“Thinking outside the box” is a phrase that tends to be used by those who are stuck inside the box. It means something real, but it’s also corporate-speak for having an actual imagination — the audacity to make something that wasn’t commanded or formatted. Given that, this is sure to go down as the weekend when thinking outside the box started to look sexy in Hollywood again.
The makers of comic-book movies, “Star Wars” movies and most rom-coms and horror films live inside the box. But not the creators of “Backrooms” and “Obsession,” two horror movies that take you places you’ve never been. Evidently, a lot of people want to go there. “Backrooms,” an experimental head-game creep-out (at moments it’s a bit like “The Blair Witch Project,” though 10 times weirder), is set to make $85 million this weekend; that number is insane. And “Obsession,” after opening May 15 with a $17 million weekend, went up its second weekend (to $24 million); that’s insane too. (It defies the laws the box-office gravity.)
Much will be said about the vast Internet followings that are swirling around the young directors of both these films, Kane Parsons (“Backrooms”) and Curry Barker (“Obsession”). That’s part of the week’s Big Capitalist Lesson: that when it comes to finding “hot” filmmakers, YouTube is the new Sundance, or the new MTV, or the new whatever. And much will be said about how the aesthetic of “Backrooms” pours right out of the structural/atmospheric DNA of the web. (That’s less true of “Obsession.”) But if Hollywood really wants to take a lesson from the shocking success of these two movies, the message should be much larger than “Hip filmmakers with devoted web followings sell!”
