A 26-year-old YouTuber-turned-filmmaker shot his debut horror film ‘Obsession’ in 20 days on a budget of $750,000, and two weekends into its theatrical run, the film is on track to gross $79.7 million at the global box office.
According to Box Office Mojo, of the projected total, $58.5 million came from North American theaters and the numbers caught even seasoned industry veterans off guard.
Horror producer Jason Blum, who served as executive producer on the film, wrote on X that Obsession is the only wide-release horror film on record to grow in its second weekend at this scale, pulling in $22.4 million, up 30 percent over its opening weekend.
“This doesn’t happen in horror,” Blum wrote.
Before Obsession debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September 2025, Barker was known on YouTube for projects like ‘Milk and Serial’ – a thriller following a duo of YouTube pranksters.
After the festival screening, studios entered a bidding war for the film, with Focus Features ultimately acquiring it for $15 million.
“When we made Obsession, we had no idea what was going to happen,” Barker said in an interview. “It was insane when we even just got into TIFF.”
The film, starring Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette, is a romance-horror built around the idea of being careful about what or who you wish for. On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a 95% critic score and a 94% audience score.
Obsession is part of a broader shift in Hollywood, where YouTube creators are increasingly breaking into mainstream cinema.
Barker credited YouTube for changing how filmmakers think about distribution. “We’re finally getting to the point where people are like, ‘Okay, fine, I’ll put my film on YouTube’,” he said.
“When I was in film school, that was kind of like a last resort,” he added.
With Obsession still running in theaters, Barker already has another film in the works titled ‘Anything but Ghosts’, and A24 has tapped him to direct a reimagining of ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’.
“The opportunities that I have right now are pretty insane,” he said. “But I’m just trying to keep my head down and focus on what’s important to me.”
