‘Obsession’ Is About to Make Horror History, and It Was Made for Less Than a Million Dollars

‘Obsession‘ is closing in on one of the most remarkable box office achievements in horror movie history and is now on track to become the sixth highest-grossing horror film of all time at the domestic box office. For a movie shot for $750,000 by a first-time theatrical filmmaker who built his following on YouTube, that trajectory is almost beyond comprehension.

The current domestic total stands at roughly $227 million, placing the film within striking distance of the all-time record for an original horror movie, which currently belongs to last year’s ‘Sinners’ at $370.2 million worldwide. Analysts believe ‘Obsession’ could surpass that benchmark before the end of its theatrical run, which would make it the highest-grossing original horror film in cinema history.

The film, written, directed and edited by Curry Barker, follows a music store employee named Bear who breaks a supernatural toy called the One Wish Willow in order to win the heart of his crush Nikki, only to find that getting exactly what he wished for comes with horrifying consequences. The premise is lean, the execution has been praised widely, and the result is a film that keeps drawing audiences back for repeat viewings week after week.

Its fourth-weekend domestic gross of $25.6 million represented a decline of just 7% from the previous frame, the best fourth-weekend hold ever recorded for a horror film, surpassing the 1999 benchmark set by ‘The Blair Witch Project.’ Earlier in its run, it also became the first film since ‘E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial’ in 1982 to increase in both its second and third weekends of release, a statistical anomaly that stunned even the most seasoned box office analysts.

Jason Blum, who joined as an executive producer through Blumhouse Productions after the film’s Toronto Film Festival premiere, attributed its success to a new generation of moviegoers who are declaring a very specific taste for left-of-center horror, calling it “a real new growth area” for the theatrical business.

Focus Features distributed the film domestically after acquiring worldwide rights at TIFF for approximately $15 million, the highest acquisition price ever paid for a genre film in that festival’s history. Thirty percent of its audience is between 18 and 25 years old, with many tickets coming from repeat viewers, particularly in Los Angeles.

The film boasts a 94% Rotten Tomatoes score from both critics and audiences and an A- CinemaScore, making it one of only a handful of horror releases in recent years to achieve that kind of dual endorsement. In a summer dominated by franchise tentpoles with nine-figure budgets, a $750,000 movie made by a YouTube director approaching all-time genre records is the most quietly extraordinary story at the box office this year.

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