A 26-year-old YouTuber has produced one of the most profitable films in cinema history after his debut horror movie — made for just $750,000 in 20 days — has grossed more than $79.7 million worldwide in just two weekends, making it one of the highest-returning independent productions ever made.
Curry Barker, who built his audience on YouTube before turning filmmaker, directed Obsession, which has defied almost every convention of modern horror filmmaking on its way to becoming the most talked-about film of the year. According to BoxOfficeMojo’s IMDb Pro data, the film has already earned more than 100 times its production budget, and it achieved something that industry veterans say virtually never happens — it made more money in its second weekend than its first.
The film earned $17.2 million from 2,615 theatres on opening weekend before climbing to $22.4 million in week two — a 30 per cent increase that stunned even seasoned industry figures. Jason Blum, the executive producer behind the Blumhouse horror empire, was among those left astonished. “Obsession is the ONLY wide-release horror film on record to grow in its second weekend at this scale,” he wrote on X. “This doesn’t happen in horror.”
The film follows hopeless romantic Bear, played by Michael Johnston of Teen Wolf fame, who uses a supernatural toy called a One Wish Willow to make his childhood friend Nikki — played by Inde Navarrette of Superman & Lois — fall in love with him, only to discover the wish comes with a sinister price. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2025 before landing in cinemas this month to extraordinary audience response.
Audience reaction has been uniformly effusive. “Obsession lived up to the hype — one of the best horror flicks I’ve ever seen,” wrote one viewer on social media. Another said it was “borderline traumatic but absolutely phenomenal,” while a third declared it the best horror film since Hereditary. On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a 95 per cent Tomatometer score from critics and a 94 per cent audience score — the highest-rated film of the year on the platform. CinemaScore exit polls gave it an A-minus grade, placing it among only six horror films to achieve that rating since 2019.
Paul Dergarabedian, a box office analyst who spoke to Variety, said the result reflected a broader truth about quality horror. “We used to say that horror movies would open on Friday and die on Saturday. A lot of prior horror movies were terrible. People would see them, realise they were awful and never go back.” The success of Obsession, he said, was a clear sign that audiences were responding to genuine quality.
Distributor Focus Features amplified the film’s pre-release momentum through an inventive marketing campaign — buying television advertising for the fictional One Wish Willow product, which sold out within hours, and placing cryptic billboards across Los Angeles and New York featuring the character Nikki’s obsessive texts and a phone number. The unusual approach helped drive audience curiosity well beyond opening weekend, with the film topping the North American box office every single day of its second week, including $3.6 million on a Tuesday — a figure that would embarrass many studio tentpoles.
Three-quarters of the film’s audience are aged between 18 and 25, according to PostTrak, underlining the growing influence of younger viewers in revitalising the horror genre.
Barker’s success follows a similar breakthrough earlier this year by fellow YouTuber Markiplier, whose horror film Iron Lung earned $50 million from a $3 million budget. Hollywood has now moved decisively to back Barker’s next projects. A24 has signed him to helm a reimagining of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and a second original film, Anything But Ghosts, is already in development. “The opportunities that I have right now are pretty insane,” Barker told Variety. “But I’m just trying to keep my head down and focus on what’s important to me.”
