In 2025, the global film industry had an annual revenue of nearly $34 billion. Despite this, viewers worldwide seem to have their fair share of issues about the industry as a whole. More specifically, who directs them.
People are tired of endless reboots, remakes and rewinds. It seems that the horror genre specifically tends to have the same cookie-cutter plots. Viewers are tired of masked killers, overused gore and predictable jump scares. Much of this can be attributed to studios reusing the same directors, with those older directors then recycling the same plots and ideas conned from other films.
Among all of this, however, a new wave of younger directors has created blockbuster movies with their innovative ideas. Recently, “Backrooms” and “Obsession” have performed exceptionally well at the box office despite being directed by generally young and “inexperienced” filmmakers.
Kane Parsons was a teenager with a camera and a Wi-Fi connection when he started filming “Backrooms” on YouTube. He didn’t have top-of-the-line equipment, a crew or a budget. He wasn’t coming out of a prestigious film school either. He just had a passion for cinema and decided to share that hobby online. Then A24, one of the most prominent labels in modern cinema, called.
Parsons hadn’t even finished high school. Thanks to platforms like YouTube, young directors can be scouted due to online exposure. Additionally, there is a digital footprint of these directors’ trial and error, as well as their success.
This footprint fosters a closer connection between creator and viewer that isn’t seen in the more traditional old guard of cinema. It makes movies so much more personal and compelling.
These young directors are becoming the new voices of horror and were trained by the unforgiving feedback loop of social media, the internet and fandom spaces — which, to me, sounds scarier than any horror movie around.
They bring a new, raw talent to horror that film school can’t necessarily teach: years of real feedback from real people in real time. The results are undeniable.
Parsons attracted millions of views online from his series. For years, he learned how to build dread and simultaneously have people lean into it instead of looking away.
“Obsession,” a new and wildly popular horror film, also encompassed this perfectly. This film was made on a $1 million budget and has grossed more than 80 times that at the box office. Mathematically, it is a 7,900% return on investment.
These two movies are just one strain of this upcoming horror movement. In a world where people scroll through 15-second shorts every single day, these creators know how to quickly hook an audience. If they didn’t, those people would’ve already clicked onto something else.
Another group, Corridor Digital, built a massive following on YouTube with its intense horror concepts, which caught the eye of studio executives. Australian twins Danny and Michael Philippou, better known online as RackaRacka, made high-energy YouTube shorts, which boosted their reputation in Hollywood. They spent years creating these action-packed horror-comedy videos on YouTube before directing “Talk to Me.” This, like “Backrooms,” was released through A24.
These directors have proven that the future of cinema doesn’t have to be a repeated cycle. The future of cinema belongs to anyone with a passion for film and a camera. Young directors have become underdogs and idols for young adults everywhere.
This trend continues to expand past these recent breakout stars. David F. Sandberg first gained attention online with his short horror film “Lights Out,” which later became a Hollywood feature and propelled his career further.
What makes these directors so unique is that there isn’t a shared style of directing, despite them generally being in the horror genre. Instead, they built their craft in the public eye with massive amounts of scrutiny along the way. They learned how to make everything with nothing: limited money, limited equipment and limited time. With such scarce resources, they had to think outside the box.
What these creatives have discovered is that fear of the unknown can often be scarier than showing the villain on screen. The scariest thing ends up being what you can almost see, not what you normally see, like your everyday horror movie villain. These talented directors are able to work with significantly less funding, but provide the same shock value, if not more.
These directors, now that they’re given more resources, are able to bring new aspects to cinema because they’ve been working with almost nothing for years and found a way to make it scary anyway.
This new wave of talented directors will carry the flame of cinema into a fresher era. For young adults everywhere, these new filmmakers are an inspiration.
Jeanne Warren is a 20-year-old mass communications major from Baton Rouge, La.
