It used to be that many young creatives aspiring to make a living as filmmakers would work their way up the totem pole through years of on-set experience, hoping to get their big break. Then there were the others who had the means to spend thousands of dollars on a prestigious film school education, where, with the right relationships and education, they may get a head start in the industry. Now, both avenues seem to be nowhere near as promising as they once were, as we haven’t had a solid crop of young filmmakers emerge together at the same time to only push each other further.
Studios aren’t interested in cultivating the next generation of talent now. Years ago, Hollywood gave opportunities to people like Spielberg to work in television or Paul Thomas Anderson to make “Boogie Nights” at only twenty-six years old. We live in an era of Hollywood in which skittish studio executives steer clear of original films, latching onto any sort of established IP in hopes of a guaranteed box-office hit. If this year has proven anything, it’s that the talents willing to disrupt this fear to get people back into theaters aren’t graduates of USC or NYU but rather from the DIY digital trenches of the video-creation platform YouTube.
The rise of YouTube as a stepping stone into Hollywood filmmaking isn’t a trend that has just appeared out of thin air; it has gradually built over the past few years, especially in the horror space. There’s an ocean of young computer-obsessed content creators sharpening their skills one viral skit at a time. It seems like this was always inevitable on a website like YouTube, where creatives could go out and make their own work with the click of a button. Yet with the success of Danny and Michael Philippou, also known online as RackaRacka, on their debut feature “Talk to Me,” the tides began to shift. From a box office perspective, if we could summarize one major headline, it would be that it is unequivocally the year of the YouTuber. Although some time has passed, Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach’s independent adaptation of the video game “Iron Lung” was a success out of nowhere, taking a self-funded project fueled mostly through Fischbach’s popularity and turning it into a modest box office hit. If anything, this set the tone early in the year for the absolute double-hitter every movie-goer and industry insider is completely enraptured by so far this summer.
That’s where twenty-something wunderkinds Curry Barker and Kane Parsons come into the equation. These two YouTubers-turned-filmmakers are the architects behind some of the biggest success stories in theaters as this article is being written. Barker’s sophomore feature “Obsession” has taken the world by storm after spending half a year building the word of mouth for the horror indie after it was picked up by Focus Features, fresh off its premiere at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. The horror-comedy, which was made on a mere $750,000 budget, has quickly amassed over $100 million at the worldwide box office, even dethroning a brand-new “Star Wars” film as the number one film three weeks after its release.
Meanwhile, Parsons’ “Backrooms,” which is based on his online series about the famed liminal space of creepypasta nightmare fuel, was the roll of the dice that a distributor like A24 had hoped for when they first announced the project was in development. The studio, certainly, isn’t shy from funding horror films, let alone ones that fit an aesthetic certainly attributed to their releases. Who knew that giving the keys to a twenty-year-old filmmaker to work alongside one of the most brand-recognizable studios amongst younger audiences in a project that features Academy Award nominees Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve would pay off dividends? “Backrooms,” in its opening weekend alone, earned $ 118 million worldwide, paving the way for it to become the biggest opening of any film distributed by A24.
So what is it that has studio executives lining their wallets for talents like Barker or Parsons? Maybe it’s the illusion of risk, banking on novice filmmakers in exchange for securing a demographic locked in by the already established fandom of these creators’ previous works. In the horror genre, it’s rarely a zero-sum game, as studios, on an annual basis, acquire or fund low-budget horror flicks that usually make a decent profit. But the ones that truly break through past the zeitgeist, like “Obsession” and “Backrooms,” signify something more than just a good investment. They show new voices ready to be heard.
What Barker, Parsons, and hell even Fischbach have done is ultimately going to change the landscape of this business going forward. We hope studios aren’t single-mindedly trying to source talent that hits data points over what, at the end of the day, is a funding good project with a real vision behind it. It’s hard not to be cynical that this isn’t the beginning of another trend, but man, it’s nice to hope that a new crop of young filmmakers at the same time have enough juice to help remind people what it’s like when we give artists a chance.
What do you think? Is this the beginning of a natural pivot for the industry? Are the successes of “Obsession” and “Backrooms” opening the door for Hollywood to take more chances? Or will they learn the wrong lesson? Have you seen both films yet? If so, what did you think of them? Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account.
