Mark Duplass: ‘Obsession’ & ‘Backrooms’ Wins Offer ‘Glimmer Of Hope’

Backrooms star Mark Duplass sees the overwhelming box office successes of horror entries Obsession and Backrooms as a beacon for a struggling industry.

“I just want to take a moment to celebrate the glimmer of hope that Obsession and Backrooms are bringing to our industry,” he said in a video posted to X. “And I don’t want to overstate it. I know how complicated and dire things can be. But this is cool.”

The Emmy-winning actor continued, “We now know we have the democratized access to technology. We’ve been wondering where to put these things because the distribution system is so fractured. But we’ve got an example of creators woodshedding things, putting them online, building an audience, and now the people with the purse strings are going to notice probably a little bit sooner because they see what they can do at the box office in the form of these two films that are over-performing.”

“So it helps to double down on what I’ve always believed in, which is we should be woodshedding at home with our friends,” Duplass concluded. “We should be using the tools that we have available to us, our iPhones and Blender and swing the sword that’s in your hand, make your stuff and when it’s really good, start putting it out there. And there’s a path.”

The 20-year-old Kane Parsons and 26-year-old Curry Barker, helmers of Backrooms and Obsession, respectively, both got their start on YouTube, using accessible tools such as the free and open-source 3D computer graphics software suite Blender to bring their projects to life. (Blender was used to produce the 2024 Academy Award-winning film Flow.)

Since then, the former has broken a handful of records for A24, becoming its youngest filmmaker and logging the indie distributor/production company’s biggest ever opening weekend with $118 million worldwide at the box office. Obsession, in its third release week, is Focus Features’ highest grossing movie stateside with $104.7 million, and one of its highest grossing with $148 million globally. In a rare box office feat, the pic — made for under $1 million — also logged a 39% increase in box office returns during its second weekend.

The two currently hold the top box office spots this weekend, beating out big budget films like Disney’s Mandalorian and Grogu and Lionsgate’s Michael.

Duplass’ comments come after the actor defended Parsons against false claims and rumors that the film was “ghost-directed” by a more experienced figure. For his part, the fresh-faced director joked: “This is actually all true. They don’t tell you this, but 96% of all movies released in North America and Europe are actually directed by the same person. They call him ‘The Older Gentleman.’ He has had all of Hollywood in a chokehold for decades now. They make you sign over all of your intellectual property, life rights, and genetic information to him when you enter the industry. He loves movies.”

As the industry continues to buzz with excitement over the horror genre’s continued dominance in theaters, heavyweight producers James Wan (who produced Backrooms) and Jason Blum (who executive produced Obsession) weighed in on the successes earlier this weekend during a conversation at the Produced by Conference. Blum expressed the belief that we’re in a “really f*cking exciting” moment for movies, adding that both projects “are edgy and weird and f*cking nuts, and to me, there’s almost this feeling of the ’70s, of this new generation of young people who are making edgy movies that are connecting in theaters in a crazy way.”

Warner Bros. Motion Picture Co-Chair Michael De Luca also weighed in during his panel yesterday, taking a moment to praise the filmmakers for capturing the zeitgeist. “They hone their craft online. Kane worked on Backrooms for five years. These filmmakers are in a dialogue with their audience from the word ‘Go’. Their subscribers have direct input in each iteration of these things.”

Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve and Avan Jogia, Backrooms is an IP-based project inspired by a creepypasta of a liminal space that went viral as Reddit and 4chan users developed lore around the neverending complex’s impossibly large, vacant rooms. Parsons published a web series of found-footage short films based on the concept in early 2022, using it as the jumping off point for the new film adaptation, in which a furniture store owner and his therapist uncover a dimension of endless spaces accessed via the basement.

Meanwhile, Obsession, an original pic written by Barker, traces the disturbing fallout of Bear’s (Michael Johnston) ill-advised wish to have his crush (Inde Navarrette’s Nikki) love him more than anyone else in the world.