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Curry Barker’s ‘Obsession’ turns a modest horror debut into a global box-office breakout driven by strong word of mouth among young audiences
Low-cost horror movie Obsession from first-time director Curry Barker is on track to become one of the most profitable films of all time, with global revenues surpassing $400 million.
After premiering at the Toronto Film Festival last year and opening in May, the film became a word-of-mouth hit over the past two months, particularly among Gen Z horror fans.
Its success has catapulted the 26-year-old Barker from YouTube creator to Hollywood filmmaker with a debut feature that cost just $750,000 to $1 million.
“In terms of the ratio between the worldwide box office and the production budget, Obsession is going to be the biggest success of all time,” Bruce Nash, founder of industry-tracking website The Numbers, told AFP.
With about $430 million in ticket sales worldwide, it has already overtaken the 1999 horror hit The Blair Witch Project, which earned around $250 million on a $600,000 budget, according to Nash.
While blockbusters such as Avatar, Frozen, and Titanic made more money overall, they were produced with budgets hundreds of times larger.
The Alabama-born director’s breakout has also eclipsed another horror success this year, Backrooms by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, which has grossed $360 million on a roughly $10 million budget.
Both films rank among the 10 highest-grossing releases of 2026, signaling strong demand for horror and a growing pipeline of social media creators entering filmmaking.
“They’re very encouraging for the future of cinema,” Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan told AFP and other entertainment journalists in Paris.
Before his breakthrough, Barker worked at Starbucks, flipped burgers, and took film industry jobs while creating comedy sketches and horror shorts online with collaborator Cooper Tomlinson.
Obsession follows a young man who uses a magical charm called the “One Wish Willow” to make his longtime crush fall in love with him, unleashing violent and disturbing consequences.
The film became a windfall for Focus Features, which acquired distribution rights for $15 million after its Toronto premiere.
Barker is now developing a second feature, Anything But Ghosts, alongside Tomlinson and has also been tapped to direct a new version of the 1974 slasher classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
“I have a lot to weigh and that’s where the stress really comes from. I don’t know what to do next,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
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