Kane Parsons Guides The Backrooms Movie Through A24 at 20
Kane Parsons has directed the backrooms movie at 20, making his first feature after years of shooting films online. The jump from several hundred short projects to an A24 horror film is the rare kind of career move that can change how a young creator is valued in the industry.
Chiwetel Ejiofor said the production used a 30,000 sq ft labyrinth of apparently random corridors and chambers, with carpet, fluorescent light and the same sickly yellow wallpaper everywhere. People were getting lost in the set, and that scale gave the movie a production profile far larger than a typical first feature.
From 4chan Image to Feature Film
The backrooms concept began with a photograph taken in 2003 of a vacant shop space in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, then posted in May 2019 on a 4chan message board inviting users to submit disquieting images that just feel off. Parsons turned that internet-origin idea into a feature, which is the kind of pipeline that used to be almost impossible without a long apprenticeship inside the film business.
He has been making films since he was a small child and said he has made several hundred films. That history matters because it explains how a 20-year-old could enter a studio-scale project with a clear creative language, even without having made a feature before.
Ejiofor Inside the Maze
Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve and Mark Duplass are among the actors on the film, bringing established names into a project led by a first-time feature director. Ejiofor described the experience of moving through the set: “Especially on those first days. As you try to navigate your way around and you’re like: ‘I’m sure it’s this door, I’m sure that’s the way.’”
He added the most practical sign of how disorienting the build was: “Get me some help!” Parsons later called the project “a big, potentially jarring, leap forward,” and also said, “I have no idea how all of this spiralled to the place it’s at now.”
Parsons and the Cinema Gap
Parsons said he had not made enough time to go to the cinema in the past, and linked his habits to the way he grew up watching film online: “Growing up with YouTube, it’s like there’s a lower requirement to go out and consume through a cinema.” He also said, “But I was there, and I know I wanted to make the movie, and I knew how to make what I make online.”
The practical takeaway for the studio side is simple: A24 backed a first feature from a 20-year-old director because the director already had a tested online language and a built-in concept with enough visual force to justify a 30,000 sq ft build. That makes the backrooms movie less a novelty hire than a bet on a new kind of pipeline, where internet-born ideas can jump straight into large-scale production if the creator can carry the room.
