The Future of Theatrical Cinema

Hey, Pablo Torere here. As a sports journalist, I've covered global sports for many years now. And there is one thing that I can promise you Nothing compares to the World Cup. And this time it is even better thanks to McDonald's, You have the chance to take home one of nine legendary cups when you order the FIFA World Cup meal The cups feature some of the biggest legends football, like David Beckham, Teron Ree and Ronaldino, Christian Palisk Laminia Mal and Alfonso Davies. Right now, get one of nine Legendary cups when you order the FFA World Cup meal only at McDonald's at participating McDonald's only for a limited time, while supplies last, All rights reserved, copyright twenty twenty six, McDonalds at the FIFA World Cup, twenty twenty six This show is brought to you by Ground News. Here at Wetneext, we cover the news day in, day out. and when my producers prep interviews for me, they are full of different sources because you cannot read just one source these days. 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Use our link so they know we sent you. groundneews d. com slash next Justin Chang, film critic from over the New Yorker He sees a lot of movies. But the other day he admitted something to me corn movies, Hollywood stuff He is not really tracking that Like I'm the type of person who doesn't is not the first person to click on the trailer or whatn. I'm like, oh that's open I' to get the New Yorker. What? you know, we just Im I u, you know, there's I keep abreast of certain, you know, I'll know, o, what's that, you know, cool Lironian film coming out, but you know, Hollywood, I'm a little I I let it come to, you know, we'll hear about it soon enough That meant that earlier this month, when a couple of new horror movies came out B and obsession, Justin wasn't exactly the first in line for screenings. Backrooms he knew a little bit about. It was released by Iie stududio A twenty four. Backrooms was definitely on my radar, and so I was definitely curious to see it and to write about it. And then obsession, which opened, I believe a week before backrooms did I was already doing phenomenal box office, and I had just gotten back from the Can film festival and and was going write my backom this, Ohh, I think I should write about obsession too, ' this clearly this seems to be something of a one two punch these two films. And I saw them both like on consecutive days and was like, o yeah, this will work Over the last couple of weeks, these two movies have become a bit of a phenomenon. both rariked in tens of millions of dollars, even though obsession costs less than a million to make Both of them those come from Internet first directors And those directors are young. I thinkink twenty, twenty six. Finally, each movie seems to capture a mood among young people a dread And Justin says, the films are actually pretty different, but he gets why people are lashing them together obsession, which, you know, I don't want to like gush and gush over inordinately, but you know, I came down. I actually think it's the better film despite it's the film that starts off seeming more conventional personal metric here, which is I have a teenagage son who's a film buff An Obsession is, I think the first movie He has planned to go to in the theater twice You you know what mean?? you can stream so much. these days, but he was like, yeah, he went And then he's like, I think I'm going to go again with a different group of kids. And I was like, hm, that's getting butts in seats. It is. no. I mean, one of the interesting things that's happened in light of the box office success of backrooms and obsession is that the Mandalorian in Grogu, the Star Wars movie, has, you know been a massive box office disappointment and has fallen like precipitously and's after its opening weekend And so it's just like that it is this very much this, you know, indie horror David slaying the big studio Big budget gooliaths, right Justin isn't the kind of guy to look at runaway successes like this and immediately think, The future of Hollywood has revealed itself. He says, honestly, horror movies are always some of the easiest content for a studio to sell But when we talked Steven Spielberg's Dclosure Day was about to open Everyone was wondering Could these indie movies somehow dominating box office Obsession is the first film since ET In nineteen eighty two increased ticket sales from its second and third weekends respectively outside the holiday season. And that's true I mean, whichich show that people like it and they're telling their friends and they're going back It's like it's spreading. It's the It is a measure of the word of mouth, absolutely. And that just it just does not happen. I mean, if a movie only drops like ten or twenty percent, that is considered like a roaring success too actually increase week after week But I think it's funny that it's the first one since ET and it's like here we are. I mean, the paradigm shift if that is what we're talking about could not be a writt larger, it's exciting to see what might happen out of this Tay on the show Obsession and backrooms are getting young people into theaters So are these movies gonna rewrite the rules of Hollywood I'm Mary Harris. You're listening to what next stick around Hey, Pablo Torere here. As a sports journalist, I've covered global sports for many years now And there is one thing that I can promise you Nothing compares to the World Cup And this time it is even better thanks to McDonald's, You have the chance to take home one of nine legendary cups when you order the FIFA World Cup meal The cups feature some of the biggest legends football like David Beckham, Teron Ree, and Ronaldinio, Christian Palisk Laminia Mal and Alfonso Davies. Right now, get one of nine Legendary cups when you order the FF World Cup meal only at McDonald's att participating McDonald's only for a limited time, while supplies last, All rights reserved, copyright twenty twenty six, McDonald's at the FIFA World Cup, twenty twenty six Right now we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New York Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Katanji Brown Jackson, Nuke Gingridge, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Charlemagne the God so many more That's all in the New Yorker radio hour. wherever you listen to podcasts don't know much about backrooms or obsession. I just want to explain what they're all about and maybe you can help me do that Both of these movies are creepy. Backrooms is a movie that grew out of an internet meme. this four chan image of a fluorescent lit abandoned room. lookooks sort of like an office. L if I'm telling people a picture in their mind, I'm telling them like a yellowed kind of severance set. Is that fair? That's very fair. abbsolutely. Yeah. No, and it's like it's interesting how the imagery is just it started with one photograph, O creepy ugly photograph of a creepy, ugly place that nonetheless we all could sort of recognize like, oh, whatever that was, was that some groy office you visited like in the nineties or something and you and backrooms, the movie is set in nineteen ninety. And so the backrooms which are sort of referred to, I think, in the original meme as like this maze of like hundreds of millions of miles of just office space. The premise of it is sort of or the question rather is, what does this evoke for you? For a lot of people it evokes, you know, yeah, a time from maybe the first time they visited a place like this it felt unmoored The image just raises questions. likeike what if you were stuck there? whyy were you stuck there? What would it feel like? I almost think about it like it's kind of like without for me, it's a childhood thing. It's like without parental supervision, the first time you ever went to this completely souless place. So and yet it's also sort of like, but and there's kind of a fantasy element too, because for some people, it's like it's very It's a very enveloping thing to be wandering a place like that. And in the movie, the character, the lead character played by Chuwoto, Egaor whose name is Clark becomes obsessed with this place and he finds this portal into or he slips through a wall his in his furniture store basement and finds himself just wandering this maze for hours and hours. And it obsesses him. So scenic moody aive I'm getting.y. Ganing Red filled ambiance, eraser head Yeah vibes galore, right? And so Okay, so then obsession It's slightly different. It's made by this twenty six year old YouTuber kind of takes on young folks angst head on because it's about The fear of revealing yourself to someone you have a crush on, basically, you want to explain? Yes. And the lead character played by Michael Johnston Um, is this young music store employee who has this very strong infatuation with one of his friends and coworers. who's played in a really good performance by Indian Navareti Her name's Niki And he acquires this novelty store make a wish cururio item and it works, lo and behold He doesn't know that it works, but then gradually at first, but then pretty soon he does because she falls in love with him but it's like what's fascinating wishes that she like becomes obsessed with him, right? She wishes she I think her, you know, his wish is that she would love him more than anyone in the whole Fing world So in love. A strong love What's really what I like about the movie, which has been debated endlessly whether this is a misogynist or a feminist, you know sort of riff on this time. Well, the filmmaker has said this movie is about consent And like the meaning of consent and, you know, the meaning of sort of Making someone love you, which I think is kind of interesting. That's exactly right. It's in conversation with consent issues. It's in conversation with absolutely what you said, Mary about, you know, the fear of revealing yourself. I mean, she even asks him before he makes the wish point up straight up like, do you like me? And he kind of hedges in his way? So it's about Hes scared us out. Some people have written about this movie as a really twisted in self fantasy because like, you know, he's not somebody youar automatically think of in those terms, but somebody who is so withdrawn and shut away with their feelings and their desire and that it comes out in this Way, what I love about the movie is that it doesn't doesn't take wishing for granted, if that's not too weird a way to put it, where it's it sort of makes you wonder like this idea that a wish, you know, you know, there are make a wish stories that have been in fantasies and fairy tales for forever. and it's like, what if Realizing that it's not just being careful what you wish for, it's realizing that There are consequences to these things because you are actually violating somebody's will, you know, and this makes you rethink a lot of movies about love potions, about love spells and things like that because youre this, you know, and what's great Indian Nbody's performance, she actually shows you in this really , you know, Mercurial performance A woman who' either being possessed by a demon, a demonic entity, or going through some kind of split personality disorder because you see her at war as she is fighting this violation to her mind and spirit and body. And's so interesting. It's like you'reing, We normally think about desire in films as being a kind of pure but what this film reveals is that every desire in fact is a trade off. Every desire every desire is not like a pure Good. But if you're just looking at the desire head on, you may say, o it's just a wish. it's happy N, if it's delivered on like that's it's never a pure good, bad story. No. And it's just a real it's like and it's interesting. I'm curious to know how how your son enjoys the movie the second time because I do think that the movie will play differently and in a resonant way, the second being once you fully know everything because I just remember from my first viewing feeling like, oh yeah, I understand now why she's reacting this way in this moment because it's not the seamless. Oh, she falls in love with him and then things get bad. No, From the minute he makes the wish, Somet is amiss. You can tell it's like she's like confused. She's like fighting herself and she realized that she has been, it's like she's been splitting two And it's and it's a, you know, it's a It's just a slight rethink of this kind of genre that also I think displaces Michael Johnon character as the lead because you realize after a while, know she's the protagonist actually. She is The survivor, the victim, and ultimately, if this story has a hero, it's her. it's her we care about. And I think it's her the movie cares about I feel like young filmmakers having big debuts and people talking about the whole industry changing happens every few years. I am old. so I remember when the Blair Witch proroject came out, also a horror movie. this is nineteen ninety nine, you know, made on a very tight budget, was snatched up after it debuted at Sundance. Sundance. That's. So and it comes out' huge, right? And it was also discussed as a triumph of the internet, although slightly different rump the internet this time around because at the time it was really about internet marketing. theseese guys like had all sorts of websites that sort of like got into the lore behind things. It There was no YouTube, so they weren't YouTubing before this. What makes this moment different from that one. Or is it different? It's a good question. Yeah, are they different? I mean, and we'll have to see. I mean, not to keep kicking it down the road, but in a way, we don't know. The fact that there's two of them mayaybe it's just a pure coincidence to them having oh decided, hey, May is the month for us. And so here we are. And if they but I think just that consecutive week openings, phenomenal success U the narrative is there. whether it's whether know, whether it's cause or correlation, it's like that narrative is there and it's irresistible It really smart to mention the Blairwitch project in this context because I do think backrooms, especially for all the reasons you listed is in conversation with that movie, right down to the found footage element that is in backrooms. Now Backrams doesn't pursue that found footage concept as rigorously as the Blair Witch proroject does, which is part of my not that's not my issue with the movie, but I think it shows how the movie is still sort of figuring it out. itself out. I don't think it has no It's a twenty year old filmmaker. I' cook. Absolutely. for sure. It's he in the film You know, but it's interesting too, because it's set in nineteen ninety and it's kind of it's set in a pre Blair Witch era. And I feel like it's sort of cognizant of that. But yeah, and, you know, the filmmakers behind the Blair Witch proroject, you know, the success of that movie also maybe proved their undoing in terms of their long term careers, you know, because it's like the creation of ations that you never match again. I mean, when you have something that just is this bolt from the blue success, how do you match that? And I believe could be wrong, but I think you know both These are smart guys, you know Kain Parsons and Curry Barker, I think have their next projects lined up already. And so it's like, and you know, they've also been, you know, they've been producing stuff for a while. I mean, they're the shorts that they've made for, you know, for YouTube are backgroom shorts in the case of Kain Parsons, and so and horror and comedy shorts in the case of Curry Barker, so U So they're, you know, they're very smart, savy and accomplished clearly. and so we will see, but Yeah. O other thing that just really quickly wanted to say is that this going back really quickly to how these films complement each other. I didn't get into this as much with backrooms, but There're also both movies about male toxicity, toxic masculinity, if you wantna call it that. I mean it's like and we've kind of talked about how that's true in obsession but in backrooms where it very much becomes about the psychology of the Chiotel asgo four character and sort of his his dissatisfaction with his failed marriage, his dissatisfaction as a middle aged man. So it is tapping into that discontent and it's interesting that it's male filmmakers taking that on. That makes me kind of I't M too. And there's room to argue about how successful they are in that regard. I mean, I haven't read a ton about it, but I know that some people F obsession that the movie hates women, which I don't agree with at all, but they I think they're because of, you know to do with the lead the character of Niki and how she's conceived, portrayed, whatever. There's a lot of grisk for argument here, but I think that that thread is very much in backrooms as well where And I think that, you know, I think young filmmakers today are, you know They are, I think politically shrewd or more self aware and they had this kind of idea of like thinking thoughtfully about these issues is sort of wired into them earlier on than it maybe was for an earlier generation of young indy talent We'll be back after a quick break Hey, Pablo Torere here. As a sports journalist, I've covered global sports for many years now. And there is one thing that I can promise you Nothing compares to the World Cup And this time it is even better thanks to McDonald's, You have the chance to take home one of nine legendary cups when you order the FIFA World Cup meal The cups feature some of the biggest legends football like David Beckham, Terryon Ree, and Ronald Dinio, Christian Pelisk Laminia Mal and Alfonso Davies Right now, get one of nine Legendary cups when you order the FeF World Cup meeal only at McDonald's att participating McDonald's only for a limited time, while supplies last, All rights reserved, copyright twenty twenty six. McDonald's at the FIFA World Cup, twenty twenty six I'm Dahlia Lithway. and I'm Mark Joseph Stern. We host Amicos Slates Legal podcast, and we want you to join us for a true Aicos tradition two hundred and fiftieth annual Amicus breakfast table Okay, it hasn't actually been that many, but The breakfast tables are great It's me and Mark live with a super smart panel of legal experts in conversation. We're going to dig into what happened during this Supreme Court term and there's a lot to talk about. We're inviting Slate Plus members to join our live audience for this taping and the exclusive Q and A that follows Fr the comfort and the safety of your own laptop. july tenth at Non Eastern. To register and to join Slate pllus if you haven't already, go to slate d. com slash breakfast table. That's slate d. com slash breakfast table was thinking about What really is the breakthrough with these movies? Like is it their internetness, the youth of the people making them? Like what is it that makes them interesting and feel like they've captured a zeitgeist It is rooted absolutely in the directors who I didn't know anything about, but their fans did. I'm not plugged into YouTube culture, but their fans are. And so it's like there's a kind of, you know, almost new generation of o tourism that is being talked about here. And that to me is heartening because regardless of whether they're getting their start on YouTube or not, is kind of immaterial to me. I know a lot of people make a big deal of that, but I care less about that than the fact that Filmmakers actually are creating following that they are actually that the idea of cinema as a director and writer, but also especially a director focused driven medium and this idea that you care about the personality of the person, the artist who made it. that's meaningful to me. And I think that's, you know, the it's the fact that they these directors have something of a cult following beforehand that then propelled this interest Uh it's u it's interesting to see When you talk to Hollywood people Um is the success of these movies resetting their expectations? Like I've read the articles and like, you know, Hollywood is looking for the next Curry Barker Is that true 's true and And I should note that I've maybe read more pieces like that than I've talked to people about it in the industry But I think that yeah, I think there was some trades published a list of, here's who the next Cry Wer could be or maybe was Game Parsons I don't or maybe both, you know, because they want both of them Yeah. And so But I think that When Barbenheimer happened, everyone when Nutson wanted to plicate that, right? That is what happens. It's like, how do we block fass that like you wouldn't think tasted great together, but they can play in the same whatever You can't do that. You just it's just it's the organic quality of it is what makes it, you know special and frankly irre reproducible. And so I remember there was, you know, enough, I think A year or two later, you know, they had Gladir and Wicked and they kind of halfheartedly tried to, you know,ies did fine, but it was Ger sure, but it was not you know, can't force these things into being. and so But but that's Hollywood. Are you saying the conversation about like looking for the next Curry Barker is silly in some ways. If they find that person and that person is talented, great, you know, that's snow. It's like, you know, it's not such a tall order to want to find The next you know, interesting, innovative film, you know, indie horror filmmaker with a YouTube following all the way. But then it's like, I don't know, it's like pulp fiction overload effect. It's like what are we going to see that just E YouTuber is now just going to want to audition for that role and God help us say that could We could wind up with a lot of terrible stuff, rightight? And that's just this Hollwood the problem here is that Hollywood invariably does learn wrong or the worst lessons from any success overlearn the lessons, right and part of what I think they see in these movies is They're cheap. Jo me, that is so appealing. If I am a Hollywood executive, I'm just sort of like seeing dollar signs in my eyes. I'm really excited, but it strikes me This is the last time you're gonna to see Cury Barker make a film for seven hundred fifty thousand dollars. He's doing that. He's giving you a taste because he wants to sell you the real stuff. Do you know what I'm saying? That's what this is. M callalling Ctifact and I dare say, I'm sure that every everyone involved with obsession is completely floored by the success and we should talk really quickly about another story that's emerged over in recent days about how the art director on Obsession, Sally Chi who took to social media to point out how little she had gotten paid and how the movies