Summary: Every awards season produces a movie that forces Hollywood to reconsider its own rules and bias. This year that movie did not arrive from a fall festival or a boutique label. It came from a YouTuber. “Obsession,” the breakout horror sensation from writer-director Curry Barker, continues to do unprecedented business, posting $19 million in its […]
Every awards season produces a movie that forces Hollywood to reconsider its own rules and bias. This year that movie did not arrive from a fall festival or a boutique label. It came from a YouTuber.
“Obsession,” the breakout horror sensation from writer-director Curry Barker, continues to do unprecedented business, posting $19 million in its fifth weekend of release. The more remarkable detail is that the low-budget film has now strung together four consecutive weekends larger than its already-impressive $17 million debut, a trajectory almost unheard of in the modern theatrical era. “Obsession” has generated $265 million globally, making it the highest-grossing release of all time for Focus Features. And that figure reframes the entire conversation, especially where awards are concerned. The question is no longer whether audiences are obsessed with “Obsession.” It is whether the Academy will be too.
For years, the genre-distribution conversation has been dominated by a single brand. A24 turned the elevated genre film into a prestige category unto itself. “Obsession” is, in many ways, the most non-A24 movie of the modern era: A broad, commercial and unapologetic crowd-pleaser that is making the money specialty labels rarely see.
That is why it matters for Focus. The success of “Obsession” offers the studio a chance to redefine what the brand can be. The old specialty playbook treats awards contenders as something you acquire or manufacture, the so-called “Oscar bait” assembled from prestige ingredients. You can discover a talent inside a genre movie and then morph that genre movie into an awards contender.
And there is a recent and instructive blueprint for exactly that move — Jordan Peele’s “Get Out.”
In 2017, a first-time feature director (with strong ties to comedy) made a $4.5 million horror movie that the industry initially filed under genre. By the following spring it was nominated for best picture, director, lead actor for Daniel Kaluuya and original screenplay. Peele won the screenplay prize, beating the eventual best picture winner “The Shape of Water” and its chief rival “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” A horror movie did that.
“Get Out” proved the path from genre breakout to awards player exists. And if anything, Barker could find his way to the DGA first-time feature triumph that Peele, Bo Burnham and RaMell Ross have all enjoyed.
The timing could not be better. We’re fresh off the 98th Academy Awards, where horror took a deserved victory lap — walking away with eight wins, the most in horror’s history at a single ceremony. Ryan Coogler’s vampire epic “Sinners” led the field with 16 nominations, the most in Oscar shistory, breaking the mark of 14 once shared by “All About Eve,” “Titanic” and “La La Land,” and it converted four of them into wins. Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” followed with three, and the night’s first televised award went to Amy Madigan for her transformative turn as Aunt Gladys in “Weapons.”
Remember, just a few years ago, horror fans were lobbying for a single nomination. And social media was infuriated we couldn’t get the deserved recognition for worthy performers like Toni Collette in “Hereditary” or Lupita Nyong’o in “Us.”
Still, horror’s relationship with the Academy has always come with an asterisk. The genre’s winners have tended to be underdogs, outliers or one-offs, and many of the celebrated films are not “pure” horror at all.
Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” is an adventure blockbuster with horror in its bloodstream, made by one of the masters of cinema. “The Silence of the Lambs” is a procedural thriller with a handful of genuinely terrifying scenes, carried by an overdue narrative for Anthony Hopkins. Even “Sinners” is as much a historical drama as it is a vampire movie, with Coogler behind the camera.
And who could forget Demi Moore, whose best actress victory for the body horror “The Substance” felt all but preordained, comeback narrative and all, before the prize slipped away to Mikey Madison on Oscar night?
Horror still tends to need a stamp of prestige to be taken seriously. It needs an auteur, a seasoned actor, a staggering box office or a blend of genres. That calculus might be slowly shifting, but it has not disappeared.
But this is where “Obsession” gets interesting. It checks more of those boxes than its origins suggest. The film plays like a blend of “Get Out,” “Smile” and the 1993 thriller “The Crush,” with a splash of the 1992 obsessive film “Single White Female.” A loving throwback to the glossy, mean-spirited horror/thrillers of the ’90s. But more importantly, it has a director’s story (aka awards narrative) tailor-made for a campaign.
Should “Obsession” land a best director nomination, Barker would etch his name into the record books, sitting in the company of the youngest directors ever recognized in the category — behind only John Singleton, who was 24 years and 44 days old for 1991’s “Boyz n the Hood,” and Orson Welles, 26 years and 279 days old for “Citizen Kane” in 1941. By nomination morning, Barker would be 27, a YouTube creator within striking distance of a company most film school graduates only dream about.