From YouTube to Hollywood: 6 of the greatest films from YouTuber directors
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It’s easy to take a dump on influencers and “content creators,” not least because quite a lot of them are absolutely awful. But the best of them are inspirational reminders of what creative people can do with some basic tools, a lot of imagination and a platform to show off their stuff.
We are now in an era when folks who grew up on YouTube are becoming actual film-makers. And where Marvel continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars making movies, and continues to struggle making a profit doing so, these influencer projects are often made on a shoestring yet draw in massive audiences.
Guess what? Spending years effectively making your own mini movies does apparently make you pretty adept at doing so on a larger scale.
Not every YouTuber movie has been a hit, or is even worth watching. But here are six we don’t think you should miss.
Backrooms: Kane Parsons
The YouTuber movie of the moment is Backrooms, which is based on a series of shorts by Kane Parsons, owner of the Kane Pixels YouTube channel. It’s about the manager of a carpet store in the US who discovers a mysterious, and pretty dangerous, series of underground rooms underneath the business. This one’s all about liminal spaces, and is a drenched in creepy dream-like atmosphere. While it was made on the cheap by Hollywood standards, it also involved 30,000 square feet of real set. And that will make perfect sense when you watch it.
Eighth Grade: Bo Burnham
You may think of Bo Burnham for his comedy specials, but long before that he published comedy songs on YouTube, for years. He’s also one of the few YouTuber film-makers who didn’t dive straight into horror, or at least not in the conventional sense. There’s plenty of that horrifying sense of self-consciousness, shame and loneliness to Eighth Grade, which follows Kayla in her last week of middle school.
Iron Lung: Mark Fischbach (Markiplier)
Video game adaptation Iron Lung was not the most highly rated or top grossing of the recent YouTuber productions. But it is highly notable in just how much Mark Fischbach took on here. He reportedly funded the film’s $3 million production budget himself, and co-wrote the film with game developer David Szymanski. Oh, and he directed and stars in it too. His character explores the blood ocean of a moon in a submarine, the Iron Lung of the title.
Obsession: Curry Barker
Curry Barker was one half of comedy duo That’s A Bad Idea on YouTube before making a splash on the movie-making scene with low-budget horror Milk & Serial, which was published on YouTube. But Obsession is a few steps above. A young man is obsessed with his friend, and uses a One Wish Willow charm to wish she were in love with him. And then fairly swiftly ends up wishing he had never done so.
Talk to Me: Danny and Michael Philippou
The Philippou brothers have already made two successful, and highly rated, horror movies. Their first was 2022’s Talk To Me, which is about a mysterious embalmed hand that lets you commune with spirits. While it sounds like the stuff of a trashy, low-effort horror flick, the result was one of the better films of the year, regardless of genre. Its follow-up, 2025’s Bring Her Back, is also absolutely worth a watch.
Lights Out: David F. Sandberg (ponysmasher)
Here’s one you may have missed. Lights Out was the first feature film from David F. Sandberg, who for years posted short films on YouTube under his Ponysmasher account. It’s based on a 3-minute short of the same name, and is about an entity that can only get you in the dark. Since then, Sandberg has gone on to direct Annabelle: Creation, Until Dawn and — from outside of horror — the two Shazam movies.
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