(2026-06-04) If You Film It They Will Come Youtubers Behind Backrooms And Obsession Show How To Get Gen Z To The Movies

If you film it, they will come. YouTubers behind Backrooms and Obsession movie show how to get Gen Z to the movies. Kane Parsons, 20, and Curry Barker, 26, the directors behind Backrooms and Obsession who both built their audiences on YouTube, have become two of the youngest filmmakers to have movies top the box office.

Not only are these movies made by hot, young directors, but the audiences are also young, with many following the directors from their respective YouTube channels — something industry watchers suggest could shape what kind of projects get the green light in the future.

their YouTube backgrounds could be a major factor behind their success.

Backrooms began as a viral 22-video found-footage YouTube series that has since amassed over 25 million views and quickly developed a cult following.

Parsons told The Independent that his "world on YouTube, the whole landscape that I've grown up with, has necessitated an extreme attention to detail since the beginning."

Barker, whose comedy sketches have been a YouTube fixture, has also dipped into the horror pool before Obsession. He released the feature-length horror film Milk & Serial entirely on YouTube in 2024.

Marlow Stern, chief correspondent at Variety, says horror is a genre that lends itself to innovation because it can have a low budget entry point. (what other genres offer this?)

*Stern says studios can't afford to ignore new pipelines for films with built-in fan bases.

"YouTubers have a hold on their audience," she said. "These people have been consuming their content every day, sometimes for years."*

As a kid, Kane Parsons liked to 3D animate YouTube short films. When he stumbled upon a creepy image online called The Backrooms, it inspired him to create a short film about this spooky, liminal space in a vacant furniture store. His short caught the attention of A24, who hired Kane to direct the feature film, Backrooms, about this strange space

Obsession was filmed on a budget of just $750,000, while Backrooms had a budget of $10 million.

According to exit polls reported by The Associated Press, 86 per cent of the Backrooms audience was under 35, more than half were 25 or younger and 44 per cent were under 21. With Obsession, 75 per cent were between 18 and 25.

In some ways, the conditions resulting in Gen Z audiences showing up en masse for these releases are mimicking those that led to the New Hollywood era of filmmaking.
In the late 1960s, the old studio system was declining as it produced increasingly expensive flops, and young directors like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola were given unprecedented creative freedom, resulting in original movies made with a gritty realism that helped revive the film industry.

"Younger moviegoers are the ones that are seen as being able to drive the box office," he said, noting that franchises like Star Wars and the Marvel movies with huge budgets and big stars attached are no longer resonating with younger audiences.