by L.A. Mood Comics and Games

By Dan Brown

A movie’s ultra-low budget is not a good enough reason, on its own, to see it.

It’s a legitimate reason for the entertainment press to talk about the movie — because in 2026, a low-budget, microbudget, or no-budget film that takes the box office by storm is a novelty. 

The latest examples of the Hollywood media buzzing over films with minuscule production costs both happened this spring.

May 15 saw the release of the horror movie Obsession. Made for about US $750,000, Obsession has grossed more than $427 million worldwide.

Two weeks later, the horror film Backrooms – budgeted at roughly US $10 million – debuted in cinemas. To date, it has made over $365 million globally.

These two films have prompted hundreds of headlines along the lines of:

* “How ‘Obsession’ became an unprecedented box office horror hit – and one of the year’s most profitable movies” (Variety)

* “Backrooms and Obsession: How two low-budget horror films caused a Hollywood earthquake” (BBC)

* “‘Wildly unpredictable’ low-budget horror hit fans are flocking to the cinema to see” (Yahoo)

* “Small-budget horror is the winning ticket these days” (Darden Report)

If you know one thing about these horror hits, it’s that they were cheap to make. 

What you don’t know from reading the blanket coverage is whether they’re actually worth the trouble of schlepping your butt to the local multiplex, then buying a ticket. Despite all the column inches, the minutes of airtime, the bandwidth, we don’t know if they’re any good.

Readers with long memories have seen this movie before. 

When it came out in 1993, it was called El Mariachi. 

That Mexploitation flick’s remarkably low budget isn’t in the first sentence of the film’s Wikipedia page, but the fourth: “The US $7,225 production was originally intended for the Mexican home-video market, but executives at Columbia Pictures liked the film and bought the American distribution rights.”

As I recall, every time the picture appeared in the media back then, some talking head would inevitably mention, “Did you know Robert Rodgriguez made that thing for $7,000?” 

The focus of the coverage wasn’t on whether it was worth seeing, but rather the fact that a guy had made a whole feature for such a scant amount. 

It happened again five years later, when The Blair Witch Project received the attention of journalists and industry experts who fixated on its original production budget of US $35,000. 

Imagine that!

(Midbudget movies don’t garner much press attention because, by definition, they aren’t newsworthy.)

Now, it’s true Hollywood filmmaking has always been a battle between art and commerce. No question. But in the commotion surrounding these low-budget oddities, the art part gets left out. It’s all about the business aspect.

And it’s still happening.  

That’s why I’m always cautious when its low budget is the first thing I learn via the web, newspaper or TV about a soon-to-release motion picture.

It’s true, in the hands of an imaginative director, less of a budget can mean more of a movie. I do believe that. However, those cases are rare. 

And you wanna know a secret?

I don’t care about a film’s production cost, be it low or high. 

It doesn’t enter into my film-watching experience. 

At all.

After all, no one walked out of the theatre in 1994 after seeing Clerks (which cost Kevin Smith a mere $28,000 to make), and said, “I hated that movie, but I’m just glad they didn’t spend a ton of cash on it.”

Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.