Published Jun 2, 2026, 11:43 AM EDT
Rohan Naahar is a News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he’ll watch anything once. He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema.
Had A24’s Backrooms not broken its own records this past weekend, the near-unbelievable performance of Focus Features’ Obsession would have once again dominated headlines. Obsession registered another weekend-to-weekend increase in box-office revenue, following a 40% increase in its sophomore frame. To be clear, every movie that is released in theaters these days is expected to report a decline in revenue over the course of its run, unless it’s a tiny indie being given a platform release. Obsession, however, has largely maintained its domestic theater count over the last fortnight. In its third weekend, the horror sensation passed the coveted $100 million mark and became Focus Features’ top-grossing domestic release of all time.
The movie made $26 million in its third weekend, which represents a 10% increase from its second-weekend earnings of $24 million. Obsession’s second-weekend haul marked a 40% increase over its debut of $17 million. What’s more astonishing is the fact that the movie cost under $1 million to produce and likely less than $10 million to market. It was picked up for domestic distribution by Focus for a reported $15 million after its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2025. Obsession was directed by Curry Barker, a 26-year-old who honed his filmmaking skills on YouTube and self-financed his first feature for $800. He is now the toast of the town, with two movies already lined up, and several studios engaged in a major bidding war for his third.
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
*Obsession *stars Michael Johnstone as a young man who casts a spell on a young woman (played by Inde Navarrette) and then suffers the consequences of violating consent. The film is benefiting from near-unanimous praise from critics and widespread enthusiasm from audiences. It holds a “Certified Fresh” 96% critics’ score and a “Verified Hot” 94% audience score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Taking an icky conceit and twisting it to deviously crowd-pleasing ends, Obsession is dauntingly disturbing while also skillfully amusing and thrilling.”
In her review for Collider, Hannah Hunt described the movie as “an awkward wish-fulfillment fantasy quickly mutates into something uglier, sadder, and genuinely disturbing.” With nearly $150 million worldwide already, box-office projections for the phenomenon currently put its final global haul at around $330 million. For context, this is higher than any installment of the Scream franchise, the Insidious franchise, and any movie that Jordan Peele has directed.
Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
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