In “Backrooms,” Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a failed architect who runs a dreary discount furniture-store, drinking himself to sleep in his shop, depressed by his divorce. One day, he discovers a portal to a mysterious labyrinth of corridors with no apparent end.
His therapist, Mary, is played by “Sentimental Value” star Renate Reinsve. She also ends up in the creepy hallways, all while dealing with her own haunting childhood memories.
At only 20 years old, director Kane Parsons has now become the youngest filmmaker in history to top the US box office with the movie produced by independent studio A24.
On its opening weekend alone, the film with a production budget of $10 million has already brought in $81 million domestically and a total of $118 million with international sales, snatching the top spot from “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” the latest film in the Star Wars franchise.
Even though the film has yet to be released in many parts of the world in the first weeks of June, it is already smashing various records. It’s the strongest North American box office debut in history for an original horror movie, and the best opening weekend for a first-time filmmaker behind a non-franchise film.
Contributing to its success is the fact that the film was spawned by a viral phenomenon that equally feels like an endless maze.
A single photo inspires an expansive universe
It all started with a photograph of a large, empty office room with fluorescent lights and depressing yellow walls that circulated on various message boards over the past decade. Then in May 2019, it was also posted on a thread of the anonymous imageboard website 4chan.
A reply to the post provided the name “Backrooms” to the image: “If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in,” reads the iconic post that sparked an entire online mythology surrounding the space.
The post continued ominously: “God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.”
“Noclipping” is a term used in video games to refer to cheat codes that allow players to go through solid surfaces. In internet urban legends, this refers to the concept of accidentally “glitching” out of reality and falling into secret dimensions.
Another useful term to understand the internet phenomenon is creepypasta, which is the horror story variant of the internet slang “copypasta” (from “copy and paste”), through which entire blocks of text become viral by being copied around the internet.
Users therefore build on these creepypasta to create different paranormal stories, and they become the digital equivalent of urban legends.
Countless fans of the Backrooms creepypasta have since been posting photos related to the myth on reddit, publishing stories for fanfiction forums or creating jump-scare games for the gaming platform Steam.
The creator of “Severance,” Dan Erickson, has also said that the Backrooms concept influenced the uncanny, never-ending office space he created in his popular series.
YouTuber Kane Pixels draws Gen Z to the movie theaters
Kane Parsons was among the fans who prominently contributed to the Backrooms myth.
As a teenager, he was already an experienced YouTuber; he reportedly started posting on the channel at the age of 9, creating Let’s Play videos of “Minecraft.” Then, during the COVID lockdowns, he learned how to use the open-source 3D computer graphics software Blender to create animated backrooms for his “Backrooms” web series that went viral.
His clip “The Backrooms (Found Footage),” published four years ago on his YouTube channel Kane Pixels, has accumulated more than 80 million views.
The video depicts a 1990s young filmmaker who accidentally no-clips into an extradimensional maze of endless abandoned rooms where hostile entities are living.
His series of 22 “Backrooms” YouTube videos explore, for example, how a fictional corporation’s experiments might have accidentally created the liminal spaces, or show a pathologist’s autopsy of an unidentified victim.
YouTube generation is shifting Hollywood’s strategy
Parsons’ prominence as Kane Pixels is seen as an important factor in the record-breaking opening weekend of “Backrooms.”
The second surprise box office hit of the month is another horror film, also directed by a YouTuber, the 26-year-old Curry Barker. After three weekends of its release, his horror film “Obsessions” has earned $148 million worldwide against a less than $1-million production budget.
According to Variety magazine, these YouTubers’ success is marking “a tectonic shift in Hollywood that’s sent shock waves across the industry.”
Set against the 70% box office drop for “The Mandalorian and Grogu” in its second weekend in cinemas, industry observers are noting that Gen Z appears to be tiring of recycled movie franchises with perpetual spinoffs, prequels and sequels.
“The moment is here,” one studio head told The Hollywood Reporter. “YouTube is blessing these filmmakers and we are struggling to catch up.”
Still, Hollywood will not be abandoning its established strategies so soon, as sequels remain in the mix: Early reports indicate that Kane Parsons will be directing a second part to his record-breaking “Backrooms.”
Edited by: Brenda Haas
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