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Matt Belinkie, Pete Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matt Wrather broke the One Wish Willow and it paid off, as a slate of fresh horror comedy has captured the attention of the moviegoing public and the zeitgeist at large… but to what end?

Following on Matt and Jordan’s recent two-hander on Backrooms, Belinkie shares his take on Obsession, which has become not just the hit film of the day, but something of a popular moment of connection, speaking to something deep and current in the culture, especially among young people, and particularly young women. To bring folks back into movie theaters together, the current moment in horror comedy seems to speak to not just shared fears, but shared relationships with fear, and a need to mirror to one another an understanding of a fearful reality that might be too seldom honestly discussed in good faith in society at large.

The Overthinkers propose candidates for this resonance, particularly in contrast to the broad cultural distaste for recent power fantasy tentpoles The Mandalorian and Grogu and Masters of the Universe, as well as a nadir for tentpole comedy that seems to accompany this zenith in tentpole horror.

Do you worry about problems? Yearn toward solutions? Veer toward thrill or safety? Listen to the episode, and make your One WIsh come true.

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Further Reading

• Backrooms, Liminal Spaces, and Gen-Z Anxiety, by Joseph Bernstein in the New York Times
• Obsession and the Rise of Incel Horror: When Men’s Entitlement Becomes the Monster, by Emma Cieslik in Ms. Magazine
• Roger Ebert’s 3 ½ star review of Matinee (1993)
• Why Did Hollywood Stop Making Comedies, a Statistical Analysis, by Daniel Parris, from Stat Significant on Substack
• New He-Man Movie is One of 2026’s Biggest Box Office Bombs, by Zack Zwein on Kotaku
• Dying of Laughter: The Intersection of Horror and Comedy by Dani Bethea on Dread Central