Curry Barker’s horror movie Obsession did something that almost never happens at the box office: it got bigger after opening. The film took in $23.9 million in its second weekend, up 39 percent from its $17.1 million debut, and had reached $68.3 million worldwide by the time described here.
That kind of hold is unusual enough that Jason Blum highlighted it on Twitter, calling Obsession the “ONLY” wide-release horror movie on record to rise by that margin and adding, “This doesn’t happen in horror.” For a genre that usually loses steam after opening weekend, the numbers are the kind of result distributors talk about for years.
The comparison set makes the point sharper. Comscore found that among movies that opened above 2,500 screens and then climbed between 35 percent and 40 percent in their second weekend, the list includes Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Migration and a December 2012 re-release of Pixar’s Monster’s Inc. Jumanji rose 38 percent in its second weekend in 2017 and made $50 million that frame. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish rose 35 percent, Migration rose 36 percent, and Monster’s Inc. climbed roughly 35 percent.
For horror specifically, the nearest comparison is Sound of Freedom, which opened during the week of July 4, 2023 with $19.6 million and then made another $27.2 million in its second weekend, a gain of about 39 percent. But that film is not similar to Obsession in subject matter or politics, and its run was helped by factors Obsession did not have. Sound of Freedom added 413 screens in its second weekend. Obsession added only 40.
That is why the Barker film stands apart. It is not just that the weekend was strong. It is that the film held with almost no screen expansion, in a genre that rarely behaves this way, and did so well enough to push its worldwide total to $68.3 million. The article frames the result as largely unprecedented, and the numbers back that up.
There is still some room for interpretation around why the surge happened. Sound of Freedom benefited from the Fourth of July period, while Obsession may have had Memorial Day weekend working in its favor. Even so, the central fact remains: a horror title from Barker, whose earlier rise from YouTube to box office is documented in coverage of Inde Navarrette and Curry Barker’s Obsession turns YouTube to box office and Obsession Movie maker Curry Barker turns comedy roots into horror breakthrough, is now being measured against some of the strangest second-weekend holdovers in recent release history.
For Barker, the answer to the obvious question is already in the grosses. Obsession is not just breaking through for a horror movie; it is doing it in a way that box office watchers can point to, compare and remember.
