"My journey doesn't feel that different from David Fincher or Steven Spielberg's": The new class of horror filmmakers is here, and they're all graduates of YouTube
"Every video we did was helping us build up to making a film," the Philippou brothers said in an interview with GamesRadar+ back in 2022. The duo was just about to burst onto the big screen with buzzy Aussie horror Talk to Me, having previously made a name for themselves via their stunt-heavy YouTube channel therackaracka – and in the four years since, a whole bunch of content creators have followed in their footsteps.
2026 has already seen big box office success for game vlogger Mark 'Markiplier' Fischbach's self-funded Iron Lung adaptation. Now May is set to mark the release of both Curry Barker's Obsession, which sparked a fierce bidding war between Focus Features and A24 at TIFF last year, and Kane Parsons' Backrooms. Far beyond that, there's Dylan Clark's Portrait of God movie, a sci-fi thriller from Together's Michael Shanks, and Sam Evenson's Mora, as well as a Talk to Me sequel to look forward to. The new wave of horror filmmaking talent is here, and they were raised on creepypasta.
Outside of their low-budget savvy (Barker wrote Obsession as a film he could still make with his buddies if the studio's greenlight fell through) and established fanbases, it's no wonder YouTubers are catching the eyes of Hollywood executives; it's clear they're tapping into what modern audiences want. The most widely accessed video streaming app in the US, the platform generated over $60 billion in revenue in 2025, largely through ads and new sign-ups to YouTube Premium. In comparison, Netflix made $45 billion while the global box office is estimated to have pulled in $33.5 billion, a 12% increase over the previous 12 months.
According to Hanna Kahlert, a senior analyst at Midia Research (via BBC), YouTube is "one of – if not the – most-used of all digital offerings, with over 70% of international consumers using it weekly, and over 50% using it daily." These vloggers are well-versed in high-volume, high-speed production. Combine that with the knowledge that Gen Z is the most active theatergoing generation, as pointed out by a 2026 Fandango survey, and that 91% of that group engages with YouTube, and the crossover potential is stronger than M3GAN vs. Chucky.
"It seems to be an attempt of people from one branch of the entertainment industry sort of capitalizing on another branch, without bringing them together quite as fully as they were in the comic book movie boom, says University of Bristol lecturer Dr. Pete Falconer. "But who knows, in a few years' time, maybe something similar will have happened."
Fresh frights
Huge financial gains don't seem to be the only appeal for studios, though – and it's not like it's guaranteed anyway. Talk to Me, which cost around $4.5 million to make, may have racked up $92 million worldwide, but other horror titles made by YouTubers haven't been so fiscally successful. Together bagged Neon $34.5m, despite being fronted by A-listers Dave Franco and Alison Brie, while Chris Stuckmann's Shelby Oaks made $8.1m. (For reference, big-budget sequel The Conjuring: Last Rites earned almost $500m).
Sign up for the Total Film NewsletterA profit is still a profit, however, and horror is notably one of the most reliable, least expensive genres to produce films in. While Focus Features acquired distribution rights for $15m and spent a small fortune on its marketing, Obsession was brought to the big screen for just $1m. As it stands, it's tracking a $7-10m debut, with Backrooms projected to pull in double that from a $10m budget.
Numbers aside, horror titans Jason Blum, who executive produced Obsession, and James Wan and Osgood Perkins, who backed Backrooms, seem genuinely eager to boost the careers of those finding fresh ways to send shivers up people's spines. Starring Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston, the former movie centers shy guy Baron 'Bear' Bailey, who wishes that his crush Nikki "loved him more than anyone in the entire f***ing world"... and soon comes to regret it.
It's a genuinely nerve-shredding flick that flirts with themes of consent, identity loss and weaponised affection, and is packed full of eerie sound design and uncanny visuals.
"I'm always chasing uncomfortability," says Barker, who wrote, directed, and edited the film, when we ask how he honed his unique sense of scary. "To me, the modern jump scare is three or four moments where I can make the audience go, 'That was weird. I didn't like that. I don't want to see that.' I kind of discovered my voice through [short films] The Chair and Warnings, and even Milk & Serial – and my bread and butter is making you feel weird. That feeling of unease when something is just slightly off? That really excites me."
Hear from Backrooms' Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve on working with Kane Parsons:
Parsons' Backrooms, which is based on his viral series of shorts, is a similarly strange affair. It follows Chiwetel Ejiofor's furniture store owner Clark, who's struggling to make ends meet. One evening, self-destructive Clark stumbles on a yellow-wallpapered, eerily infinite space connected to the shop. Reinvigorated by the discovery, he embroils his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), in his frantic, and sometimes bloody, search to find out all he can about the titular dimension.
"You want a director to deeply understand the world they're exploring," Ejiofor notes. "[It] makes the difference in a project – and I don't know if I've ever worked with somebody who's built the world that they're exploring; who gets every nook and cranny. Who's built that world in such a granular way, you know? From the ground up. It was really exciting to know you're working with somebody who's literally the only person on the planet who knows how to tell this story. It was pretty remarkable."
Community vibes
It may seem surprising that many YouTubers, even the ones who started out in comedy, have graduated to cinematic horror movies, but it's worth remembering that a key corner of the platform was founded on spooking people. Videos that build to a jumpscare, otherwise known as 'screamers', were an early trend on the site before giving way to arguably the most popular type of upload: the reaction video.
Initially, there'd be reaction videos of people being subjected to screamers, which were played for fright-laced laughs. Later, subscribers would regularly tune in to see what their favorite internet personalities thought of the latest trailers or plot twists in Game of Thrones – and well, it's no secret that horror movies spark the most visceral of reactions. "My screen time has been exponential these past couple of weeks because I just love seeing people reacting to it," Fischbach told BBC Newsbeat, when asked what he made of the reception to his directorial debut, Iron Lung.
Horrors tend to be the films that people most want to watch collectively, too, so it's not that bizarre of a transition; YouTube is all about community, after all.
For Parsons and Barker, specifically, creative control doesn't come at the expense of collaboration. "We all gave 110%... you know, working really late. Curry had such a playful energy on set," says Johnston, who plays Obsession's Bear. "The film is so heavy but behind the scenes, everything was so chill and fun. It just gave us that extra boost that we needed to push ourselves."
Image credit: Focus Features
Image credit: A24
Image credit: A24
As Navarrette points out, a lot of the movie's crew were made up of Barker's pals, all of whom were under 30 years old. It also co-stars Cooper Tomlinson, who launched YouTube channel That's A Bad Idea with Barker in 2018. "Cooper grounds me," says Barker, "because it was a little intimidating at first. I remember the first day, the set designers were putting wallpaper on the wall. They were putting picture frames up. Then I go downstairs to the camera department, and they're putting together all these monitors. And I'm just like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm in charge of this whole thing? This is crazy'. But then it's like, 'Oh, this is the guy I do stuff online with,' you know? Then it's so normal for me. You're just constantly reminding yourself you've been doing this for a while."
As A24's youngest-ever director at just 20 years old, Parsons is a little less experienced, so he was keen to soak up as many tips as he could during production. "[Kane] was so humble. At the end of every day, he would ask, 'What could I do better?'" Reinsve recalls. "Because it was his first time directing actors, and I heard him ask that to everyone on set. So he was a great leader in pulling us through his specific world and his vision, and also very [acknowledging] of being in the process of learning how to make a movie. It was very inspiring to watch."
Attention to retention
In our 2022 chat with Danny and Michael Philippou, the duo remembered sweating in the edit room when Talk to Me's runtime started creeping over the hour-and-a-half mark. "I think we do still have that YouTube mentality. The film only runs for 89 minutes... 94 minutes with credits, ha! We cut 20 minutes out." They got braver with their follow-up, Bring Her Back, which comes in at 104 minutes, but it's evident they're not in the business of crafting bladder testers like Midsommar or The Substance, which clock in at close to two-and-a-half hours each. Barker admits to feeling the same pressures and how content creation made him hyper aware of attention span drop-offs. When you're not competing against a plethora of thumbnails and someone's actually sat down with popcorn to watch your movie, though, he likes to believe you can let your movie "breathe" a little bit.
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Almost in response to all the schlocky remakes – The Ring, House of Wax, and The Hills Have Eyes to name a few – that permeated the 2000s, the horror genre saw an uptick in more serious, slow-burn or socially satirical offerings in the 2010s. Think Get Out, The Witch, and Hereditary.
Perhaps it's less that YouTubers are reinventing horror, then, but rather reacquainting the genre with the delights of the fast-paced thrillride. "There is an appetite for shorter, punchier, less self-important movies, but I'd argue that that appetite has remained within the fandom fairly consistently," says University of Bristol lecturer Dr. Pete Falconer. Some horror fans, myself included, have been turned off by the kind of pretensions of elevation. There's stuff to be said for a lot of 'elevated' horror movies. But the term itself is kind of offensive to the genre, and the 90-minute genre movie remains, I think, the ideal."
Maybe there'll come a day when content creators aren't reliant on studios to fund their flicks. Fischbach, whose YouTube channel has over 38.6 million followers, coughed up the $3m Iron Lung cost to make personally – and despite its mixed reviews, it managed to make $51.2m.
"I think we do still have that YouTube mentality. The film only runs for 89 minutes... 94 minutes with credits, ha! We cut 20 minutes out"
The Philippou brothers, Talk to Me directors
"It is a win for YouTubers because it's like, the more that this happens, the more normalised it becomes," he proposed to Newsbeat in February.
For now, though, it seems like the majority of YouTubers-turned-horror filmmakers are opting for a more traditional pipeline. Parsons has teased Backrooms follow-ups, while Barker has just inked a first-look deal with Blumhouse and is writing a new Texas Chain Saw Massacre movie.
"What's interesting to me is that my journey doesn't feel that different [from] David Fincher or Steven Spielberg's," Barker tells GamesRadar+ with a grin. "The only difference is that I used YouTube as a platform that helped spread [my work], right? So what I think it really comes down to is YouTube [being] a really helpful tool to get your work out there. We're lucky enough to have that in our day and age." We'll like and subscribe to that sentiment.
Obsession releases on May 15, while Backrooms lands in theaters on May 29. For more, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.
I am an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering all things TV and film across our Total Film and SFX sections. Elsewhere, my words have been published by the likes of Digital Spy, SciFiNow, PinkNews, FANDOM, Radio Times, and Total Film magazine.
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