backrooms

Two of the biggest box-office standouts of 2026 so far were not made by established studio directors or built on franchise IP.

“Obsession” and “Backrooms” — horror films from internet-native directors in their 20s — have outperformed far more expensive studio releases.

The breakout success of these films has ignited debate across Hollywood about what made these movies so popular, especially among Gen Z moviegoers who haven’t been flocking to cinemas in recent years. Here’s what to know:

The numbers

”Obsession” was directed by 26-year-old Curry Barker, who got his start on YouTube with sketch comedy and horror shorts. Released May 15 by Focus Features, the film was made for just $750,000 but opened to a staggering $17 million and has improved on its debut every weekend since.

“Obsession” set an all-time horror record for the biggest fourth weekend for a film at the domestic box office, raking in $25.4 million. It now ranks as the year’s fifth most popular film, nearing $200 million domestically and roughly $295 million worldwide — ahead of Pixar’s “Hoppers” ($166 million) and Paramount’s “Scream 7” ($121 million), per Box Office Mojo.

“Backrooms,” from 21-year-old Kane Parsons — known on YouTube as Kane Pixels — drew on an online fascination with liminal spaces, leading audiences through an endless run of nearly indistinguishable rooms.

Released May 29 by A24 (known for such acclaimed films as “Moonlight” and Everything Everywhere All at Once”) on a reported $10-million budget, it opened to $81 million and crossed $100 million in under a week.

Within two and a half weeks, it had outgrossed the entire theatrical runs of horror films “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” “Smile” and “Scream 7.” It sits as 2026’s eighth-highest-grossing film.

Who is watching?

The audiences are young. In recent weeks, nearly 90% of “Backrooms’” viewers were under 35, with more than half under 25. Over “Obsession’s” first few weekends, 75% of the audience was 17 to 34, which is significant at a time when major studios have struggled to consistently get younger viewers to trek to the multiplex.

Why it’s working

Audiences have clearly latched onto the stories, said Jason Blum of Blumhouse–Atomic Monster, who worked on both films.

“There’s been an audience kind of waiting to get back to the movie theaters, and we in Hollywood really have not landed on what would get them back,” he told The Times in an interview this week.

Blum, who upended horror genre with the “Paranormal Activity” franchise, ties the success of “Backrooms” and “Obsession” to a connection to the directors’ origins.

Because the films were made by creators who speak to younger viewers daily on YouTube, he said, that generation “feels like they’re being spoken to.”

David Gross, an analyst at FranchiseRe, framed it as a new pipeline of talent and material. Creators can build large followings very inexpensively, he said, and their stories arrive further developed — which expedites the development and discovery process. He called internet-based storytelling “another additive source for material for movies.” Blum added that the films’ success could make studios more willing to bet on undiscovered directors who “might not have been considered” before.

Rosie Ramirez, chief marketing officer at Galaxy Theatres, said a young first-wave audience tends to generate buzz. More than a month after “Obsession” was released, she said, the Nevada chain’s four California locations are only now seeing a second wave of moviegoers curious about the hype.

Notably, the rise of these two films has unfolded in the shadow of major releases like Disney’s “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu,” and Mattel’s “Masters of the Universe,” both of which returned underwhelming numbers in their respective opening weekends.

Is it a trend or an anomaly?

Whether this marks a lasting shift or a fluke is unclear. May crossed $1 billion in box office — with “Backrooms” and “Obsession” doing much of the heavy lifting. Despite the improvement, the box office has yet to full return to pre-pandemic levels, with the summer tracking roughly 3.5% behind summer 2019, said Comscore’s Paul Dergarabedian.

And Dergarabedian questioned how the industry could replicate a success that, in his words, was “authentically and organically created” rather than manufactured: “It just happened,” he said.

Ramirez argued the broader summer slate — franchise tentpoles like “Toy Story 5” alongside some original surprises — points to a healthy box office regardless, a reminder that “it doesn’t always have to be the big summer blockbuster.”

Steven Spielberg’s latest sci-fi thriller, “Disclosure Day,” topped the box office this weekend, an encouraging sign for what could be a big summer for theaters.

The film, which stars Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor, brought in $44 million in the U.S. and Canada for a worldwide total of $92.9 million, according to studio estimates. The opening weekend totals beat box office analysts’ expectations of about $40 million to $50 million.

“Disclosure Day” is Spielberg’s latest alien-centric movie that charts a desperate race to show the world the truth about extraterrestrials.

The film, which had a production budget of about $115 million, was also scored by legendary composer and longtime Spielberg collaborator John Williams, who is now 94 years old.

Spielberg described the film in April as “way closer to truth than fiction” during a speech at the CinemaCon trade convention in Las Vegas. The veteran director of 1977’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” 1982’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and 2005’s “War of the Worlds” said at the time that he’s been curious about “what’s going on in the night” since he was a child and “been very fixated on the possibilities.”

Focus Features’ “Obsession” came in second at the box office with a domestic haul of $19 million, a continuation of the film’s strong run in theaters.

“Scary Movie,” “Backrooms” and “Masters of the Universe” rounded out the top five at the box office.

Recent box office performance — particularly with Gen Z hits “Obsession” and A24’s “Backrooms” — along with a slate of upcoming blockbuster franchise installments has buoyed the hopes of exhibitors and studio executives for a strong summer.

Next week, Walt Disney Co. and Pixar will release “Toy Story 5,” while Warner Bros.’ DC Studios has “Supergirl” landing in late June.

Universal Pictures and Illumination’s “Minions & Monsters,” Disney’s live-action “Moana,” Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” and Sony Pictures’ “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” are all slated for July.

That steady cadence of new and different films is key for a healthy box office and a successful summer, said Daniel Loria, editorial director at the Box Office Co.

“We’re seeing that momentum come back on a weekend-by-weekend basis,” he said. “What we needed to get back to a healthy industry post-pandemic is consistency, and that’s the difference here in 2026.”

AMC’s plan to launch a new interactive live concert series in theaters is on ice, for now. With a booming box office full of films like “Obsession,” “Backrooms” and “Scary Movie,” the theater chain has postponed the concert project until later this year.

In a statement, AMC said due to the “robust lineup of upcoming films and strong advance ticket sales in the weeks ahead,” it needed to make some programming adjustments. Some of the major upcoming releases for June include Disney’s “Toy Story 5” and Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day.”

Acts like Bebe Rexha, Paris Hilton, Kim Petras and Marren Morris were lined up to test out the new format next week, as a part of the Girls Night Live concert series.

The chain is partnering with live entertainment company Arena One to bring new technology to theaters. This tech would allow artists on a remote stage to see, hear and respond to the theater audience, in effect turning your local cinema into a stadium, the companies said. Fans who already purchased tickets have received refunds.

The series was initially marketed as a new draw to get customers to the theaters, but given the strong box office numbers so far this year, it’s clear the demand for theaters is already growing

Focus Features’ “Obsession” is now nearing $230 million in global box office revenue, according to Box Office Mojo, and is the studio’s highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office.

Similarly, A24’s “Backrooms” is the indie studio’s highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office, with nearly $140 million. It pulled in $100 million at the box office only six days after its initial release.

Most recently, “Scary Movie” topped the box office last weekend with a $105.5-million worldwide debut, ranking among the top five biggest R-rated comedy openings of all time.

AMC said it would announce new dates and additional artists for the interactive concert series in the coming months.

Hollywood has been waiting for Kane Parsons since the year he was born. The 20-year-old director is the same age as YouTube’s first videos and grew up with no barriers between his creativity and an audience. “Backrooms,” his debut feature, marks the start of a new new wave of filmmakers raised by internet feedback who are ready to reinvigorate the industry.

Young Steven Spielberg screened his 8mm reels for his neighborhood. Parsons uploaded his early shorts online where he could analyze the mass response. When one, an unsettling nine-minute experiment about a warren of dingy carpets, taffy-yellow walls and gridded drop ceilings clicked with 78 million viewers, he made sequels. A24 offered Parsons a deal before he finished high school. He’s graduating into multiplexes having spent his adolescence writing, directing, editing, composing and market-testing what people want to watch. I’d toast to that, but Parsons isn’t old enough for Champagne.

Given that backdrop, “Backrooms” would be one of the year’s most significant releases even if the movie itself was merely fine. But it’s better than fine — it’s a work of honest-to-goodness art. Working with screenwriter Will Soodik, Parsons has gone back into that banal maze to find an uncannily mature story about loss and stagnation, about how our self-serving narratives barricade us from emotional growth.

Set in 1990, “Backrooms” has the fritz of an old VHS tape. (Like so many other Gen Z kids, Parsons is nostalgic for a pre-smartphone era he never knew.) A failed architect-turned-furniture salesman named Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor, superbly expressive) tumbles through a portal in his store’s basement to the backrooms of the title — less Alice in Wonderland, more Alice in Wonderbland.

“It’s like it was made by a bunch of construction workers on acid,” he muses. The hallways lead to more hallways, the overhead fluorescents whine like hornets. Someone — or something — has piled lamps and stools into the center of one room, scattered chairs in another and embedded shoes into the floor as though the ground were made of sand. The disorder looks like the wreckage of an unknown chaos. Aboveground, Clark is trapped in his own resentments, throwing temper tantrums like a toddler. Down here, frustration feels natural.

Should he be afraid? And if so, then what of?

Distant thuds warn that Clark isn’t alone. Soon after, three other characters follow Clark into this liminal space: his loud employees Bobby and Kat (Finn Bennett and Lukita Maxwell) and his exasperated therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), who is haunted by flashbacks of her agoraphobic mother. There’s also a mysterious man in a lab coat (Mark Duplass) who works for a company that factors into the backrooms’ preexisting internet lore, but doesn’t have much purpose in this script. It’s fine just to see Duplass as a gesture toward corporate apathy. More beings will appear too and cinematographer Jeremy Cox’s deliberately low-fi look forces you to do triple and quadruple takes to comprehend what you’re even seeing.

How does a 20-year-old fathom adult-sized discontent? Lord knows, but Parsons does. One theory is that today’s 20-year-olds were just launching into teenhood when the pandemic teleported them from their classrooms to isolated computer screens. Meanwhile, they overheard their parents fret that society might be forever hollowed out. When a young person looks toward the future, what do they see? Probably not an office building bustling with entry-level jobs.

Think about how the act of buying a couch no longer involves interacting with a salesman like Clark, but peering at a pixelated living room that doesn’t actually exist with a couch that changes colors at a tap. Think about how lately the internet at large feels human-less. Then layer that emptiness over the images here.

Sparse yet gripping, “Backrooms” and its minimalist story accommodate the audience’s own free-ranging imagination. The infinite size of these drab catacombs triggers sense-memories of feeling small and confused in an ordinary place that feels all wrong. It’s a time travel trip back to childhood — mass entertainment made intimate — with Parsons tossing us scraps of Clark and Mary’s personal histories like a breadcrumb trail. I remembered what it felt like to get lost in a motel on a road trip with my grandparents. More recently, I tidied the home of a friend who was in the hospital, the pill bottles and crumpled blankets left in situ as evidence of someone else’s pain. “Backrooms” felt like that, too.

There’s an incredible special effects shot where the camera sinks through the floor of Mary’s living room to find a mutation of the same room — and then another and another — each replica deteriorating further from reality until it becomes a new room altogether that would fit right into the backrooms. This, we wordlessly understand, represents how memories of the past can be at once factually inaccurate and emotionally true. We’ve all been bewildered kids, Parsons more recently than most. Some of the most powerful people on Earth still behave like they’re stuck in that headspace.

Describing “Backrooms” as a horror film doesn’t feel exactly right. It’s a surrealist painting in motion, the equivalent of staring at Salvador Dali’s wasteland of melting clocks until it makes gut-sense. Dali made that famous masterpiece, “The Persistence of Memory,” in 1931, a breath-holding moment between wars when daily life looked normal enough but vibrated with the dread that no, things were definitely not OK. Kids don’t know that, but they vibe with Dali anyway because he keys into their suspicion that the world doesn’t really obey the rules.

That anxiety hums through “Backrooms.” It’s why millions of people watched and shared the original short. Yet as fraught as it sounds — and as abruptly as it ends — I left elated. A major new moviemaking talent has arrived and he’s the beginning of a movement. Other internet-honed young filmmakers will follow with their own fresh insights into genres like action, comedy and romance. Kane Parsons is just the first one through Hollywood’s labyrinth.

Internet culture is showing up in a big way in theaters, as low-budget horror films “Backrooms” and “Obsession” led this weekend’s box office and beat out big franchise films like “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu.”

A24’s “Backrooms” topped the charts with $81.5 million in the U.S. and Canada in its opening weekend, according to studio estimates. The film is directed by 20-year-old YouTuber Kane Parsons, who based it on his internet series of the same name.

“Backrooms,” which reportedly had a production budget of about $10 million, stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as a furniture store owner who finds a mysterious portal in his basement. The film made a total of $118 million worldwide.

In second place was Focus Features’ “Obsession,” which hauled in $26.4 million in its third weekend in theaters, up 10% from the previous weekend’s total. The film, which had a production budget of less than $1 million, has now grossed $104.7 million domestically for a global total of $148 million.

“Obsession” director Curry Barker is also known for his YouTube sketch comedy channel.

The success of two YouTube-native filmmakers at the box office indicates the growing power of the platform — and online culture as a whole — in attracting audiences to cinemas.

Walt Disney Co. and Lucasfilm’s “The Mandalorian and Grogu” fell to third place this weekend with a domestic gross of $25 million. Lionsgate’s musical biopic “Michael” ($11.7 million) and Sony Pictures’ family comedy “The Breadwinner” ($7.5 million) rounded out the top five at the box office, according to Comscore data.