Box Office: ‘Obsession’ Tops ‘The Blair Witch Project’ as Historic Run Continues

I’ve got a brutal flu, so I’m not going to do my usual deep dive into every corner of the box office this weekend, but there’s really only one story worth talking about right now anyway: Obsession.

The film added another $19 million this weekend (-27%) and continues to hold at a level most movies would kill for. More importantly, it’s now officially surpassed The Blair Witch Project‘s $248.6 million worldwide total, making it one of the most successful independently produced horror films in history.

That’s a number many people thought would never be touched by another indie horror movie.

And the funny thing is, the more I think about it, the more the success of Obsession makes perfect sense.

Every single person on the planet has either gone on a date or has a dating horror story. The concept is instantly relatable. You don’t need to know horror mythology. You don’t need to understand some giant franchise. Everybody gets it.

That’s why I’ve been calling it the Jaws of dating.

It’s such an obvious idea that you almost wonder how nobody got there first.

What continues to blow my mind is that Obsession is doing all of this while competing against some massive studio releases.

This weekend saw Steven Spielberg‘s new alien film Disclosure Day open to $45 million. That’s a solid number and a little better than some early projections, but it’s not exactly setting the world on fire for a filmmaker of Spielberg’s stature or a film with this kind of scale behind it. Reviews haven’t exactly been spectacular either.