There is a new renaissance in horror, you say? Excuse me while I roll over and go back to sleep.One can easily understand the cynicism. There’s always a renaissance in horror. The slasher movie in the 1970s. The self-referential vibe that began with Scream in the 1990s. The elevated horror – “elevated” is a word no film-maker enjoyed – exemplified by Hereditary in the 2010s. Appropriately enough, the genre is always rising from the grave in differently appalling bloodied garments.This time it really might be different. The extraordinary critical and box-office success of Curry Barker’s film Obsession – five stars from your soaraway Irish Times – cannot be easily dismissed. Kane Parsons’s Backrooms, opening this weekend, looks set to do almost as well with pundits and public. This comes on the back of buzzy hits by the likes of Mark Fischbach (aka Markiplier) and the incorrigible Philippou twins, from Australia. In an irony that most sensible satirists would reject as too on the nose, the kids from YouTube look set to become the saviours of theatrical exhibition.Made for less than $1 million, Obsession stars Michael Johnston as a young man who, in the spirit of WW Jacobs’s durable story The Monkey’s Paw, makes an irresponsible wish on a possessed geegaw. His old pal, played by a stunningly good Inde Navarrette, becomes, alas, more romantically obsessed than he had bargained for. Murderous jealousy ensues.[ Obsession: The best US horror film of the 2020s – starring a ringer for Paul MescalOpens in new window ]The film landed with a hugely impressive $17.2 million on its North American opening, eventually passing out Michael and The Devil Wears Prada 2 to top the daily box-office chart. The following weekend Obsession did something that is close to unprecedented: it made more than on debut. That $23.9 million (rising to $30.2 million over the Memorial Day holiday) marked a 39 per cent increase on the first weekend. For entertainment journalists, this is, to use an analogy from physics, as if some boffin had found an exception to the second law of thermodynamics. Maybe entropy does not always increase over time.“Obsession is the only wide-release horror film on record to grow in its second weekend at this scale,” Jason Blum, chief executive of Blumhouse, Obsession’s distributor, remarked. “This doesn’t happen in horror.” It almost never happens in any genre.Over the past decade or so the film industry has, at the blockbuster level, eaten itself alive in its compulsion to give the public only what the studio thinks that public already knows it wants. Hence the reliance on superheroes, musical biopics and legacy sequels. The building success of Obsession speaks to the old-fashioned power of strong reviews and stronger word of mouth. Backrooms, starring Renate Reinsve as a therapist searching for Chiwetel Ejiofor through eerily nested interiors, has been accumulating similarly frenetic buzz.If you need confirmation that Barker and Parsons have hit a chord you need only look at the wave of petty jealousy that has broken out on social media. Over the past week or so a conspiracy theory has grown that neither young man – Barker is 26, Parsons is 21 – could possibly have directed such accomplished movies without assistance from senior film-makers.The speculation got to such absurd heights that Mark Duplass, a star of Backrooms, felt the need to clarify. “I don’t remember seeing you on set,” he replied to a sceptical X post. “When I was there, Kane was 100% in control. More so than many directors 3x his age.” Hmmm, with all due respect I don't remember seeing you on set. When I was there, Kane was 100% in control. More so than many directors 3x his age. https://t.co/GXQsI5jxG0— Mark Duplass (@MarkDuplass) May 26, 2026