Viral Horror Creator Spencer Lackey Sets Feature Debut Lust With Neon and Blumhouse Atomic Monster
Hollywood’s growing interest in filmmakers who built their audiences online is showing no signs of slowing down. After the extraordinary 2026 success of Curry Barker’s Obsession and Kane Parsons’ Backrooms, another creator is making the jump to feature filmmaking. Spencer Lackey will write and direct Lust, a new horror movie bringing together Neon, Blumhouse Atomic Monster and Spooky Pictures, with some formidable genre names behind him. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news, having previously identified Lackey as one of the creators repeatedly mentioned by agents, managers and producers when the publication asked who could become the next Barker or Parsons.
Plot details are being kept completely under wraps, so for now even the title isn’t giving us much to work with. What we do know is that Neon and Blumhouse Atomic Monster will co-finance Lust, while Steven Schneider will produce for Spooky Pictures. Jason Blum and James Wan are producing for Blumhouse Atomic Monster, giving Lackey a considerable amount of horror experience around him as he makes his first feature. Schneider was one of the producers of the original Paranormal Activity, while Blum and Wan hardly require introductions to horror audiences after their involvement in franchises including Insidious, The Conjuring and numerous other genre successes.
Lackey hasn’t arrived from nowhere. The New York-based filmmaker has amassed around seven million followers across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, largely through original narrative horror shorts. His videos frequently take ordinary situations and introduce something deeply wrong into the background, with ghosts, creatures and strange figures appearing while his characters are doing decidedly uncinematic things such as sleeping or laundry. It is horror designed for an audience accustomed to watching closely and discovering the thing they probably wish they hadn’t noticed.
He has already begun moving beyond extremely short social-media horror. Lackey developed You Are Here, a larger-scale short centred upon a young man trapped inside a strange world constructed from memories. Lackey’s original crowdfunding material described it as drawing upon dreamcore, liminal spaces, analogue horror and the visual language associated with Backrooms-style imagery. The project raised $14,925 from 259 contributions, and Lackey stated during its development that the intention was for the short to act as a proof of concept for a possible feature-length version.
You Are Here subsequently had Mike Flanagan involved as a producer and travelled the festival circuit before being released online. That connection gave Lackey another bridge between internet horror and the traditional industry, but Lust represents a much larger step. Instead of adapting one of his existing viral clips into a feature, Lackey is now being entrusted with an original project backed by companies with substantial theatrical and genre experience.
The timing certainly isn’t accidental. Curry Barker and Kane Parsons have provided Hollywood with two enormous examples of what can happen when online horror filmmakers are allowed to move into features without abandoning the instincts that built their audiences. Barker’s Obsession has become one of 2026’s extraordinary box-office stories, while Parsons’ Backrooms turned the internet phenomenon he had been developing through YouTube into a major theatrical success. TheWrap reports that Obsession has passed $509 million worldwide from a budget of around $750,000, while Backrooms has reached approximately $394 million worldwide from a budget below $10 million.
Those numbers make it considerably easier to understand why studios are paying attention to filmmakers who have already demonstrated an ability to frighten millions of people without beginning inside the conventional Hollywood system. Lackey himself discussed that changing attitude with Dread Central last year, arguing that although creating a TikTok and directing a feature are obviously different disciplines, many of the same creative skills are being exercised. Now he gets the opportunity to test that theory on a much bigger canvas.
Nor is Lackey alone. Sam Evenson, another filmmaker who developed an audience through online horror, is moving into features with an adaptation of his viral short Ignore It. Elsewhere, characters created by artist Trevor Henderson are moving towards cinemas, with separate feature projects based around his viral creations Siren Head and Cartoon Cat. What once might have been viewed primarily as online horror content is increasingly becoming a hunting ground for studios looking for filmmakers, concepts and characters with an audience already waiting for them.
There is currently no announced cast, release date or production start for Lust, and its actual story remains secret. That leaves little to judge beyond the talent involved, but Lackey certainly isn’t being sent into his first feature without experienced hands around him. With Neon, Blumhouse Atomic Monster and Spooky Pictures backing the project, and Blum, Wan and Schneider producing, Hollywood’s search for the next online horror filmmaker to make the leap has found its latest candidate.
