Hollywood is Slop, but Gen Z Might Fix it.
In an age of IP slop and Martin Scorsese extolling the virtues of AI-generated storyboards, we need creative stories and new voices in film more than ever. With the release of Obsession and Backrooms earlier this year, some are tentatively hopeful we're getting them. Are young filmmakers and original works the answer to the enshittification of one of the world's most accessible and beloved art forms?
If you've been on the Internet in the past month or so, you will have heard of Obsession. A monkey's-paw tale of control and desire, it employs a horror narrative to skewer the real-life Tinder Chainsaw Massacre of dating anxiety and 'nice-guy' culture. It's also written, directed, and edited by Curry Barker, a 26-year-old who got his start in YouTube comedy skits, and made on a tiny (in film terms) $750k budget.
Similarly, the creepypasta-based Backrooms generated buzz upon its announcement for the even younger mind behind it, 2005er Kane Parsons. The draw of such a young director has been one of the most important marketing aspects of the film, along with its distributor A24, a company with a general vibe of arthouse clout even as its films have largely passed into the mainstream. Parsons also got his start on YouTube, initially drawing attention for his Backrooms mini-series.
Both Obsession and Backrooms have garnered critical praise, broken records and grossed box-office numbers in the $200 millions. They have been praised for their originality and freshness in what feels, to some, like an increasingly slop-saturated space. Does this mean that filmmaking as a vocation is finally opening for fresh-faced, nepotism-free creatives and their projects?
“I do think the industry will be more open to younger filmmakers overall”, Auckland-based filmmaker, Jack Macpherson, said. He also suggested that, in the case of Barker, Obsession's success “might make a few investors more chill giving low budgets to newer filmmakers.”
Still, he admits this does not make entry to the highly competitive film field any easier for up-and-comers; breakout success like this hinges mostly on the capricious aspect of luck. For Barker and Parsons, at least, a significant amount of their success is also owed to the years they've spent building audiences and recognition on YouTube.
It also must be noted Barker was granted a generous $10 million budget by A24, which, needless to say, is not something most aspiring directors have access to. As Substack film blog Hollywood Gadfly explained, the silver screen largely remains the domain of the few that can afford MFAs at elite film schools in the United States. At major film festivals, where up-and-comers vie for attention and funding, there is a huge bias towards the tiny, exclusive pool of emerging directors funnelled through schools like NYU, Columbia, the University of Southern California and the American Film Institute's conservatory.
As everyone in the arts knows, the industry is hard to enter and never stable, with sustained financial success an impossible green light most chase for as long as they can bear the drudgery. If you aren't the child of a multimillionaire and/or an established Hollywood star, you have to get your start early, make a hard-hitting impact right off the bat, and, again, be blessed with luck. Commercial success can be achieved with low budgets and by relative newcomers, as evidenced by Obsession and Backrooms, respectively. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, it doesn't.
In regard to the two, Macpherson posited that “the real outcome is a return to the filmmaker as celebrity–New Hollywood. People know who the filmmakers are… [and] the name of the indie auteur will be leveraged among the average audience.” Unfortunately, this presents a whole new issue: selling out. Who knows? In a couple of years, we may see Kane Parsons first up in the credits for the eightieth Avengers instalment. Obsession has already started to become firmly entrenched in the mainstream, and, in a way, Backrooms was always a sort of IP.
At any rate, it won't take us long to see the ultimate fruits of the crop of new talent in Hollywood. Barker is already at work on a reimagining of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for A24. Meanwhile, Parsons is looking to expand his Backrooms universe. Audience reaction to these projects will be a litmus test as to the longevity of new, boundary-pushing filmmakers that fought their way up from the bottom.
However, it's still true–and sadly so–that the profit incentive runs this art form, like everything. Money, not necessarily quality, is the answer to what gets exposure, and what is lost to the sands of obscurity. Regardless, artists can adapt to it, and maybe auteur filmmaking will be what earns the dough in the oncoming wave of cinema. It all remains to be seen where film is going from here–hopefully, onwards and upwards.
PHOTO: Shannia Christanty., Unsplash.