Backrooms is the movie of the season. With a budget of 10 million, it has made 135 million at the box office so far, and with an extraordinary critical reception and a notable reception from the public, the film is set to be one of the movies of the year. In addition to turning its very young director, Kane Parsons, who is only 20 years old, into one of the great revelations of cinema. He is also already making headlines for his completely contrarian opinions on AI in film. No to generative AI, thanks. In a recent interview with The Australian, the director […]
Backrooms is the movie of the season. With a budget of 10 million, it has made 135 million at the box office so far, and with extraordinary critical reception and notable audience reception, the film is set to be one of the movies of the year.
In addition to turning its very young director, Kane Parsons, who is only 20 years old, into one of the great revelations of cinema. He is also already making headlines for his completely contrarian opinions on AI in cinema.
Generative AI no, thanks
In a recent interview with The Australian, the director stated that regarding AI, he considers himself to be “in the same place as most people with their heads on their shoulders”: he does not want Hollywood, or any other industry, to start using AI. Stating that “if I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would,” Parsons seems to have very clear ideas about it.
In fact, it hasn’t stopped there. Stating that “generative AI feels less like innovation and more like a symptom of a greater cultural and economic corruption,” he has made his opinion on AI very clear. But he also wants to explore it in his work. He has said that “I am interested in using that iconography in art — not using AI to create the art itself, but examining what it represents,” hinting at where his upcoming projects may lead after the overwhelming success of his debut.
This contrasts with the recent statements by Martin Scorsese, stating that we must be open to AI, because cinema is a young medium and we should not close ourselves off to its possible evolutions. Demonstrating that there is a clear difference in how this technology is perceived generationally. And not necessarily in the age relationship that we would normally expect.
It is now official: Backrooms, in just one weekend at the box office, has earned 8 times what it cost, achieved the greatest success in A24’s history, and changed everything for its director, Kane Parsons, who at just 20 years old has just secured a spectacular future. However, it was a foreseen success: after all, it has been adding lore on its YouTube channel since January 7, 2022, and terrifying the audience with its version of the backrooms. But… what are they, how have they become a well-known term throughout the […]
It is official: Backrooms, in just one weekend at the box office, has earned 8 times its cost, achieved the biggest success in A24’s history, and changed everything for its director, Kane Parsons, who at just 20 years old has secured a spectacular future. However, it was a foreseen success: after all, he has been adding lore on his YouTube channel since January 7, 2022 and terrifying the audience with his version of the backrooms. But… what are they, how did they become a term known worldwide, and why have they dominated the box office? We’ll tell you.
Do not enter through the main door
Year 2019. Someone uploads to 4Chan, the famous anonymous Internet forum where some of the greatest atrocities in history have occurred, movies have been spoiled, and governments have been decided, the image of an interior place, carpeted, with several interconnected rooms illuminated only by artificial light. The text accompanying the image is “Post unsettling images that feel strange”. Another user, shortly after, named the phenomenon: “If you’re not careful and you step out of reality in the wrong places, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where there is nothing but the smell of old damp carpet, the madness of the yellow color, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum, and approximately six hundred million square kilometers of randomly arranged empty rooms to trap you”.
Immediately, 4Chan users adopted the term “Backrooms” and began posting both real images and digitally created ones, as well as creating stories about people who have fallen into these places. But of course, there was no real timeline or canonical story, so everyone followed the lore they wanted to follow. Little by little, they started uploading more and more videos, creepypastas, and images in a collaborative effort that we can hardly see anymore on the current Internet. And in this maelstrom, Kane Parsons appeared.
In the end, the Backrooms were evolutions of things we had already seen in horror, liminal places between reality and fiction, which we recognize and do not at the same time. Particularly, that first image that started it all was of a furniture store being renovated in Wisconsin back in 2002. A perfect moment for Parsons, at just 16 years old, to upload a video created with After Effects and Blender to YouTube titled The Backrooms (Found Footage), about a man being chased by a monster in this place, filmed with a VHS camera in the 90s. It was a success with tens of millions of views and excellent reviews, indicating that it was better than what Hollywood was doing at that time. Life was never the same for the teenager.
24 short films later, where the story expanded and grew to unforeseen limits even with breaks in between (for example, between 2023 and 2025 he could only make four shorts), A24 saw the potential and decided to finance a low-budget film directed, of course, by the young man, to ensure that he respects the lore, his ideas, and his own tone. The result has been global applause and the discovery of the “backrooms” for an audience unfamiliar with the Internet… in addition to the birth of a new franchise. The meme has officially died on the Internet, but it has found a new place to sneak in, because in this world we live in, nothing lives and nothing dies: it simply learns to transform.
