I'm a long-term "OG" Kane Pixels fan. I took a friend to see the opening night preview and we both loved it.
Anyone not familiar with Kane - who was 16 when he started making his "found footage" films in Blender - the guy is a truly brilliant mind. Listening to him talk... you can close your eyes and he speaks like someone middle aged. It's almost uncanny.
Anyhow, in addition to his genuinely excellent Backrooms videos, I highly recommend you turn off the lights and take in his The Oldest View series as well.
I really enjoyed it. I had no idea what a “backrooms movie” would end up being, but it was exactly what I could have hoped for having enjoyed his other work.
Honestly creators from youtube putting out movies recently has probably been the most interested in going out to see something in years.
I saw it. I'm not a young Internet kid. And I enjoyed it - it's quite clever, I never cringed at terrible dialogue, people behaved in ways that you would expect them to in strange circumstances. Worth seeing. Amazing it was made by a 20 year old.
I think people are excited for new ideas in cinema. A24’s track record is far from perfect, but I respect their willingness to try things. In my opinion, this movie is no exception. Very meandering and largely devoid of any real plot. Did a good job holding the tension at points, but ultimately fell flat in delivering on that tension.
Probably worth a watch if you enjoy the genre. If you’re someone who just enjoys a good story, this is a pretty easy skip.
Between this, Iron Lung, and The Amazing Digital Circus finale getting a cinema release, I think this is shaping up to be a great year for small movie productions
The Amazing Digital Circus finale got completely shat on by fans after they leaked the ending and harassed Gooseworx because they didn't like it.
Is it worth being involved in indie production when success just guarantees a hate campaign against you? It will probably happen over Backrooms soon enough.
it's the exact opposite of an original story. It's so successful because it is so strongly based on viral and meme-able internet content that is immediately recognizable to any person who spends time on the internet, it has its roots literally in creepypasta.
What A24 is doing with this movie is what the large studios have been doing, they're just doing it for a different audience. It's franchise driven content but simply 'gamer-coded' and sourced from Youtube or game-related media rather than from more traditional sources, mobilizing the gen-z fans of that content.
This is something people keep saying out of inertia. It hasn't really been true for a few years. There's been a ton of original movies lately. I guess they just don't get a lot of press or people don't go to the movies anymore. Here's a few from the last couple years:
Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die
Honey Bunch
Cold Storage
Send Help
Marty Supreme
Dust Bunny
Fackham Hall
Eternity
Rental Family
Bugonia
Roofman
Ok, going to cut this short because I'm only back to October 2025 and it's already long. Seriously, there's lots of movies out there that aren't part of a franchise or other IP (other than maybe books).
A similar thing is happening in video games. Big studios rarely have interesting games. Just GameTitle2026. Reboot of game from the 90s and no one is left of the original staff.
Still a lot of people buy those, so studios continue to make them.
Also indie games are too cheap. I noticed the need to correct my own thinking: Why should the boring game of a big publisher cost more than the great game made by a single guy? And allowed myself to use more money when I want to support smaller studios.
I don't think that cinephiles are a huge target market, though.
Major studios produce movies that most people want to see. The cinephiles don't like those films, but conveniently, they do like films that don't cost a quarter of a billion dollars to make.
The headline here is about a movie that took in $81 million. The Mandalorian took in about the same amount in its first weekend, and it's considered a financial disaster.
If people would start going to see more of those low-budget movies, they'd see a lot more interesting films. The cinephiles would be thrilled, because it would get those films into major theaters (over 2,000 for this film), rather than having to seek them out in tiny arthouse theaters for very few showings.
The what? Horror something? ....started on 4chan? Yeah, immediate aboutface here. And reading wiki articles about it that throw around words like "creepypasta" like that's widely understood?
Liminal spaces I get. Reminds of Severance. And anyways, how is this worth going to a theater for? <Shrug> A24 has done well. Is 81M considered breaching 'mainstream'? Because these niche horror things being portrayed as part of the greater 'culture' is tiring.
The original videos have tens of millions of views, became extremely popular memes online, and the movie is now the biggest-ever opening for an independent film. It's not niche, just a bottom-up internet-driven thing.
If it helps, there's some stratification that makes understanding it a bit confusing at first. There's basically four layers:
- The original 4chan post, a vaguely unsettling photo of an odd yellow room with an evocative caption about it being a vast realm outside reality that you can accidentally fall into to be stalked by unseen monsters.
- This post went viral and kicked off the "creepy liminal spaces" trend, where people found or created unnerving images of dark or abandoned places that are normally busy, like malls, schools, hotels, airports, etc.
- This evolved into the idea that the original yellow Backrooms is just one of infinitely-many connected environments/levels, each reflecting a different surreal aesthetic: tiled pools, children's playspaces, empty suburbs, etc. People also invented their own weird creatures that inhabited them (think the SCP Foundation stuff crossed with Five Nights at Freddy's). This resulted in an explosion of videos, wikis, and indie games exploring and expanding the concept.
- Kane Parsons created a more restrained and focused version of the above in his YouTube series, dispensing with the profusion of levels and monsters and drilling down on various first-person, found-footage explorations of the original Backrooms and glimpses of the mysterious company researching it. His take became by far the most popular, and landed him the director role for the film, which has turned out to be quite thoughtful and well-done.
I definitely recommend checking it out if you like surreal psychological horror. It's good even if you're not familiar with his web series.
I practically never watch any movies because they are almost always trash, but decided to go watch Obsession after seeing a youtuber (penguinZ) talking positively about it
Yeah it's pretty good. I am in my late 30. Excited for Backrooms which isnt yet available
Chiwetel Ejiofor is a phenomenal actor, that probably helped. This is more of an indictment of Hollywood’s creative bankruptcy than anything, strip-mining Star Wars or Marvel will only take you so far.
Now that Backrooms has been a hit, I wonder if we’ll ever get a House of Leaves movie, which was somewhat of an inspiration for the original backrooms lore.
House of Leaves form of hypertextual academic satire is so firmly bound to the written word that it would be un-filmable, but you could make a film from the Navidson Record (and it would potentially be much more interesting than Backrooms).
I recall Danielewski sharing a spec script for a possible TV series some years ago. Appropriately, it referenced itself and treated the show as a real thing within its own universe.
In the meantime, claymation studio Laika has a faithful adaptation of "Piranesi" in the pipeline. It's more dreamlike and beautiful than gothic horror, but it does center on a similar concept of an infinite structure existing beyond physically reality that reflects human thought in enigmatic ways.
All they had to do was simply hire a talented person who knows how to make compelling narrative art. This is lost on the movie industry, though Hollywood has been treading water for over a decade now, failing to examine its failures and coasting on inertia.
In general, there is sooo much free money on the ground for large, hierarchical American corporations to do the following
1. Give young talented people resources and freedom
2. Don't put them through endless bullshit internal status games
The reason why the tech industry in the US thrives so much is partially due to the fact that it is one of the few industries that gives people high salaries and agency in their roles without a huge amount of experience.
Almost everywhere else is just an artifically gated series of internal politics, nepotism and pointless rituals in too-big-to-fail industries, which attract people who prefer these games over actual results.
I saw a Youtuber recently make a compelling argument that one of the features Hollywood has been missing is the pipeline of young, imaginative talent that music video direction used to provide. Backrooms, Iron Lung, etc. make a good case that YouTube can be that new pipeline.
The movie was great but it's not a stand-alone movie, it is a small piece of the full story so don't go in thinking that everything will be explained and tied up in a neat little bow.
I watched the YouTube series and didn't notice anything specific that it added or answered. It provided a bit more context about ASync, but that wasn't really a core part of the movie (or at least didn't actually answer anything other than they had discovered it and had been researching/experimenting with it).
Is there something I missed?
omg my family we all went to see this today and we were all raging at the end. this is one of the dumbest movies any of us have ever seen. no plot. no point. complete waste of my life that i will never get back.
I wonder how much of this is a kind of alternate nostalgia like Vaporwave. Similar to the aesthetic draw of Severance.
Wandering around the halls of some functional institution was definitely a childhood past time of mine. Now still wondering how our parents and grandparents enjoyed private office space, lounge furniture designed by professional celebrities like Eames, and time, doing more with less. Now stuck at home or wandering in some open plan space that looks like college kids got permission to use a charge card at Ikea.
I'm convinced it's from the old JCPenny/Sears/mall back hallways that were minimally decorated that housed the photo studio and layaway filtered through the eyes of a 5 year old.
This is where internet lore and 'YouTuber'-made movies will begin to pass stuff like Star Wars and the DCU in popularity and the mainstream consciousness. Backrooms will gross just as much as the Mandalorian movie and the upcoming Supergirl flop, if not more. Glad to see it. In terms of good will, this point was passed well over a decade ago.
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[ 6.8 ms ] story [ 814 ms ] threadAnyone not familiar with Kane - who was 16 when he started making his "found footage" films in Blender - the guy is a truly brilliant mind. Listening to him talk... you can close your eyes and he speaks like someone middle aged. It's almost uncanny.
Anyhow, in addition to his genuinely excellent Backrooms videos, I highly recommend you turn off the lights and take in his The Oldest View series as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjY897CCu4g&list=PLVAh-MgDVq...
He painstakingly recreated a random demolished suburban Texas mall from archival footage. It's wild how good he is at this.
It was unsettling but maybe that was the point.
Probably worth a watch if you enjoy the genre. If you’re someone who just enjoys a good story, this is a pretty easy skip.
Major studios were too afraid to produce something fresh instead of numberless sequels and reboots in the last decade or so.
Is it worth being involved in indie production when success just guarantees a hate campaign against you? It will probably happen over Backrooms soon enough.
What A24 is doing with this movie is what the large studios have been doing, they're just doing it for a different audience. It's franchise driven content but simply 'gamer-coded' and sourced from Youtube or game-related media rather than from more traditional sources, mobilizing the gen-z fans of that content.
Still a lot of people buy those, so studios continue to make them.
Also indie games are too cheap. I noticed the need to correct my own thinking: Why should the boring game of a big publisher cost more than the great game made by a single guy? And allowed myself to use more money when I want to support smaller studios.
Major studios produce movies that most people want to see. The cinephiles don't like those films, but conveniently, they do like films that don't cost a quarter of a billion dollars to make.
The headline here is about a movie that took in $81 million. The Mandalorian took in about the same amount in its first weekend, and it's considered a financial disaster.
If people would start going to see more of those low-budget movies, they'd see a lot more interesting films. The cinephiles would be thrilled, because it would get those films into major theaters (over 2,000 for this film), rather than having to seek them out in tiny arthouse theaters for very few showings.
Liminal spaces I get. Reminds of Severance. And anyways, how is this worth going to a theater for? <Shrug> A24 has done well. Is 81M considered breaching 'mainstream'? Because these niche horror things being portrayed as part of the greater 'culture' is tiring.
Backrooms for me was definitely a yum!
If it helps, there's some stratification that makes understanding it a bit confusing at first. There's basically four layers:
- The original 4chan post, a vaguely unsettling photo of an odd yellow room with an evocative caption about it being a vast realm outside reality that you can accidentally fall into to be stalked by unseen monsters.
- This post went viral and kicked off the "creepy liminal spaces" trend, where people found or created unnerving images of dark or abandoned places that are normally busy, like malls, schools, hotels, airports, etc.
- This evolved into the idea that the original yellow Backrooms is just one of infinitely-many connected environments/levels, each reflecting a different surreal aesthetic: tiled pools, children's playspaces, empty suburbs, etc. People also invented their own weird creatures that inhabited them (think the SCP Foundation stuff crossed with Five Nights at Freddy's). This resulted in an explosion of videos, wikis, and indie games exploring and expanding the concept.
- Kane Parsons created a more restrained and focused version of the above in his YouTube series, dispensing with the profusion of levels and monsters and drilling down on various first-person, found-footage explorations of the original Backrooms and glimpses of the mysterious company researching it. His take became by far the most popular, and landed him the director role for the film, which has turned out to be quite thoughtful and well-done.
I definitely recommend checking it out if you like surreal psychological horror. It's good even if you're not familiar with his web series.
Yeah it's pretty good. I am in my late 30. Excited for Backrooms which isnt yet available
In the meantime, claymation studio Laika has a faithful adaptation of "Piranesi" in the pipeline. It's more dreamlike and beautiful than gothic horror, but it does center on a similar concept of an infinite structure existing beyond physically reality that reflects human thought in enigmatic ways.
In general, there is sooo much free money on the ground for large, hierarchical American corporations to do the following
1. Give young talented people resources and freedom
2. Don't put them through endless bullshit internal status games
The reason why the tech industry in the US thrives so much is partially due to the fact that it is one of the few industries that gives people high salaries and agency in their roles without a huge amount of experience.
Almost everywhere else is just an artifically gated series of internal politics, nepotism and pointless rituals in too-big-to-fail industries, which attract people who prefer these games over actual results.
<:)
The movie was great but it's not a stand-alone movie, it is a small piece of the full story so don't go in thinking that everything will be explained and tied up in a neat little bow.
The movie takes place in Kane Pixel (the movie director's) youtube series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVAh-MgDVqvDUEq6qDXqO...
It makes a lot more sense if you watch the full youtube series first.
Wandering around the halls of some functional institution was definitely a childhood past time of mine. Now still wondering how our parents and grandparents enjoyed private office space, lounge furniture designed by professional celebrities like Eames, and time, doing more with less. Now stuck at home or wandering in some open plan space that looks like college kids got permission to use a charge card at Ikea.