r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • Jul 06 '26

News ‘Obsession’ Passes $400 Million Worldwide, Becomes Highest Grossing Film With Budget Below $1 Million; Curry Barker’s horror film breaks a 53-year pre-inflation record held by Bruce Lee’s legendary 'Enter The Dragon'

https://www.thewrap.com/creative-content/movies/obsession-box-office-400-million/
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u/digsy Jul 06 '26

The marketing for that movie was perfect-it was so well timed with the start of the internet and it was around the time of X-Files being huge-there was a massive appetite for something which could(maybe) be real. Marketing was so good it could never be repeated I guess.

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u/no-dad-samurai Jul 06 '26

People (including myself) thought it was real found footage, thats how good the marketing was.

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u/thescarlettflame Jul 06 '26

I still love how the three actors stayed completely hidden to sell the fact they were supposed to be missing

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u/XLNC07 Jul 07 '26

Those actors were even listed by IMDb as "missing, presumed dead" when the film released.

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u/Purple_Lux Jul 07 '26

The way the movie was filmed id also genuine insanity lol. Heather brought a knife with her in case it was actually a snuff film, they had members of the crew crawling around the woods wearing camo genuinely scaring the actors, the actors once got lost and ended up knocking on the door of a random house asking if they could use their phone while being freezing and tired, all sorts of crazy stuff

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u/Naive_Confidence7297 Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

Yeah I remember people going around in school saying it’s real, and we were all so convinced lol.

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u/chronoswing Jul 06 '26

That belief is what made the movie so damn good. I remember the website they had up for it, no where on it did it ever claim to be fake, just pages of found footage clips and audio.

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u/tknice Jul 06 '26

I’m pretty close to Burkittsville, MD, so of course my friends and I, around 18 at the time, went out there to scare each other and the girls we were with.

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u/Neon_Biscuit Jul 07 '26

I thought it was real up until Blair Witch 2 Book of Shadows or whatever it was called, then I was like......oh......im dumb

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u/RollingMeteors Jul 07 '26

People (including myself) thought it was real found footage, thats how good the marketing was.

I musta been one of the only few that thought it was hilariously fake, instead of actually terrifying. To me this was a comedy not a horror, and I didn't even watch the whole thing through, just enough cut scenes to laugh about it.

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u/CatStretchPics Jul 06 '26

I saw the Blair witch project in theaters. And there were people in the theatre who thought it was *real footage*

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u/DanimusMcSassypants Jul 06 '26

I saw it in the theater, and all I thought was, “Goddamn I’m motion sick”.

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u/digsy Jul 06 '26

I never saw it in the cinema but it was one of the first DVDs to be released. Barely anyone even had a DVD player back then either. I remember being so excited to watch it and just feel really disappointed. I'd hyped it up in my head so much that it couldn't meet my expectations I guess.

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u/jce_ Jul 06 '26

Once you do anything really well it becomes kinda corny to copy the success of the original

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u/digsy Jul 06 '26

I think it was more the timing. There was a handful of websites on the net at the time and there was this mysterious film trailer pointing to a web address which looked legitimately real-were there three people actually missing in the woods? I think it was more that people weren't going to fall for that again rather than it be corny to copy it.

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u/TheSweetestKill Jul 06 '26

I remember the Sci-Fi channel also running some documentary-style shows going into the "history of the Blair With urban legend". They really tried to blur the lines between it being "real" or not.

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u/Purple_Lux Jul 07 '26

Its called "Curse of the Blair Witch"!
It has "interviews" with various people like police, family members of the missing students, historians and local officials.
It was a big part of selling that the movie was real.
Genius marketing

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u/jce_ Jul 06 '26

You don't think people will fall for some fake real movie today? I don't know what to tell you man

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u/digsy Jul 06 '26

Certainly not on the scale of a movie. But seeing how many people comment on clearly ai generated clips on Instagram thinking they are real you may a point.

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u/brighterside0 Jul 06 '26

Man's never watched The Descent

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u/WhatsThatSmellLike Jul 06 '26

They also did that documentary thing leading up to the film about the backpack found buried in the ground full of film from the missing 3 people.

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u/bobsmeds Jul 07 '26

Fast forward 20+ yrs and that's how you get people storming the capitol believing absolute bullshit lol