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Backrooms Breaks Out: 20-Year-Old YouTuber's A24 Horror Becomes Major Hit

The film’s strong reviews and outsized box-office returns point to a new path from online shorts to mainstream studio success.

Overview

  • Backrooms opened in France in mid-June and early reports show global ticket sales in the low hundreds of millions against a roughly $10 million budget.
  • Kane Parsons, a 20-year-old former YouTube creator known as Kane/Ken Pixels, directed the feature that adapts his viral Backrooms web work into a full-length film.
  • Critics praise the movie’s claustrophobic, psychological horror, often noting its found-footage lineage, disorienting camera work, and Edo Van Breemen’s unsettling soundtrack.
  • The production paired established stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve with experienced genre producers and A24 distribution, a mix credited with widening the film’s mainstream reach.
  • Industry observers say the film’s commercial model and open ending have already prompted discussion of sequels or platform-spanning extensions and signal studios’ growing interest in platform-born filmmakers.