6 Movies That Made Comedians & YouTubers Horror’s Hottest Movie Makers (and 1 That Breaks The Rule)

Jordan Peele is probably still best-known in front of the camera for his work on the Key & Peele sketch show. Across 53 episodes, he and Keegan-Michael Key teamed up for some of the most hilarious skits of the 21st century – many of which are still worthy of stopping you in your tracks if they pop up on social media.

How exactly this man went from that to crafting one of the most incisive and entertaining horror movies of the past decade is beyond me, but Get Out really did put Peele on the map as one of the most important voices in the genre today. Perhaps, with his sketches tackling everything from politics to sport, education to social status, it’s the fact he’s had his finger firmly on the pulse of current-day culture, particularly the Black experience in America. 

He channelled all of that into the story for Get Out, with astonishing aplomb. Since then, Peele has proven he was no one-hit wonder with his follow-up, Us, garnering mass praise, and his third feature, Nope, arguably being the best of the lot.

Describing The Dirties as a horror movie is questionable, I’ll admit. The first hour of the film is pure mockumentary comedy and coming-of-age drama, but the last 20 minutes are some of the most harrowing scenes I’ve seen in years. Those haunting final words spoken on-screen will stay with me for a long, long time as the lead character’s abhorrent plans are realised in devastating fashion.

Matt Johnson is the man behind this low-budget, high-impact movie, but before this, he was fooling around with the web series Nirvanna The Band The Show. The ten episodes of that series, and the subsequent TV show that followed, are so incredibly silly that it’s unthinkable that his brain could go to such dark places.

Still, maybe we should have seen it coming. The Matt we see in the webseries – and indeed, in the hit comedy movie from this year, Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie – is a stickler for plans, has no comprehension of when he’s crossing the line, and really knows how to hold a grudge.

Film fans today will know the Philippou Brothers for their terrifying feature debut, Talk To Me, and their follow-up, Bring Her Back. However, long before that, the siblings went by the name RackaRacka on YouTube, where they produced short comedy-horror parodies. Referencing pop culture cornerstones like Harry Potter, Star Wars, and even McDonald's, the pair showed glimpses of their penchant for violent themes among the madcap slapstick. 

We shouldn’t really be too surprised that they entered into the horror realm, then. But what is surprising is just how effective they have become at creating unsettling, uncomfortable atmospheres with their films.

While Bring Her Back is a bleak and brutal watch, it’s Talk To Me that really exhibits the pair’s fervour for nightmare-inducing visuals and imaginative ideas when it comes to horror stories.

Thanks to the mega success of Weapons and the popularity of his previous film, Barbarian, any movie fan would be forgiven for being oblivious to the fact that Zach Cregger actually first made his mark in the creative sphere as part of a YouTube comedy troupe known as ‘The Whitest Kids U Know (WKUK)’.

Cregger and his clan made a Dungeons & Dragons webseries, provided cultural and societal analysis of current affairs, told more personal stories, and even made music videos. Clearly, Cregger relished the idea of creating, regardless of what content it was, but he’s certainly found his feet in the horror pool now.

Much like Jordan Peele, Cregger understands what makes people tick and is able to tap into that in creepy yet comedic ways. From Justin Long measuring the square footage of the scary tunnel under his house in Barbarian to the kids in Weapons beating the crap out of Aunt Gladys at the end of the film, Cregger knows how to switch up the tone of his work at just the right time – probably owing to his ability to be versatile across a range of different content online.

Curry Barker is the talk of Tinsel Town right now, thanks to the mammoth success of his movie Obsession. Costing just $750,000 to make, the horror movie phenomenon has surpassed $100 million at the box office and has broken all kinds of records. Deservedly so, too – it’s one of the most intense, interesting, and shocking movies of the year.

Obsession is actually Barker’s second feature film. He previously made a highly provocative and twisted flick called Milk & Serial, which really leans into the idea of online fame and YouTube clout as a framing device. Clearly, Barker has some outstanding ideas in his head, and he knows how to express them in unique and compelling ways.

You’d never really have seen this horror interest coming, though. Before all this, Barker and his pal Cooper Tomlinson found viral success with their short sketches, largely focused on situational comedy, turning relatable yet very awkward scenarios into hysterical and heightened versions of real life. Still, in many ways, that’s exactly what Barker has done with his features.

No sooner had 26-year-old Curry Barker exploded onto the scene than his hype crown was stolen by someone even younger. Kane Parsons has just released his directorial debut at the tender age of 20, but this is no nepo baby job or director-for-hire gig. No, Backrooms is the fruit of Parsons’ labour, many years in the making, with the young man finding viral fame for his YouTube shorts on the idea of liminal spaces over seven years ago.

The original Backrooms movie and associated webseries, explainers, and Reddit deep-dives took the internet by storm in the 2010s, and Parsons (aka Kane Pixels on YouTube) was largely responsible for it all. A24 have now put their faith in him to extend that story, and it was clearly a wise gamble indeed.

In truth, no one could have tackled Backrooms with more passion, knowledge, and creativity than Parsons. You could hire a director twice (or three times) his age, and you simply wouldn’t be able to tap into what makes the very concept so fascinating.

And now we come to the one movie that – as harsh as it sounds – simply failed to get anywhere near the others on this list. 

Chris Stuckmann spent years building a dedicated following on his YouTube channel by offering genuinely insightful and engaging film reviews. There are very few people in the modern era who can match him when it comes to discussing movies, but that doesn’t always mean you’re going to be good at making movies.

Shelby Oaks was Stuckmann’s big homage to horror movies from days gone by, like The Blair Witch Project and Lake Mungo. However, in leaning so far into those influences, Stuckmann’s directorial debut ended up being little more than a pastiche of the films it wanted so badly to emulate.

Stuckmann raised over $1 million in the Kickstarter campaign to make this movie, had the backing of horror fiend Mike Flanagan, and attracted distribution from Neon. On paper, it had all the ingredients to flourish. However, while the other filmmakers listed above worked extensively to tell different kinds of stories through their online content beforehand, Stuckmann perhaps suffered due to his more static, analytical approach to film.