There was a time when the movie star sold the movie. A Tom Cruise movie. A Julia Roberts movie. A Will Smith movie. Denzel, Schwarzenegger, Paul Newman. The face was the promise. You didn’t always need to know the premise. You didn’t need to understand the genre. You didn’t need a cinematic universe, a post-credit scene, or a lore Bible. You had the star, and the star told you what kind of experience you were buying.
Then the logo took over. Marvel became the star. Star Wars became the star. Jurassic, Harry Potter, DC. The IP became the movie star. Hollywood didn’t stop believing in stars. It changed what counted as a star.
And for a while, that made sense. If audiences weren’t automatically showing up because of a face, maybe they’d show up because of a world, a franchise, a thing they already knew, a thing that had already been sold to them.
But right now, I think we may be watching that system hit the same wall. Because when Star Wars, a franchise that used to rearrange culture around itself, has to fight for relevance in the same marketplace where a 20-year-old filmmaker can turn a yellow hallway into an $80 million domestic opening, something has changed. And when Obsession, a tiny horror film built on one poisonous wish, can grow through word of mouth while bigger studio machines struggle to feel alive, those aren’t just cute genre success stories. That’s evidence. Maybe not a final verdict, but evidence.
So today we’re not doing a traditional analysis. We’re looking at a shift. A strange one, a big one, and maybe one Hollywood should have seen coming. The movie star used to sell trust. Then the logo sold trust. And now the market may be looking for something else: demonstrated effect. What does the movie do to people? Does it scare them? Does it disturb them? Does it make them argue? Does it make them drag someone else to the theater? Does it create the feeling that something is happening and they need to be a part of it?
That’s the thing I want to work out. Because right now, The Backrooms and Obsession are doing something a lot of expensive franchise filmmaking is struggling to do. They feel necessary. And Star Wars, which once defined cinematic necessity, now has to fight for it.
That’s not a small thing.
When Star Wars Cleared the Room
Star Wars used to clear the room. It didn’t just open in theaters. It rearranged the culture around itself. When a new Star Wars movie showed up, the question wasn’t whether people would notice. Of course they noticed. The question was how big it would be, how dominant it would be, how much of the conversation it would swallow.
That was cultural authority. And I’m not talking about quality. I’m talking about gravity. Star Wars had gravity.
Now, Star Wars still has recognition. Of course it does. It may have more recognition than almost any franchise on Earth. But recognition is not the same as relevance, and relevance is not the same as authority. That’s the gap we’re living in.
People know Star Wars. People debate Star Wars. People buy Star Wars. People love Star Wars. People hate Star Wars. But does a new Star Wars movie still make the average person feel like they have to be there?
That used to be automatic. Now it’s a question.
The Safety Math
This isn’t just an abstract shift in box office. It’s a calculation embedded into the walls of the studio system. For roughly the last 20 years, Hollywood has treated known IP like a safety device. Known IP lowered risk. That was the math. If the audience already knows the title, lower risk. If the audience already knows the character, lower risk. If the audience already bought the toy, read the book, played the game, watched the show, saw the original, or grew up with the logo: lower risk.
That thinking didn’t come from nowhere. When budgets balloon, marketing gets expensive, theatrical windows shrink, and global box office becomes more important, uncertainty becomes terrifying. So Hollywood tried to buy certainty. And for years, known IP looked like certainty.
I understand that impulse more than I wish I did, because I’ve been on the other side of that door. Years ago, and if you’re new to the channel you may not have heard this story, I had an original fantasy script move through the Warner Brothers ladder. Not in some vague, Hollywood-almost-called-me way. It went up the chain, assistant to assistant to assistant, until it reached the desk of the president of Warner Brothers. And the response was the kind of compliment that punches you in the gut: this is wonderful, maybe even great, but we only invest in known IP.
That was the answer. Not “the script didn’t work.” Not “the characters aren’t there.” Not “the world isn’t interesting.” Not “you’re not good enough.” I feel like any of those would have been something. It was: this may work, but it isn’t pre-sold.
At the time, as much as that hurt, I understood it. That was the business. That was the safety model. A story could be wonderful and still be risky because it didn’t arrive with a built-in identity. That’s what known IP became. Identity in advance. Permission in advance. The thing that told the studio, don’t worry, somebody already cares.
But now I’m looking at this box office moment, and I have to ask a question Hollywood probably doesn’t want to answer. What if that math changed? What if recognition doesn’t reduce risk the way it used to? What if the old safety model became unsafe because it trained studios to confuse recognition with proof of life?
That’s the phrase that matters to me. Proof of life. A movie can be polished and still feel dead. A movie can be expensive and still feel dead. A movie can be attached to one of the biggest brands in the world and still feel like it’s trying to justify its own existence. And a movie made for almost nothing can feel alive because it has an effect.
And that is where The Backrooms and Obsession enter the conversation. Not because they prove horror is the future. Not because they prove YouTube is replacing Hollywood. Because they prove effect. The Backrooms proved dread. Obsession proved discomfort. Those are not small things.
The Backrooms: Filmmaking, Not Lore
Kane Parsons didn’t just bring a meme to theaters. I think that’s the shallow read. The Backrooms as an internet concept is useful. It gives the movie a starting point, a language, an audience that already understands the basic dread of liminal space. But a concept is not a movie. A meme is not a movie. A recognizable idea is not a movie. The movie still has to do something.
And The Backrooms does something. It brings you into the room.
That sounds simple, but it isn’t. The opening stretch understands cinema at the level of sensation. It doesn’t rush to explain itself. It doesn’t panic and start dumping mythology into our lap. It lets the space speak for itself first. You’re in a yellowish, unremarkable room, then another, then another, then another. The room is boring, but the boredom becomes threatening. The geometry becomes emotional. The repetition is pressure. And the lack of explanation ultimately becomes the hook.
That’s filmmaking, not lore. Parsons understands that the camera can ask a question before the script answers one. He understands that a hallway can be a character, that spaces can have psychology, and that the audience doesn’t always need to know more. Sometimes they need to feel more. It’s not scary because someone explains the Backrooms. It’s scary because the movie gives you enough structure to believe the nightmare has rules, then refuses to give you the comfort of mastering them.
That’s a very different kind of authority than Star Wars has been leaning on. Star Wars asks you to care because you recognize the universe. The Backrooms makes you care because you’re trapped in the effect.
Now, the movie is not perfect beyond discussion. The interesting movies never are. One of the things I keep thinking about is Chiwetel Ejiofor. I think he’s absolutely tremendous in the film. His voice, his emotional control, his physicality, his ability to make collapse feel internal and visible at the same time, all of that is remarkable. But there’s a version of this movie where he’s almost more actor than the movie needed. I don’t mean that as a criticism of him. I mean it as a production question. His presence helps the movie. He gives it weight, legitimacy, something for A24 to sell. He gives older viewers and skeptical viewers a reason to treat the Backrooms movie like a real film and not just a YouTube adaptation that got out of hand. That’s significant. But there’s also a version of The Backrooms with an unknown or early-career actor where the nightmare feels less safely contained by prestige. Maybe not better, but stranger. Less anchored. Less protected.
That tension is useful, because it shows that the new model is not purely replacing the old one. The Backrooms still needed Hollywood machinery. It needed financing, distribution, actors, sets, infrastructure. It needed A24. And pay attention, A24 matters here, because A24 is not just a distributor anymore. It’s a taste signal. A tastemaker. It’s not IP in the traditional sense, but it does tell a certain kind of audience: pay attention, this strange thing has been curated for you.
That complicates the story in a useful way. The Backrooms is not just effect beating IP. It’s an internet-proven effect plus A24’s taste authority beating inherited franchise authority. The machine helped scale the room. Parsons made the room matter. That’s the distinction. So the story isn’t filmmakers versus Hollywood. The better story is that Hollywood may need to learn how to support demonstrated effect without sanding it down. Because The Backrooms works because Kane Parsons is still visible in the final object. You can feel the creator. You can feel the obsession. You can feel the very specific nightmare. That’s the point.
Obsession: One Poisonous Wish
And then there’s Obsession, which matters for a very different reason.
The Backrooms has a mythology. It has lore, an internet-native concept people can recognize and search and explain and decode. Obsession doesn’t need that. Obsession is built on one very poisonous idea: a man wishes for the woman he loves to love him more than anyone else. That’s the pitch. That’s the movie.
And that simplicity is why it travels. You hear the premise once and you understand the danger, because the premise isn’t really about magic. It’s about entitlement. It’s about possession pretending to be romance. It’s about the fantasy of being chosen without consent. It’s about wanting love without becoming someone capable of receiving it. That’s not a lore hook. That’s a moral infection.
Barker understands the value of that. The movie doesn’t need to build a giant mythology. It needs to keep turning the screw. It needs to make the wish feel less like a supernatural device and more like the ugliest version of a familiar human impulse. That’s where its craft lives. Not in scale. In pressure.
Obsession has to make the audience understand the desire before it can condemn it. If the wisher is only a monster from frame one, the movie is easier, cleaner, safer. The more dangerous version is the one where you recognize the loneliness first. The rejection, the humiliation, the fantasy that if someone could just see you correctly, everything would change. Then the movie makes you sit with the cost of that fantasy. That’s discomfort as structure. The effect is not just “this premise is messed up.” The effect is the slow realization that the wish worked exactly the way it was supposed to. The horror is not that love got corrupted. The horror is that it was never love.
That’s why Obsession is important to this argument. It proves this isn’t just about internet lore becoming new IP. If The Backrooms were the only example, the conclusion might be “Hollywood needs more internet-native mythology,” and that would be the wrong lesson. I’ve already heard a ton of arguments about what’s the next creepypasta thing to bring to the movies. Obsession says something way sharper: the next source of theatrical urgency does not have to be a giant world. It can be a clean premise with a dangerous effect.
That’s what these two movies share. Not platform. Not mythology. Effect. The Backrooms creates the effect of discovery. Obsession creates the effect of danger. And both movies make audiences do the thing Hollywood wants most: they make people tell someone else, “You need to see this.” That is the oldest and most powerful marketing tool in movies. Not awareness. Urgency. Someone else has to see it because the experience wants to spread.
That’s what the movie star used to do. That’s what IP used to do. Now the effect is doing it.
Star Wars Was Never a Safe Bet
And that brings us back to Star Wars. Because Star Wars used to be the greatest effect machine in modern cinema. Before it was IP, it was discovery.
That gets lost now, because Star Wars has been famous for so long that people forgot how strange it was. Star Wars was not born as a safe bet. It was weird. It was a gamble. It was space opera, samurai influence, old adventure serials, mysticism, religion, politics, puppets, monsters, dogfights, a farm boy, a princess, a smuggler, a dark knight, a wizard, and a spiritual force bending the universe together. That was not a spreadsheet. That was an act of imagination.
Star Wars became known IP because it was once unknown IP that worked.
That should haunt the industry. Because Hollywood keeps worshipping the results while starving the process that created them. Every franchise was once a risk. Every iconic character was once unfamiliar. Every mythology was once something that could have sounded ridiculous in the wrong meeting. A shark terrorizing a beach town. A kid hiding an alien in his house. An archaeologist with a whip chasing biblical artifacts. A cyborg assassin traveling through time. A theme park full of cloned dinosaurs. A ghost-catching business in New York. These things were not born safe. They became safe because somebody took the unsafe bet first.
That is the contradiction. Hollywood wants the next Star Wars but often refuses the conditions that create one. And when a franchise like Star Wars begins to feel optional, that contradiction becomes impossible to ignore.
Why It Feels Optional
So why does it feel optional? It isn’t one thing. People are going to argue politics. Fine. People argue fan toxicity. Okay. People are going to argue sequel trilogy damage, Disney-era management, streaming, inconsistent creative direction, nostalgia fatigue, canon confusion. All of that belongs on the board, I guess. But those are branches. I think the root is simpler.
The franchise lost necessity.
It still has recognition. It still has scale. It still has iconography. It still has money behind it. It still has one of the most valuable libraries of images, sounds, costumes, ships, planets, and characters in cinema. But too much of the modern franchise machine feels like it’s preserving value instead of creating effect.
And that’s a production problem as much as a brand problem. A familiar ship gives recognition (just ask Star Trek), but it can also shrink discovery. A legacy character gives instant emotion, but it can also prevent true risk. A canon connection rewards the invested, but it can also make the movie feel like administration. A global franchise tone keeps the product legible, but it can also sand down danger. A streaming pipeline keeps the brand active, but it can drain theatrical urgency.
When every choice has to protect canon flexibility, merchandise potential, streaming capability, global legibility, nostalgia management, backlash avoidance, and future franchise options, the movie starts carrying too much armor. And armor is not the same as life.
That is what smaller films can sometimes do better. They can risk shape. They can risk silence. They can risk ugliness. They can risk alienating people. They can risk not explaining. And they can risk being very specific. The Backrooms can let you sit in a room that makes no sense. Obsession can make a wish feel morally disgusting. Star Wars should be able to take risks too. It once did.
And that might be the real death of IP filmmaking. Not that IP stops making money. The movie star didn’t stop making money either. The movie star lost automatic authority. That’s the distinction. Tom Cruise can still open a movie. Star Wars can still open. Marvel can still open. Jurassic can still open. DC absolutely can still open. But known IP no longer guarantees the culture will move.
Demonstrated Effect
If that’s true, Hollywood is facing a problem its old language can’t solve. Because the question is no longer “what does the audience recognize?” The question is “what does the audience feel compelled to experience?”
That is a harder question. You can’t answer it with a logo. You can’t answer it with a release calendar. You can’t answer it by strip-mining nostalgia. You answer it with demonstrated effect. Show me the filmmaker can make people feel something. Show me the premise spreads. Show me the audience leans forward. Show me the work has proof of life.
That’s what YouTube contributed here. Not replacement. Proof. If this were just about YouTube, every viral creator would have a hit movie. They don’t. If it were just about internet fame, the box office would be full of creator-led theatrical events. It isn’t. So what did Parsons and Barker prove? They proved effect. They proved they could make audiences respond before the studio arrived.
That’s not the same as having followers. That’s not the same as being popular. It’s closer to apprenticeship. They practiced in public. They built a language. They received feedback. They refined timing. They learned when to withhold and when to strike. They didn’t wait for permission to become filmmakers. They made things until the permission became hard to withhold.
And that part matters, at least to me. Because I remember what it felt like to wait at the gate. I remember having a story good enough to make the climb but not branded enough to survive the final answer. I’m not pretending The Backrooms and Obsession mean the gates are open or that the gates are gone. They aren’t. Money still matters. Access still matters. Distribution definitely matters. Marketing still matters. A24 has made themselves matter enormously in this industry right now. Focus, casting, timing, all of those things are important. Heck, luck matters.
But the wall is different. I think that’s what reinspires me. Not because the path is easy, but because the first proof might not have to come from the studio anymore. Maybe the first proof comes from making the thing. Maybe the first proof comes from the audience. Maybe the first proof comes from a short, a scene, a concept, a channel, a test, a cheap version, a personal version, a version nobody asked for.
That’s not romantic nonsense. That’s work. And it’s also a challenge. Because if the tools exist, then the question gets uncomfortable. What are you making? Not what are you pitching. Not what are you waiting for. Not what would you do if someone finally said yes. What are you making?
I think that’s the part I can’t get away from. And maybe that’s why this moment feels bigger than box office. It’s not just that The Backrooms made money. It’s not just that Obsession made money. It’s that they make the old excuse sound weaker. The industry told generations of filmmakers that the unknown thing was too risky. Now the known thing may be risky too. Recognition may get you noticed, but it won’t automatically make you necessary. That has to be earned.
Star Wars is being forced to earn it again. Hollywood is being forced to earn it again. And filmmakers are being forced to earn it too. That’s good. Painful, but good.
Because the movie star era gave us icons. The IP era gave us whole universes. Whatever comes next has to give us effect. A reason to sit in the dark. A reason to leave the house. A reason to tell someone else, “You need to see this.”
That’s what The Backrooms did. That’s what Obsession did. That’s what Star Wars used to do at a level almost nothing else could touch. And maybe it can again. But not because the name is Star Wars. Because the effect is Star Wars. The name isn’t enough. Not anymore. The logo definitely is not enough, and even the IP is not enough. The movie has to make the room move.
If Hollywood wants to survive the next era, it needs to stop asking only what the audience already recognizes. It needs to ask what the audience can still discover. Because sometimes the future of movies doesn’t arrive as the biggest brand in the world. Sometimes it arrives as a strange yellow wall. Sometimes it arrives as a nasty little wish. And sometimes the most important thing happening in the room is the thing Hollywood almost didn’t let in.
And just so nobody has to ask: yes, I did love the movies. Obsession is sitting around an 8 for me, and The Backrooms is closer to a 9. But that’s not really the point of this one. The point is what they reveal.
So there you go. Now you know it. Knowledge is half the battle, and you’re halfway to being a know-it-all yourself.
Your turn. What did you think of either movie? Or better yet, what do you think Hollywood’s takeaway is going to be from all of this? The conversation lives in the comments on the video above. And never forget: everyone loves a know-it-all.
