There’s a common trope in apocalyptic thrillers where a deadly plague — naturally occurring, man-made or extraterrestrial — suddenly goes viral, leading to the end of the world as we know it.
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we → ’ → it
The idea of something strange and potentially dangerous being unleashed on an unsuspected populace is terrifying, unless you’re a movie producer, in which case it’s the best possible outcome.
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it → unleash → populace
Two of the most profitable American films of the year offer case studies in niche items breaking mainstream containment: Curry Barker’s “Obsession,” which has already earned 700 times its reported $750,000 budget worldwide; and Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s “You Can See Everything,” poised to become one of the highest-grossing non-music documentaries of all time and possibly the first ever nominated for a best-picture Oscar.
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You → offer → Oscar
Beyond their mutually supernatural return on investment, “Obsession” and “You Can See Everything” have something else in common: they’re both horror movies (or at least psychological thrillers).
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they → see → something
Certainly, Barker’s riff on “The Monkey’s Paw” is more explicit about its genre orientation, offering up an energetic if derivative array of jump scares, face-smashes and occult touches.
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riff → offer → scares
But Fielder and Oppenheim’s surveillance-era update of “Scenes from a Marriage” has its share of shivery, uncanny moments, including the image of a digitally scanned, holographic Elizabeth Holmes being programmed by her flesh-and-blood husband as a mouthpiece for his alt-right rhetoric.
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update → have → rhetoric
Quick: which of these two films is an allegory for a strain of incel-era control-freak misogyny that visualizes women as easily manipulated avatars of desire?
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that → visualize → desire
Surprise: it’s both of them, and a Halloween double feature of “Obsession” and “You Can See Everything” would be instructive.
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You → ’ → Everything
A year in horror
In terms of actual, official horror movies, 2026 offered up a mixed bag of sequels, remakes and variously imaginative renovations of extant intellectual property.
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2026 → offer → property
For those keeping score, Nia DaCosta’s “The Bone Temple,” released all the way back in January, was a visceral and intermittently exhilarating sequel to “28 Years Later,” further developing its predecessor’s themes of mortality and endurance while delivering a payload of pulled-pork gore.
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Temple → keep → gore
Zach Cregger’s “Resident Evil” also did well by its source material, effectively replicating the point-and-shoot excitement of the original video game.
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Evil → do → game
Elsewhere, though, the franchise pickings were slim, whether in terms of ostensibly actually scary movies — “Insidious: Out of the Further,” “Scream 7,” “Evil Dead Burn” — or the tired spoofery of “Scary Movie,” which name-checked the phenomenon of so-called “elevated horror” while failing to successfully cut it down to size.
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which → check → size
Surely, the Wayanses were kicking themselves for not waiting a few more months before locking the picture, when it would have been possible to make fun of Freaky Nikki from “Obsession” or have the characters get lost in “Backrooms.”
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characters → kick → Backrooms
Speaking of Kane Parsons’ surprise blockbuster: it may ultimately represent more of a paradigm shift than “Obsession.”
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it → speak → Obsession
Both films exemplify the YouTube-to-Hollywood pipeline, but where “Obsession”’s esthetics simply feel borrowed, “Backrooms” suggests something more ingenious and sinister — a horror movie about the insidious nature of reiteration, which is to say a metaphor for artificial intelligence.
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which → exemplify → intelligence
The cognitive dissonance of a movie set in the analogue past addressing the digital present is real, but Parsons — who just turned 21 this summer — is clever beyond his years: he’s also spoken out against generative AI, referring to it as “cultural rot.”
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he → set → rot
It may or may not be a coincidence that the surname of the unseen founder of the film’s villainous Async Research Institute is Altman, but either way, “Backrooms”’s vision of warped, distorted physical and virtual space feels like a bellwether: it’s a nightmare under the sign of OpenAI.
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it → feel → OpenAI
Christmas brings Luca Guadagnino’s OpenAI origin story, “Artificial,” which will compete with Robert Eggers’s creature feature “Werwulf” (you know it’s an old-fashioned monster movie by the way it’s spelled).
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it → bring → way
Suffice it to say that “Artificial” looks scarier: it arrives hyped as the second coming of “The Social Network,” as opposed to Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Reckoning,” which is basically a lousy rerun of “The West Wing.”
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which → suffice → Wing
“I mean, they’re trying to make a good movie, and maybe it will be good,” Altman told Vanity Fair about Guadagnino’s film, in which he’s played by Andrew Garfield.
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he → mean → Garfield
He has also denied having any involvement in Amazon MGM Studios’ decision to drop the film following its parent company’s announcement of a $50-billion partnership with OpenAI.
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He → deny → OpenAI
Given Altman’s tendency for deranged equivocations about AI — that it could possibly lead to the end of the world while also creating some pretty good tech companies — no satire would seem to be too extreme.
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satire → give → companies
Altman isn’t the only narcissistic billionaire being portrayed in “Artificial”: there’s also Elon Musk, impersonated — apparently to uncanny effect — by the abrasive comedian Ike Barinholtz.
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Altman → portray → comedian
Tesla’s CEO has his pick when it comes to decrying alleged acts of cinematic character assassination — not only “Artificial,” but Alex Gibney’s excoriating documentary “Musk,” which was just pulled from theatres after a fraught, commercially DOA two-week run.
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which → have → run
“See it while you can,” Gibney exhorted his social media followers, alluding to a possible co-ordinated campaign to suppress advertising and promotion for his portrait of the entrepreneur as a con man.
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Gibney → see → man
It may be, though, that even viewers who most fear and loathe Elon — the most important demographic for a brand-name takedown like Gibney’s — aren’t dying to spend four hours in his excruciating company.
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who → fear → company
Exhibit B that one-percenter critique is a hard sell these days: Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Digger,” which exists at the other end of the economic spectrum from “Obsession” and “You Can See Everything” — a $15-million domestic gross against a $150-million budget — but aligns with them, spiritually and thematically, as a horror film.
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You → exist → film
Or more specifically, an eco-horror film, with Tom Cruise as a 10-gallon snake-oilman — a hybrid of J.D. Rockefeller, Donald Trump and “There Will Be Blood”’s Daniel Plainview — trying to lasso a runaway glacier shaken loose into the ocean by his own drill-baby-drill philosophy.
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Cruise → try → philosophy
In retrospect, the decision to market Iñárritu’s film as a broad farce in order to protect its central conceptual twist looks like bad business: there’s an argument that the film hidden not so secretly inside “Digger” — the dystopian cautionary fable-slash-backstage-drama about the complex relationship between art and tragedy — would have been more compelling to fans of the director’s “Birdman.”
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film → market → Birdman
Whether “Digger” adds up to more or less than the sum of all of its giant, whirring parts is one of the year’s most polarizing film-cultural talking points.
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adds → add → points
Suffice it to say that the coda is more frightening on its own terms than anything in, say, “The Other Mommy.”
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coda → suffice → Mommy
Iñárritu subjects the multiplex audience — or the small percentage of it that showed up — to a glimpse in a stylized mirror, and the effect is unsettling.
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effect → subject → mirror
It suggests that we’re living in a world where containment has already been broken, with no fix (quick or otherwise) in sight.
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containment → suggest → sight
The Aporia
