Focus Features has officially kicked off summertime horror with Obsession (read our review), the first big horror movie of the year, setting off a string of genre films coming out over the next few months. Summer used to be dedicated to blockbusters, but now we get horror films that studios actually believe in.
As many of you older readers know, August, September, January, and February used to be considered “dump months,” where studios would unload horror films they didn’t believe in, with lesser marketing spends and less risk, just to get them off the books and move on. We horror fans always felt irritated by this because, a lot of the time, those movies were pretty good. We enjoyed them, they performed really well, and we’d ask: why? Why didn’t you take a chance on this and give it a wider audience? Why throw it out when kids are back in school? We could never understand it.
Anyways, things have changed over the past few years, and here we are with the first big movie of the summer: Obsession. And Curry Barker’s Obsession is kind of a big deal.
As much as I’d love to talk about Backrooms right now, Obsession is the movie we’re going to be talking about next January and February when Oscar season comes around. This is our new Hereditary.
But I want to digress for a moment. Hereditary was extremely divisive. It’s a slow-burn arthouse horror film, and it did not connect with a lot of the horror audience, and that’s totally fine. I get it. But Toni Collette’s performance was Oscar-worthy, and to this day it’s still bullshit that she wasn’t even nominated. I didn’t expect her to win, but I wanted to see her there. I wanted to see Hereditary up on that screen, and it still pisses me off.
Now, Indie Navarrette‘s performance in Obsession already feels like the kind of performance that should be in the Oscar conversation next year.
Before we get that far ahead of ourselves, Obsession is what Hereditary wasn’t: a unifying horror movie. It’s a film that everyone seems to be enjoying, and it’s anything but divisive. It’s not even the safe thriller the trailers might suggest in order to get people into seats. It is the extreme, full-blown horror version of The Monkey’s Paw, which has been adapted into films and TV and referenced in shows and comics for over 50 years.
It’s one of the best stories ever told, yet nobody has really connected with it the same way that Barker did here with Obsession. Maybe that’s because he has this comedic undertone to everything, sort of like Radio Silence and the way they approach their movies and screenplays.
Obsession is more universal. It’s accessible. It had audiences howling, laughing, gasping, and cheering in ways I haven’t seen in a very long time, and it sticks with you for a very long time after it’s over.
I think it’s a forever film. An instant classic. A movie you watch over and over again. I think it’s going to crush on streaming, and people are going to be talking about it all the way through next year. It’s going to make everybody’s Top 10 list for sure.
Now to the box office: Focus Features has really been crushing it lately, but the marketing campaign for Obsession has been phenomenal, and they were rewarded with the movie opening to an estimated $16.1M, which is wonderful considering the payday they spent on the film after stealing it out of Sundance in a huge bidding war between A24, Neon, and everybody else who wanted to get their hands on it.
At $16.1M with strong word of mouth, there’s no way this movie doesn’t end its domestic run somewhere in the $40M-$50M range, which is incredible for an independent feature coming out of a film festival.
It’s also the film that announces Curry Barker to the world, because he’s going to be a tour de force. He’s our new guy. This feels like the passing of the baton. The new guard is here, and the old heads are moving on to bigger and better things.
This is also a great start for horror and for the summer. There’s a lot of great stuff coming, and we’re not even talking about October yet, where we’re finally going to get Resident Evil and all sorts of other shit.
Horror fans have been waiting for a movie like Obsession for a very long time, and now that it’s here, there’s no putting that genie back in the bottle.
In Barker‘s film, after breaking the mysterious “One Wish Willow” to win his crush’s heart, a hopeless romantic (Michael Johnston) finds himself getting exactly what he asked for but soon discovers that some desires come at a dark, sinister price.
Categorized:Box Office News