Bob Mondello

The film Backrooms, about a furniture dealer who discovers a secret door in his showroom.

This place builds like a maze.

It just goes on and on.

Opened this weekend to an astonishing $81 million, the biggest opening ever for an original horror film.

Its 20-year-old director is now the youngest filmmaker to have a number one box office hit.

And remarkably, backroom scoring with patrons primarily in their teens and twenties did not step on the box office momentum of a fellow YouTuber's horror hit that's playing to that same audience.

In a genre where precipitous weekly drops are the norm, Obsession rose for the third consecutive weekend.

No wide-release film has done that in a non-holiday week since E.T.

the Extraterrestrial in 1982.

Bob Mondello, NPR News.

The film industry news site Deadline calls it YouTube fever.

Hot new films from directors who got their starts making short viral videos.

I found a place.

This week's number one hit, Back Rooms, which will take in close to $90 million by Sunday night.

This place builds like a maze.

It just goes on and on.

Is a thriller from Kane Parsons, a YouTube creator.

It's an extension of a web series he began four years ago when he was 17.

In second place is Obsession.

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