“Thinking outside the box” is a phrase that tends to be used by those who are stuck inside the box. It means something real, but it’s also corporate-speak for having an actual imagination — the audacity to make something that wasn’t commanded or formatted. Given that, this is sure to go down as the weekend when thinking outside the box started to look sexy in Hollywood again.
The makers of comic-book movies, “Star Wars” movies and most rom-coms and horror films live inside the box. But not the creators of “Backrooms” and “Obsession,” two horror movies that take you places you’ve never been. Evidently, a lot of people want to go there. “Backrooms,” an experimental head-game creep-out (at moments it’s a bit like “The Blair Witch Project,” though 10 times weirder), is set to make $85 million this weekend; that number is insane. And “Obsession,” after opening May 15 with a $17 million weekend, went up its second weekend (to $24 million); that’s insane too. (It defies the laws the box-office gravity.)
Much will be said about the vast Internet followings that are swirling around the young directors of both these films, Kane Parsons (“Backrooms”) and Curry Barker (“Obsession”). That’s part of the week’s Big Capitalist Lesson: that when it comes to finding “hot” filmmakers, YouTube is the new Sundance, or the new MTV, or the new whatever. And much will be said about how the aesthetic of “Backrooms” pours right out of the structural/atmospheric DNA of the web. (That’s less true of “Obsession.”) But if Hollywood really wants to take a lesson from the shocking success of these two movies, the message should be much larger than “Hip filmmakers with devoted web followings sell!”
The message should be: There’s a way to solve the problem bedeviling the movie industry. How? By thinking outside the box. Which doesn’t mean the box needs to be thrown away. (Of course not; tentpoles still rule.) But the box has become an addiction that Hollywood needs to shake. And what the success of “Backrooms” and “Obsession” demonstrates is a principle that we’ve already seen at play this year, in films from the edgy marital-jitters drama “The Drama” to the out-there Pixar comedy “Hoppers.” Namely: If you build it, they will come. The $85 million question is: What is it? What is it that Hollywood needs to build?
The answer: more movies ripped right out of the imagination, more movies that go around forbidden corners and surprise you, that don’t trod the places we’ve already been, that tap into new audiences by tapping into new ways of seeing.
“Backrooms,” which at times recalls the life-as-surreal-nightmare industrial-sound-garden bugginess of David Lynch’s “Eraserhead,” is one of the most experimental movies ever to turn into a blockbuster. “Obsession” is more conventional, yet there’s something awesomely new in its shivery funhouse vision of a romantic relationship that swirls down the drain of mental illness. That’s what “Obsession” is really about. Dan (Michael Johnston), the more-sensitive-than-he-should-be hero, buys a make-a-wish collectible that gets Nikki (Inde Navarrette), the girl of his dreams, to fall in love with him. When she does, her neediness becomes so compulsive that it’s as if she’s having a depressive/ narcissistic/schizophrenic breakdown. There’s real-world terror lurking inside this fantasy premise, and that’s what’s so effective about the movie. It taps into actual generational anxiety.
There’s no denying that “Backrooms” and “Obsession” are this month’s shiny new Hollywood objects. They’re megahits to coo over. But it’s significant that both films were released by independent companies: “Backrooms” by A24 (it will be the reigning indie studio’s biggest hit), “Obsession” by Focus Features (which picked it up for $14 million at last fall’s Toronto Film Festival). A24 and Focus are wired to think independently, and do. But just as the success of Miramax, in the ’90s, changed Hollywood, the triumph of these two films has a wider implication, because it so undermines the industry-wide fear and cynicism about the future of theatrical. Imagine if Netflix had bought “Obsession” at TIFF — the sound of no one talking about it now would be deafening in its silence. And I’d make the case that A24, after “Marty Supreme” and “The Drama” and now “Backrooms,” is entering its full Miramax era, the place where it has a chance to bend the culture, and the curve of theatrical.
So let’s put aside the whining and the hand-wringing about streaming and about how Young People Don’t Like Movies. There’s no question that for movies to thrive, the industry needs to evolve, starting with a return to the religious belief in the power of windows. (If you delay the home release…they will come!) But mostly we need a return to making the kinds of movies that people seek out because they want to be surprised. “Backrooms” and “Obsession” are artful enough to prove that mainstream audiences actually crave something artful. Something out of the box. For a moment and maybe more, these films should unite everyone in saying: Fuck the box.
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