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I’m sitting here pretty fucking irritated with Hollywood right now.
Horror is always treated like the redheaded stepchild of the industry, and we all know it. Every single time a horror movie breaks out, suddenly the conversation becomes, “Horror is back.” As if the genre disappears every six months and has to reintroduce itself to the industry over and over again.
Meanwhile, horror has quietly been one of the most reliable genres in the business for decades.
And look, I understand why the studios think the way they do. When you’re staring at billion-dollar superhero movies and giant franchise IP, a horror movie making $40 million, $50 million, even $100 million can look small in comparison. These companies answer to shareholders. To conglomerates. To corporations like Comcast and everybody else sitting above them demanding constant growth.
But what really lights a fire under Hollywood’s ass are these low-budget horror movies that cost almost nothing and suddenly make everybody look stupid.
That’s why the reaction to Curry Barker and Obsession has been driving me crazy.
Everyone in town seems completely shocked by what’s happening with this movie, and I keep sitting here asking myself… why? Seriously, why are we pretending this came out of nowhere?
I was saying back in April that Backrooms would be massive. When early tracking started throwing around $20 million projections, I laughed publicly because they were obviously low. I wrote about it on May 7. I tweeted about it repeatedly. And now, suddenly, everybody’s shocked that it’s heading toward a $40 million to $50 million opening.
I’m not shocked at all.
And while I never would’ve predicted Obsession somehow pulling off the impossible and making more money in weekend two than weekend one, I absolutely thought it was going to be a huge hit.
Because we horror fans knew.
That’s the part Hollywood keeps missing. We horror fans are ahead of this stuff. We follow filmmakers early. We know the YouTube creators. We know the short films. We know the festival buzz. We know when somebody actually has “it.”
And Curry Barker has “it.”
We’ve been all in on him since Milk & Serial. That movie cost basically nothing and still felt fresher and more alive than half the studio horror movies getting dumped into theaters every year.
Then Obsession premieres at TIFF Midnight Madness, Focus Features picks it up, and now suddenly everybody’s acting like this success came out of nowhere.
It didn’t.
The signs were all there.
And this is the part of Hollywood that drives me fucking insane: the reactive bullshit.
Nobody in this industry seems capable of taking a real chance on something before it’s already a hit. Everything has to prove itself first. Everything has to make money first. Everything has to become “safe” before people react to it.
It’s the same exact bullshit as a dangerous four-way intersection. Everybody points out that it’s dangerous. Everybody says somebody’s eventually going to get hurt. But nobody does a fucking thing until somebody finally dies there, and suddenly the stop signs go up afterward.
That’s Hollywood.
You say, “Hey, Curry Barker is the guy.” You say, “Obsession is going to explode.” You say, “Take a shot on Kane Parsons because Backrooms is going to be huge.”
Do they listen?
No.
They wait until after the fact. Then suddenly everybody wants to jump on the bandwagon once the movie’s already a hit.
And what really set me off was reading that Hollywood Reporter piece talking about how a studio was suddenly throwing around eight-figure offers north of $10 million for Curry Barker to direct a project sight unseen because NOW he’s the guy. NOW he’s king of the hill.
Oh, now he is?
Because a lot of us saw this coming way before opening weekend.
Jason Blum saw it coming. James Wan saw it coming. Focus Features saw it coming. They took the risk early. They spent real money buying Obsession ($15M!). They believed in the filmmaker before the box office validated it for everybody else.
Kudos to them for that.
Honestly, I hope Curry Barker stays loyal to the people who actually believed in him and tells everybody else to go fuck off.
Because this town constantly claims it wants “new voices” and “original filmmakers,” but most of the time it only wants them after somebody else already proved they can make money. Hollywood wants the upside without the gamble. They want to show up after the audience already did the hard part.
And horror history is filled with this exact same story.
Paranormal Activity. The Blair Witch Project. Terrifier. The audience sees it first. Horror fans see it first. Then Hollywood scrambles afterward, trying to catch up and pretend they understood it the whole time.
That’s why Obsession feels bigger than just a box office story to me. It feels like another reminder that horror doesn’t need Hollywood’s permission to create the next great filmmaker. Sometimes, the fans already know who the future is long before the industry catches up.
We’re used to being the outcasts. We’re used to sitting in the corner while the rest of the industry rolls its eyes at the genre until the box office forces them to pay attention. Horror fans have always had to discover this shit for themselves. We find the filmmakers early. We champion them early. We scream about them long before the trades suddenly decide they matter.
So let’s stop pretending the success of Obsession is some shocking mystery nobody could’ve predicted. This is some of the most obvious shit I’ve ever seen in my fucking life.
Curry Barker was always going to break out. Obsession was always going to hit. Horror fans knew it. The signs were there the entire time.
And once again, here comes the industry acting surprised while saying, “Horror is back.”
No, the fuck it isn’t.
Horror never went away. It’s always been here. The only thing that changes is whether Hollywood is paying attention to it or not.
Categorized:Box Office News