Backrooms and Obsession top box office—YouTuber surge

YouTube-to-horror pipeline – Two horror films led the weekend box office: “Backrooms,” a feature expansion of Kane Parsons’ YouTube found-footage series, and “Obsession,” directed by Curry Barker, whose filmmaking rose from YouTube. Both pushed past typical release expectations, while a R

By the time weekend box office numbers started to settle, it was hard to miss what was happening: the top two slots belonged to horror films built by creators who first earned attention on YouTube.

“Backrooms,” directed by Kane Parsons, took the number one spot. The movie expands Parsons’ series of YouTube videos built around eerie found footage of a mysterious office space—material drawn from a 4chan thread and presented as something that defies physics. The feature is estimated to bring in $81 million at the domestic box office this weekend alone.

For A24, that’s a standout benchmark. It’s the biggest opening by far for the indie studio, beating its previous record held by “Civil War,” which made $25.7 in its first weekend of release.

At number two, “Obsession” didn’t need the same opening-weekend muscle to look extraordinary. Its estimated weekend total is $26.4 million. but the film has been growing rather than fading—making more money in its second weekend than its first. Now its third weekend is set to grow another 10 percent.

That kind of upward momentum is rare outside holiday releases. Most wide release films normally fall between 50 to 70 percent in their second weekend. Last year’s “Sinners” was treated as an outlier because it fell less than 5 percent, driven by word-of-mouth. Outside of Christmas releases—which tend to last longer because of the holidays—growing from weekend to weekend is considered unheard of. “Obsession” is described as the first film since 1982 to grow on both its second and third weekends.

“Obsession” is also part of the same YouTube-to-prestige horror pipeline. Like “Backrooms,” it’s directed by someone who first built a following on YouTube. Curry Barker. whose YouTube filmmaking culminated (for now) in the hourlong found footage horror film “Milk & Serial. ” released in 2024. has already shot his next film and is set to direct a new remake of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”.

The weekend’s momentum comes after another earlier foothold for the format: “Iron Lung,” a video game adaptation released earlier this year. Directed by Mark Fischbach—better known under his YouTube account name Markiplier—“Iron Lung” grossed nearly $41 million domestically.

The pattern is getting harder to dismiss, especially given what comes with it. In a New York Times article about the recent “YouTube-to-filmmaker boomlet. ” Rutgers Cinema general manager Mark DelVecchio said that “lots of YouTubers have tried to make the leap to mainstream movies and come up short.” What separates Parsons. Barker. and Fischbach. DelVecchio argued. is longevity. He said Parsons is 20. Barker is 26. and they’ve kept making videos for years—developing the kind of loyal audience that will actually follow them.

DelVecchio added: “At this point, some of them have been making videos for a very long time, and that’s how you develop a loyal audience that will follow you.”

As the two horror releases played out, they arrived just ahead of the first Star Wars film in seven years, “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” which is on-track to gross $24 million this weekend.

The throughline here isn’t simply that YouTubers are getting directing credits. It’s that two very different horror stories—both rooted in found-footage aesthetics and audience-built momentum—arrived with numbers that don’t look like a fluke. and in “Obsession’s” case. look like a pitch gaining steam instead of losing it.

YouTube movies Backrooms box office Obsession box office Kane Parsons Curry Barker Markiplier Iron Lung A24 opening record found footage horror film industry trends