Will Gen Z in Sacramento and elsewhere help return movie houses to their old glory?
The turnout for the 10:20 p.m. viewing of “Obsession” at the downtown Sacramento Cinemark wasn’t bad for a Tuesday night.
Fifteen out of 40 seats were filled (indicated by a snapped “One Wish Willow” graphic on the theater website).
Although, or perhaps because of the half-empty seats, theater etiquette seemed all-but forgotten — couples canoodling in their seats, doing little to hide the sound of their lips smacking; two friends cackling throughout the viewing; the intermittent glow from a man checking his phone. Still, there is a different feeling of watching a film on the big screen, the velvet darkness of the theater a portal into director Curry Barker’s sinister world of lonely young men and the fatal consequences of their heady desires.
It’s no secret theaters have been struggling the past several years. After movie ticket sales collapsed by 81% due to theater closures, theaters have stumbled in their recovery — a PEW Research Center study found that only 53% of respondents said they saw a movie in movie theater in 2025.
Nowadays, the biggest movie houses only seem willing to book blockbusters such as Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day” or Christopher Nolan “The Odyssey.” The summer of 2024’s “Barbenheimer” double-feature set a world record for the biggest collective opening weekend in film history.
However, a 2026 study by Fandango found that Gen Z movie-goers averaged about seven films per year, ahead of Gen X and baby boomers. They also led online movie ticket sales by 92%.
Whether Gen Z will restore movie-theaters to their once former glory is unlikely, in part because of all the options available on streaming platforms such as Netflix or Amazon Prime. But as Zoomers lead the charge on movie ticket sales, there is a higher chance the generation is transforming the movie theater experience from mundane recreation to something more eclectic such as listening to music on vinyl.
But it’s not just blockbusters that are bringing younger fans to the movies — it’s the smaller, YouTube driven, lower-budget films like “Backrooms” made by people like 20-year-old Kane Parsons and “Obsession’s” 26-year-old Barker.
“Obsession,” which will stream on Peacock beginning Friday, follows Bear, a shy twenty-something music store clerk harboring a crush on his best friend, Nikki. Rather than mustering the courage to tell her, Bear makes a wish on a novelty toy, a “One Wish Willow,” that Nikki will love him “more than anyone else.”
As a romantic horror film, “Obsession” appeals to Gen Z on multiple levels. The novelty of Barker’s take on the genre draws many audiences in, but the film also invites multiple viewings and plenty of room for analysis over Nikki’s possession by the spirit that loves Bear.
Before Bear makes his wish, the film is purposefully ambiguous about whether Nikki has any real feelings for him. But when the spirit takes over Nikki, the true source of ambiguity in the story becomes Bear’s complicity in Nikki’s loss of autonomy.
The controversial nature of the storyline has driven buzz online, inspiring a flurry of analysis content on TikTok and YouTube. And for many Zoomers like Hope Quichocho, those TikToks are how they originally heard about “Obsession.”
The snippets Quichocho saw online didn’t spoil the film for her. “I would say that the advertisement was good enough to hide a lot of the key moments,” she said.
For Paul Ruiz, going out to the movies is different from streaming at home.
“I go to drive-ins, so like they’re pretty cheap. You know, it’s like catching a matinee at the regular movie theaters,” Ruiz said.
Curated experiences such as a drive-in movie or cultural hits like “Obsession” are especially drawing in young movie-goers. For Lauren Hess and Tish Sparks, the founders of the independent theater, Dreamland Cinema, in Midtown, a curated experience is the future of movie theaters.
“I think that a boutique curated experience is going to catch on in a wider way, I think there you’ll see more places like ours pop up around the country, just because people want to see things that they haven’t had a chance to see otherwise. And if you’re gonna spend money and go out of the house, you want it to be a good experience” Sparks said.
“You know, ‘Obsession’ knew their audience, and they went to the places where their audiences are, and I think that’s something that we do at theaters like ours do well. We try to meet the audience where they are.”
This story was originally published July 16, 2026 at 3:49 PM.
