Pod Insights Pop Culture Happy Hour Gen Z and the movies About this episode Two big horror films, Obsession and Backrooms, just smashed all box office expectations. So much of their success has been driven by Gen Z, which is now the biggest moviegoing demographic. But what makes a movie a Gen Z movie? Today we’re bringing you an episode of NPR’s It’s Been a Minute. Host Brittany Luse talks about this trend with Sam Adams and Reanna Cruz.
If you want to hear more about these movies, check out these episodes:
In ‘Obsession,’ love hurts. It really, really, really hurts. https://www.npr.org/2026/05/15/nx-s1-5822305/in-obsession-love-hurts-it-really-really-really-hurts
'Backrooms' brings YouTube horror to the big screen https://www.npr.org/2026/06/01/nx-s1-5838026/backrooms-brings-youtube-horror-to-the-big-screen
Zendaya brings 'The Drama,' we bring the spoilers https://www.npr.org/2026/04/06/nx-s1-5771506/zendaya-brings-the-drama-we-bring-the-spoilers
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel? That's your drive for more. Capella University's FlexPath learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at capella.edu.
0:19 Stephen Thompson? Two big horror films, Obsession and Backrooms, just smashed all box office expectations. Backrooms is 824's biggest opening in the studio's history, and Obsession made more than 300 times its small budget. So much of their success has been driven by Gen Z. Gen Z is now the biggest movie-going demographic, according to a couple of recent surveys, by Fandango and Comscore. And, not for nothing, both of these movies were directed by Gen Z filmmakers. What makes a movie a Gen Z movie? I'm Stephen Thompson. Today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we are bringing you an episode of It's Been a Minute. Host Brittany Luse sat down with Sam Adams, staff writer at Slate, and Reanna Cruz, entertainment
1:03 Stephen Thompson? journalist and critic. Reanna is also a member of Gen Z. Here's Brittany.
1:12 Speaker 02 Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luse, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
1:28 Speaker 02 Reanna, Sam, welcome to It's Been a Minute.
1:31 Speaker 03 So happy to be here. Thank you for having us.
1:33 Speaker 04 Yeah, thank you.
1:34 Speaker 02 OK, I'm excited to talk about this. I want to talk about Backrooms and Obsession. These movies have done huge numbers, huge numbers. What did you think about them? Reanna, we'll start with you.
1:44 Speaker 03 It's interesting. I've had kind of inverse reactions to both of those movies, where I was in the theater for Obsession, I was like, this is pretty good. And then, over time, I've started to like it less. And I've had the opposite experience with Backrooms, where I saw it and was like, all right, this is OK. And the more I sit and think about it, the more I like it. I like a lot of horror movies.
2:07 Speaker 02 Me, too.
2:08 Speaker 03 We kind of live in horror Maxx. Times, which I'm obsessed with, but I think of the two, I'm definitely team back rooms. I know you would, we don't want to pick sides, but that's the side that I'm coming down on. I gotta say.
2:22 Speaker 02 I gotta say, I'm inclined to agree with you. I'm inclined to agree with you. Backrooms I saw initially and I was like, this is decent. And then over time, I've grown to appreciate it a little bit more. And then I saw Obsession yesterday and I was like, my husband, I were leaving, he was like, is this a moment where we're like, I'm too old to understand what's going on. But what did you think, Sam? You saw both of these movies, Backrooms and Obsession. What did you think?
2:45 Speaker 04 Well, since we're not picking sides, uh, team obsession. Yeah. Backrooms, I think is an incredible vibe. Like I love the environment of it, which is what the director Kane Parsons kind of comes out of. The sort of literal backrooms in it. I think the script, which he did not write, is kind of a mess.
3:01 Speaker 02 There's like several monologues coming from a middle aged man.
3:04 Speaker 04 Yeah.
3:04 Speaker 02 And I'm like, have you met any middle aged women before?
3:07 Speaker 04 Right. I mean, it's like, you've got this wunderkind, then someone decided that the best protagonist for his movie was like a 48 year old divorced guy. I think that's a bit of a category error right there. Whereas Curry Barker, who made Obsession, I think that's like, it's an imperfect movie, but I think some parts of it really work. It's like, there's so many horror movies you see now that just feel like they're kind of grinding their gears in the first 10, 20 minutes, until you start getting to the kills and the premises establish. And I think this is a movie that like actually cares about the characters and has especially in Indi Navarrete, who plays Nikki. I think has a really like stellar effect of performance at the center of it, which has been so key to
3:51 Speaker 04 just the one viral clip of her going sort of, no, no, no, I'm not even going to try to do her performance. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, don't do that. That was so key, just in my experience of kind of watching people warmed to the movie online, that really seemed to get people's attention.
4:10 Speaker 02 Huh, you know, one of the things that's interesting is that according to The Hollywood Reporter, 75% of Obsession's audience was 18 to 34 through the second weekend, which is mostly Gen Z.
4:22 Speaker 03 Wow.
4:23 Speaker 02 And over half of Backroom's first weekend audience was under 25, according to IndieWire.
4:28 Speaker 03 Yeah, this makes sense to me.
4:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, like, Gen Z, they're showing up for these films. Why do you think that is? I mean, you say it makes sense to you, Rihanna, why do you think that is?
4:35 Speaker 03 Well, I think both of these movies have been massive cultural moments. I think both of them have been founded on premises that are easy to convey. You know, I think the marketing for both of those movies has been good, especially on social media, right? And I think it lands really well with audiences that want to be in on the discourse a little bit.
5:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:00 Speaker 03 Like, I've seen a lot of people talking about these films on platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels and Twitter. It's interesting to me how many people are showing up because they want a take and they want to comment, right? And I think there's also an element that, like, horror is very easy to consume. It doesn't really ask much of its audience. You know, you kind of just show up. And in the case of Backroom, specifically, like, be immersed in the vibe.
5:27 Speaker 04 You know, when I, when I was growing up, it was like, it's Friday night, what movie are we gonna see? I don't think that's how younger people are approaching it. It's not the default thing anymore. So they are picking the movies they want to see, not just based on, like, do I want to see this thing? But like, what is going to be an experience to, like, see this in the theater? And horror is the genre where you most feel like you're in a crowd, people are, like, screaming and gasping and, like, reacting along with you. And it's just like, the theatrical experience for horror is really special. Like, that's feeling of being part of a group is something that especially a generation that, you know, was coming up during the pandemic is really craving that sort of collective experience.
6:07 Speaker 02 That's a really, really, really good point. Obsession was directed by Corey Barker, who is 26, and Backroom was directed by Kane Parsons, who is 20. Both of them started out as YouTubers. What do you think about the Gen Z YouTuber to director pipeline happening with these films?
6:25 Speaker 04 Super Mario Galaxy just crossed the billion dollar mark. So it's not like everything has changed in Hollywood, but it certainly like feels like a moment for these particular kind of movies. I think Gen Z is responding to something that feels like a little bit more theirs, not just that the filmmakers are, you know, in their twenties, but also that this is not something that has been like shoved down their throat by a major corporation and it feels like something they've been ordered to see. It feels like something that is possible for them to discover. And I just think that's really like intoxicating and it's a feeling that's been missing from movie going for a long time.
6:59 Speaker 03 Over the past few years, there's been a lot of, you know, the YouTuber to director pipeline. I'm thinking of Chris Stuckman and Shelby Oaks. I'm thinking of the Filippos and Talk To Me and Bring Her Back.
7:09 Speaker 02 Such a good movie.
7:10 Speaker 03 Grey Flicks, not Shelby Oaks, the other ones. But I think there is something to the fact that audiences feel, yeah, a little bit of ownership over these creators. You know, there's a parasocial relationship element. I think especially when it comes to Backrooms, because I hate to call it a property, but it is like a thing on YouTube.
7:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:33 Speaker 03 Audiences like myself watched it. Backrooms was based on a creepypasta, which is like a meme if a meme was scary. Yeah, a Gen Z way of engaging with horror material.
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8:39 Speaker 04 I saw something on the internet the other day where someone was saying, if you're in a certain age, like in your mid 20s, like you've just never known a world where people are rewarded for doing good. And I think that feels like something that really runs through in these films.
8:53 Speaker 02 Stick around.
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10:24 Speaker 02 Even before these films came out, according to a couple of recent surveys by Comscore and Fandango, Gen Z is now the biggest movie-going audience. I think for a long time Hollywood was worried that that wouldn't be the case. But I wonder, what is bringing Gen Z to movie theaters?
10:40 Speaker 03 I think it's a lot of things. I think, again, social media plays a big part of it. People want to be in on the discourse.
10:45 Speaker 02 That's how obsession got me because I was like, everyone's talking about, I'm like, I want to talk too. I want to be included.
10:49 Speaker 03 Well, yeah, exactly. And I think Gen Z is a demographic that uses the platform Letterboxd a lot.
10:55 Speaker 02 Ah, yes, Letterboxd.
10:57 Speaker 03 You know, Letterboxd gamifies movie watching. It rewards you the more movies you watch.
11:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, I love logging my watches into Letterboxd. Yeah.
11:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. It shows off to your friends how cultured and tapped in you are. You know, there's something really satisfying about seeing your movie stats go up. It's a social media platform for movies, and I think that has a lot to do with it. I also think that, like, the idea of these movie subscription services, like AMC A-List, turns the movie, which was previously, in my eyes, like a solo experience, into something easy that friend groups can do.
11:36 Speaker 02 Oh, so you're an A-Lister? Okay.
11:38 Speaker 03 Oh, you know I'm an A-Lister. It's, for a lot of people, cost-effective. I see a lot of movies with a lot of different people. I have a lot of people on my A-List entourage. Like, it's a social element baked into the service.
11:51 Speaker 02 What is A-List entourage?
11:53 Speaker 03 Basically, all of your friends who also have A-List. You can send each other links and, like, add each other on the app. So they all populate in your app, right? When you're buying a ticket, and it's very, very easy to book tickets for your friends.
12:11 Speaker 02 Oh, that makes sense. Sam, what do you think? How do you think Gen Z has become the largest movie-going audience?
12:17 Speaker 04 I mean, I wonder if one of the things that's maybe going on in this particular moment is sort of like a long-term rant of mine, is that people have been complaining for years that movies are too expensive, right? I think what really happened is that people stopped valuing that experience.
12:30 Speaker 02 Hundred percent agree.
12:31 Speaker 04 So it wasn't that they cost too much, it's that they were like fifteen bucks for a movie when I can wait for it. Why would I pay that?
12:37 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:37 Speaker 04 Everything else is so much more expensive now that I think maybe part of it is people are coming back around to like, there's not a lot of other things you can do, except for like, go for a walk? That involves like, paying fifteen bucks to do something collective for two hours? Like, you can't get two beers for that in most cities.
12:54 Speaker 02 No.
12:55 Speaker 04 So I think, and especially if you have something like, you know, a subscription service, which also they often like discount your popcorn and your soda and whatever. Like, I think it actually is just sort of like a good value-for-money proposition on top of everything else. And I think part of what's going on with these movies too, not just Obsession and Backrooms, but also like the drama a couple of months ago, which was another movie that seemed to be a real hit with this demographic, because these are movies that people are like discussing. There's something that you can kind of chew on for days and weeks afterward, which again is like, spend 15 bucks, go to a theater for two hours and you have like weeks of, I guess, entertainment.
13:34 Speaker 02 I just saw the drama a week ago. Gen Z members of the IBM team have let me know that that was a Gen Z movie. And after I saw it, I was like, oh, I totally get the sensibility. I 100% agree. I think there are certain movies that are of certain generations, regardless of who made them, right? High Fidelity feels very Gen X to me. Mean Girls, made by a Gen X person, but very millennial.
13:57 Speaker 03 For sure.
13:58 Speaker 02 Although I think their everything, everywhere, all at once is perhaps like more apt example of like what a millennial film really is because of like, it just has this sort of like millennial hope core kind of vibe running through it.
14:10 Speaker 03 Hope core, definitely millennial.
14:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. And like the millennial directors, it just feels like the generational fingerprint is really on there. What do you think makes a Gen Z movie? Like, what do you think about that?
14:20 Speaker 03 Backrooms and Obsession are very doomer vibes. That's definitely part of the Gen Z movie aesthetic. I think as a member of Gen Z, I think there's two things going on, right? And it's an and or or situation. It's, it's that members of Gen Z have to be featured in the movie. I think that's why the drama in part is a Gen Z movie.
14:43 Speaker 02 I mean, it's just Zendaya and she's on the cusp, right? I think she's technically a millennial, but only just by a few months, though of course, more culturally, she might be Gen Z. Either one of us could claim her.
14:53 Speaker 04 Robert Pattinson keeps insisting in interviews that it's, he's Gen Z. It's sort of like a rhyme joke.
15:00 Speaker 06 Do you wish you were a Gen Z? You're not Gen Z, you're a millennial. No, you're a millennial. I believe that you believe that you're Gen Z. I am Gen Z. What year were you born? Doesn't matter.
15:12 Speaker 03 I think Gen Z movies have to feature members of Gen Z in some capacity and also have a devotion to exploring the digital aesthetic landscape that we find ourselves in. I don't think obsession does this. Part of my issue with the movie is that screens are kind of non-existent for these characters. But I don't know, I think that's why the drama to me lands because it features Zendaya and also it has a very uniquely Gen Z experience of like being on the computer too much and getting really involved in like scary communities online. Not saying that happened to me, but I saw that happen to people that I know where when she was talking in the movie about, you
15:56 Speaker 03 know, being obsessed with school shootings, like I would come across people like that on Tumblr when I was a teenager and be like, whoa, this is really freaky. It's something that could actually happen. And so that's why I think like the two things are members of Gen Z and or digital aesthetic where Backrooms is made by a Gen Z director, but all the characters are not Gen Z. And yet it focuses on like digital abstraction.
16:24 Speaker 02 I didn't even think about that. You're right. Like.
16:26 Speaker 03 Well, because we live in a very digital age, you know, as Gen Z, like we're the first generation to grow up fully online.
16:32 Speaker 02 That part makes sense, but I'm talking about what you said with Backrooms where it felt Gen Z because it's got a kind of digitally abstracted aesthetic. I mean, of course, like canonically, it's taking place in 1990, so no one in the film can be Gen Z. But to me, it's always kind of fun to see people who were not even born in the 1900s in general try to imagine what it was like back then.
16:51 Speaker 03 Yeah.
16:51 Speaker 02 It's almost like, I don't know, someone's trying to go back through, like when people were obsessed with Egyptology in the 1920s and they were like trying to excavate and figure out what ancient Egyptians were doing. That's kind of how this movie felt where it's like a person who grew up around probably. Not too many shopping malls and or maybe saw a lot of vacant strip malls and
17:10 Speaker 03 Yeah.
17:10 Speaker 02 It's trying to sort of like make sense of like why that feels so horrifying and what was going on there. It's funny to me as a person who like I'm old enough to remember people shopping in these places, but like, why would Kane Parsons Kane Parsons was not born when people were shopping in these places. So it's kind of interesting to see through the lens of like a period film. What horror there is to be mined in sort of like thinking about the ruins of the world that was.
17:33 Speaker 04 I mean, one of the sort of recurring explanations in Backrooms that Chiwetel Ejiofor's character has is it's like if you described a dog to someone who didn't know what a dog was and then had them draw a picture of that thing. In the Backrooms, which is set in, you know, sort of shopping malls and these like public spaces that are kind of devoid of all meaning.
17:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:53 Speaker 04 One of the things that I think links certainly the movies that seem to be hitting with Gen Z this year is this just total evacuation of like any meaning from the world. Like there are rules, but they don't work anymore. Even in Obsession, it's like the rules, like take this stick, like break it, wish for what you want, you'll get it. And Bear, in theory, like does what the instructions on the package tell him to do. And it does not work out for him. And so these are worlds in which there's just kind of like no pathway to success or happiness anywhere. Like the world is just fundamentally broken. I saw something on the internet the other day where someone was saying, if you're in a certain age, like in your mid twenties, like you've just never known a world where people are rewarded for doing good.
18:38 Speaker 04 And I think that feels like something that really runs through this, the sense of the world you're seeing in these films.
18:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's what I mean about the like doomerism of it, right? Like, I think that's the dominant vibe that Gen Z finds ourselves in. It's interesting to see that conveyed in movies. And I don't think that there has been anything to accurately portray that hopelessness so far. So I think that's a really great point, Sam.
19:05 Speaker 02 One of the things about Obsession is that the film kind of starts off with a group of four friends who all work at the same job that None of them are fulfilled by or seem to particularly like. They're all kind of lonely in their own individual ways and they don't share with each other emotionally as you think that friends might. They're kind of like suffering in silence, even though they're spending a lot of time together. And what hope for happiness that a couple of these characters have? It gets snuffed out by the events of the film.
19:34 Speaker 04 Right. I do wonder also how much of this vibe that's coming through is because also because horror is like one of the few places that like a young filmmaker who doesn't have a movie star on board can like make an impression and get an audience like the fact that Curry Barker was a sort of online sketch comedian. But when he wanted to make features, he obviously knew that like horror was the place to break in. Like, I wonder if you gave a Gen Z filmmaker $10 million, like Kane Parsons got for Backrooms, to make like a romantic comedy or something, maybe it wouldn't seem like quite so hopeless.
20:04 Speaker 02 I mean, I would totally watch a Gen Z rom com. Like, one of the coolest things for me has been seeing through different pieces of art made by members of Gen Z, how they're feeling about their experience of the world. But I'd like to see more perspectives on it. Like, even the YouTuber to film director pipeline, like, it's still very white and male. I'll be curious to see if that or how that opens up for Gen Z. I mean, for millennials, we had versions of that. Like Abbott Elementary is due to the success of Quinta Brunson. She started out doing online videos, as did Issa Rae, who turned an online video series into basically an HBO show. I mean, it was a different kind of era for Hollywood to a certain degree, both in terms of diversity and in terms of trying to mine the internet and video content for potential new stars.
20:48 Speaker 02 I'm hoping to see maybe another cycle of that and some new voices. But Hollywood is obviously paying attention to the success of these movies, right?
20:57 Speaker 04 Hollywood tends to learn the least disruptive lesson they can from things like this. So in this case, it's like, get me the next young white guy with a big YouTube presence. And that's one way to go in this. But the lesson I hope they would take from these is just let younger people kind of like represent their experience. I think there's so few movies just about characters in their twenties doing anything that looks like real life or resembles the way they see the world. And I don't think that it has to come from YouTube. Been Curry Barker had a YouTube following. It's not enormous. It's not like the 83 million people who watched The Back Room's video. It's just enough to give them a leg up. And the people are responding to this because it's a good movie and it has characters in their 20s whose lives feel like the lives of people in their 20s.
21:41 Speaker 04 And I, I hope someone, some smart person will take that lesson from it instead.
21:47 Speaker 02 Sam, Rihanna, thank you so much. This has like been such an enlightening conversation. You all brought up so many things I hadn't even thought of. So thank you both so much for joining me.
21:55 Speaker 04 Thank you.
21:56 Speaker 02 Happy to be here. That was Sam Adams, staff writer at Slate, and Rihanna Cruz, entertainment journalist and critic. This episode of It's Been a Minute was produced by Liam McBane. Engineering support came from Tiffany Vera Castro. This episode was edited by Nina Potuck. Our supervising producer is Cher Vincent. Our executive producer is Barton Girdwood. Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sanghweni. All right. That's all for this episode of It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Brittany Luce. Talk soon.
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