{"id":44639,"date":"2026-06-01T00:42:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T05:42:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/?p=44639"},"modified":"2026-06-02T15:04:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T20:04:05","slug":"horror-will-save-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/horror-will-save-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Horror will Save Us"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have an Obsession for Backrooms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Producers James Wan and Jason Blum spoke at the Produced By conference and it looks like they realized what a lot of cinephiles have been screaming for years. Apparently, the future of horror, and cinema in general, is in letting younger passionate voices make movies.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Jason Blum and James Wan at The 16th Annual Produced by Conference. Picture courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter. Find it here<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In this<\/a> article, written by Lexi Carson of The Hollywood Reporter, she mentions how well Kane Parson’s Backrooms has been doing as well as Curry Barker’s Obsession. At the conference, producer and director Jason Blum said that Obsession has done something we haven’t seen since ET came out in 1982. The film’s popularity, and thus its gross, has gone up 3 weeks straight. It went up 30% from it’s opening weekend and up 20% more, the following.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s be honest though. As many of you may know, making money isn’t neccessarily a sign that a movie is any good. According to Box Office Mojo, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 grossed about 107 million on a 30 million dollar budget making it a financial success (find that info here<\/a>). But the critic and audience scores show a different story. Rotten Tomatoes had it at a 6% Tomatometer score and a 33% for the Popcornmeter (find that here<\/a>). <\/p>\n\n\n

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Kane Parsons and Chiwetel Ejiofor on the set of Backrooms. Picture courtesy of Variety. Find it here<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

But the good news for Barker is that Obsession is no Paul Blart 2. The indie horror so far has a 96% and 95% for the Tomatometer and Popcornmeter respectively (the link<\/a> if you’re interested). Backrooms is doing very well too. According to Box Office Mojo<\/a>, it had an amazing opening weekend doing 81 million domestic and 36 million international all on a estimated budget of 10 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look at Markiplier’s Iron Lung from earlier this year. Forbes’s Tim Lammers recently wrote that Iron Lung is coming to streaming ahead of schedule and he goes on the mention the films amazing box office success (find the article here<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n

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Markiplier on the red carpet for Iron Lung. Picture courtesy of Forbes. Find it here<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Mark Fischbach, better known by his YouTube handle Markiplier, directed, co-wrote, and starred in the 2026 film based on a popular video game and made the movie on a 3 million dollar budget. What was even more impressive was that by the end of it’s theatrical run, the movie grossed about 51 million dollars worldwide. Beyond even that, he also distributed the film himself, bypassing Hollywood distributors and seeing a run of over 4 thousand theaters across a 3 and a half week period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What 2026 has shown us is that horror is leading the way and setting an example of what needs to be done across Hollywood as a whole. Invest in indie. True, if one of the major studios got behind a project it wouldn’t technically be “indie” anymore BUT the idea is that we need to find these new, young voices and give them a chance.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Curry Barker on the red carpet for Obsession. Picture courtesy of Deadline. Find it here<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This isn’t a brand new thing, of course. Before the Barbie movie came out, Greta Gerwig worked on one of the most beloved indie films of recent memory; Ladybird. Before Saltburn and Wuthering Heights, Emerald Fennell did Promising Young Woman. Even before Barker and Parson we had Jordan Peele, Osgood Perkins, and Zach Cregger. But now more than ever it feels like Hollywood needs to take notice. 2026 has had 3 independent horror films that have been critical successes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it seems horror is leading the way once again and I’m not the only one that thinks this. In Lexi Carson’s article she mentions that James Wan talked about how he grew up watching Wes Craven and John Carpenter and wanted to make horror movies like them and that even today we are mimicing that model. He finished by saying:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I say this to anyone who will listen: The horror genre keeps saving our industry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have an Obsession for Backrooms. Producers James Wan and Jason Blum spoke at the Produced By conference and it looks like they realized what … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":44655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,305],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-movies","latest_post"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/somewhatnerdy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG-20260602-WA0002.jpg?fit=1000%2C563&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p35LLI-bBZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44639"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44651,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44639\/revisions\/44651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}