From Blair Witch To Obsession: 10 Low-Budget Horror Movies That Became Massive Hits
Great horror movies don't have to cost the Earth, as Curry Barker's Obsession and these other superb low-budget success stories prove.
At the time of writing, Barker’s breakout feature, Obsession, has amassed over $100 million and it's showing no signs of slowing down at all. Considering that the movie was made on a budget thought to be around $750,000 and that it is an original property lacking any big name actors, that is a very impressive result. It isn’t the first low-budget genre movie to perform well, though, with horror renowned for its profitability.
While it tends to be easy to generate a profit from horror, there are few that manage to take off in the same manner as Obsession. For Curry Barker, the film's journey built from word-of-mouth after early festival screenings. The movie debuted at TIFF in 2025, before touring the genre festival circuit with stops including Fantastic Fest, Overlook, and Panic Fest, where it took away the Audience Award for Best Film. This, coupled with some ingenious marketing that begged people to call Nikki — who would then bombard the caller's phone with messages at 4am — and Barker’s profile as a YouTube creator, generated a lot of excitement. That Obsession is also fantastic is a happy bonus.
Obsession now sits among an elite rank of horror films that have crossed over from indie to mainstream titan. There is something extremely special about movies that break out of the genre box like this. These films, even if eventually distributed by big studios, were made outside of the system, and therefore maintain the unpredictability that independent cinema thrives on. The lack of studio control often makes for more exciting movies, and the success of the following movies is almost certainly proof of that.
With The Blair Witch Project, directing duo Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick set the blueprint for low-budget horror movies becoming massive hits. Made for an initial $60,000, The Blair Witch Project went on to earn nearly $250 million. A key factor in the film’s success was its marketing campaign. Sánchez and Myrick harnessed the power of the internet in the early days, creating a website that detailed lore around the fictional Blair Witch, as well as positioning the disappearance of its characters as real.
The hook was that the found-footage was genuine, with the film going so far as to keep the actors' real names for the characters, and giving them cameras to film the bulk of the movie; only rough plot points were outlined for the cast and their performances relied on improvisation. The directing pair also famously orchestrated unexpected scare moments for the actors, such as the tent attack, to elicit a more realistic and natural reaction from the cast.
Parker Finn’s Smile began life as the short film Laura Hasn’t Slept before being scooped up by Paramount for a feature-length adaptation. While it might have had a big studio behind it from the start, Paramount was initially unsure about Smile. Originally set for a streaming release, it was the reaction during test screenings that swayed the studio.
The premise of the film, which sees an ever-smiling demon latch onto a new host every few days, is suitably disturbing, but the marketing went one step further. In the lead up to Smile’s release, actors were planted at a variety of high-profile events, such as hockey games, and spent the duration sinisterly smiling dead ahead. The hard work paid off, with Smile’s second weekend bringing almost as much as the first.
The slasher movie is now one of the most popular subgenres of horror, and yet, were it not for the work of horror maestro John Carpenter, it wouldn’t exist. His 1978 movie Halloween is often touted as one of the very first examples of the slasher film, helping to set up such rules as characters being killed after engaging in pre-marital sex, and the concept of the Final Girl.
In 1978, Halloween was terrifying for audiences, and the lasting power of the series has seen both its killer Michael Myers, and his preferred prey, Laurie Strode, continue to star in new stories spanning 50 years.
Not all movies that take the horror world by storm earn a lot of money, but eye-watering box-office results are not the only marker of a film’s success. Take Kyle Edward Ball’s Skinamarink for example. On paper, Skinamarink’s experimental nature and liminal space nightmare should have been locked away, known only to the most niche of genre cinephiles.
However, thanks to some of the more weird clips making their way onto TikTok, a much wider audience ended up seeking it out. The buzz generated from the social media platform meant that the film, made for around $10,000, ended up taking $2 million during a limited cinema run.
Way before Saw was a billion dollar franchise spanning ten films, it was a modest short film created by Australian film students James Wan and Leigh Whannell. The pair then used that simple sequence to pitch their feature idea to Hollywood. Eventually, the (at the time) relatively new studio Lionsgate decided to snap it up. The decision proved worthwhile as the Saw franchise essentially helped make the studio.
Unlike the films that followed in its wake, the original Saw was more serial killer thriller than stomach-churning horror. Saw spoke to fans of The Silence of the Lambs and Seven, and featured an exceptional final act reveal that had everyone telling all their friends they had to go watch it.
After seeing the success of viral marketing campaigns by films like Smile, Neon went hard promoting Longlegs. The campaign rightly earned the company a tonne of awards, including a sweep of the 2024 Clio Entertainment Awards. What made the marketing so brilliant was that it barely gave away any aspects of the final movie.
The first glimpses of the Longlegs movie on social media were written in code, inviting the audience to try and decipher what was happening. It was a stroke of genius that had everybody talking, and that chatter resulted in a big win for Neon, with Longlegs earning just shy of $128 million from a budget of $10 million.
For anyone wondering where Curry Barker can go after Obsession, one only has to look at the career of Ari Aster. His feature debut, Hereditary, came seemingly out of nowhere and delighted in disturbing and unnerving anyone brave enough to watch it.
Starring Toni Collette in a role that should have snagged her an Oscar, Hereditary became a word-of-mouth phenomenon. Making $90 million from a $10 million budget might make it less profitable than some of its peers, but Hereditary performed even better once it landed on streaming. Since then it has been hailed as a modern horror classic with Aster going from strength to strength with his follow-up Midsommar being viewed as equally amazing.
Damien Leone’s first Terrifier made a humble $421,000 from a budget of $35,000. Over the course of the last decade, though, the series has become incredibly popular, with Terrifier 3 making $90 million from a budget of just $2 million. The reason for this is not really about the film doing anything different from others, but rather the inclusion of Art the Clown. The Mr. Bean of horror, Art is a murderous mime that takes great delight in torturing and tormenting everyone that crosses his path.
As with Michael Myers, Chucky, and Ghostface before him, Art has become so recognisable that even children far too young to watch his movies know exactly who he is. Art’s mainstream appeal hasn’t changed him, though — he’s still as vile as ever in his methods of dispatch, and all eyes are on the upcoming fourth Terrifier film.
Earning $10 million more than fellow A24 horror Hereditary, Talk to Me currently holds the title of being the highest-grossing horror for the company. The Australian possession chiller is pure nightmare fuel, and a film unafraid to get nasty. Debuting at Sundance in 2022, Talk to Me had everyone confused about where its directors, Danny and Michael Philippou, had been hiding.
The truth was that the directing siblings hadn’t been hiding at all, and were actually YouTube celebrities, known for their comedy horror content under the name of RackaRacka. Letting the comedic couple loose with a fully-fledged horror was a risky move, but one that has paid off massively. The work of the Philippou’s with Talk to Me almost certainly opened the door for fellow YouTube star Curry Barker, and Kane Parsons (the director of Backrooms).
Almost a decade after The Blair Witch Project revolutionised the horror landscape, Oren Peli repeated the trick with Paranormal Activity. Like Blair Witch, Paranormal Activity was a found footage film, and it told of a couple being haunted by a demonic force. Made for just $15,000, Paranormal Activity is one of the most profitable movies ever made, raking in a staggering $193 million.
Rather than focus on the ‘real’ aspect in the marketing campaign, the film was instead sold on its fear factor. Now a common marketing tool, Paranormal Activity was one of the first to feature footage of early audience screenings, leaving everyone desperate to see what was causing all of the gasps, screams, and cowering on screen.
