AI Summary
5 min readKane Parsons was 16 when he started developing the world of Backrooms on YouTube, working in open-source software like Blender and building a universe from an anonymous 4chan post describing an endless, yellowed office maze. Five years later, A24 releases his debut feature—a $150 million box office sensation starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve. The episode tracks how a generation raised on YouTube, Discord, and free 3D tools is rewriting the rules of how movies get made.
Two Filmmakers, Two Paths
The conversation opens with a comparison between Parsons and Curry Barker, director of the horror-comedy Obsession. Both emerged from YouTube in their early twenties, but their approaches diverge sharply. Barker’s film is fast, funny, and structurally conventional—what one host calls "anyone but you but made by somebody who knows how to do it." Parsons, by contrast, makes something internal, durational, and almost anti-narrative. The hosts frame this as two sides of the same coin: a generation that trained in public, iterating on audience feedback, and now arrives in theaters with distinct aesthetic programs. Neither went to film school. Both learned by uploading, watching the response, and revising.
Why Horror, Why YouTube
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:15) **Introduction and Backrooms Premise** - Sean Fennessey introduces the episode and teases his upcoming interview with Kane Parsons, the 20-year-old filmmaker behind the upcoming *Backrooms* movie.
- 2 (02:48) **Segment: The New Horror Wave - Obsession vs. Backrooms** - The panel discusses the dual release of *Obsession* (dir. Curry Barker) and *Backrooms* (dir. Kane Parsons) as two distinct examples of a new generation of filmmaking.
- 3 (07:10) **The New Filmmaker Pipeline: YouTube to Theaters** - The hosts analyze how young directors are bypassing the traditional film school-to-festival route by learning and building audiences on YouTube.
- 4 (09:27) **Why Horror is the On-Ramp** - The panel explores why horror is the primary genre for this new wave of internet-born filmmakers.
- 5 (12:31) **Backrooms: A Meme Turned Into Cinema** - The conversation shifts to *Backrooms* specifically, praising it for turning internet culture into a "real ass movie."
- 6 (17:05) **The Film's Structure and Thematic Depth** - The hosts discuss the film's three tracks: narrative, lore, and theme, praising its visual storytelling and metaphorical exploration of mental health.
- 7 (22:27) **Monoculture and the Backrooms Universe** - A discussion on how *Backrooms* functions as a modern fable, with teenagers invested in the "universe" and "vibes" more than a fixed mythology.
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Show Notes
Sean and Amanda are joined by Chris Ryan to explore some liminal spaces and figure out what really scares them. They open the show by reacting to some brief movie news (3:20) before diving deep into one of the most highly anticipated directorial debuts this decade: Kane Parsons’s ‘Backrooms,’ starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve (11:14). They break down how the movie pushes the filmmaking medium, discuss why it works on its own without any prior knowledge of the original material, and debate whether this type of success is a blip or whether it represents what the future of film will look like. Finally, Parsons joins Sean to discuss his new film and explain what the process was like shifting from making stuff for YouTube to making something for the big screen (1:02:02).
Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins
Guests: Kane Parsons and Chris Ryan
Producer: Jack Sanders
Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh
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