $41 million domestically.
In a New York Times article about the recent “YouTube-to-filmmaker boomlet,” Rutgers Cinema general manager Mark DelVecchio noted that “many YouTubers have tried to jump into mainstream movies and come up short.” What makes Parsons, Barker, and Fischbach different? DelVecchio said that despite their youth (Parsons is 20, Barker is 26), they all have “long lives.”
“Now, some of them have been making videos for a long time, and that’s how you grow a loyal audience,” he added.
Both films come in ahead of the first Star Wars film in seven years, “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” which is on track to earn $24 million this weekend.
However, although I have yet to see “Back Rooms” (fingers crossed for tomorrow), be see “Obsession.” So I can confirm that it’s not at all disappointing – I watched most of the second half with my fingers over my eyes, and may have screamed a few times.
This post was originally published on May 30. Updated with current box numbers.
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