A24’s “Backrooms”. From A Viral YouTube Series He Launched As A Teenager To A James Wan And Osgood Perkins-Produced Feature Tracking For A $45-50 Million Opening. The Critics Are Split Between “A Surrealistic Spell” And “Eerie But Underbaked”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, A24’s Backrooms hits theaters Friday with an 87 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and is tracking for a $45 to $50 million opening which would mark A24’s biggest debut yet. The film adapts director Kane Parsons’ viral YouTube series, launched when he was a teenager. Parsons is now 20. It stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, with James Wan and Osgood Perkins among the producers.
The reviews are split. THR’s Angie Han found the eeriness wore thin, noting the oddities feel designed to keep audiences guessing with no meaningful answers. The Daily Beast’s Nick Schager praised it as a “waking nightmare” comparable to David Lynch’s Lost Highway. Empire’s Jamie Graham called it the most surreal art-horror feature since Eraserhead. The AP’s Jake Coyle found the backstory more intriguing than the film itself.
The bigger story is Parsons. A filmmaker who built a 200-million-view web series as a teenager has now delivered A24’s potential biggest opening. Mark Duplass defended him publicly: in control, “more so than many directors 3x his age.” The YouTube-to-A24 pipeline is now real.
To check out our previous coverage on film, horror, and the streaming-to-cinema pipeline, read our articles here.
