Nineteen year-old creator Kane Parsons is to direct an adaptation of his viral YouTube series, The Backrooms, as A24 gives it the greenlight.
Indie production company A24 has officially pressed the big greenlight button (NB: probably not an actual button) on The Backrooms – an adaptation of series of viral short films on YouTube. They were created by the very young and talented Kane Parsons, who began producing his eerie horror shorts when he was just 16 years old.
Set in the 1990s, The Backrooms purport to be pieces of video footage taken in empty industrial spaces where the architecture feels increasingly uncanny, and where shadows of something or other are glimpsed at the corner of the frame. The concept is based on an earlier urban legend floating around on the web, but Parsons has gradually built it up into a sci-fi mood piece that has amassed some 200m views to date.
Now aged 19, Parsons now has the shot of turning it all into his debut feature – with the Oscar-nominated Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person In The World, A Different Man) set to star according to Variety. Plans to adapt The Backrooms were first announced in February 2023, which gives a flavour of the speed at which the movie world often works; it’s said that shooting will finally begin this summer.
Parsons is far from the only director to first make his mark on YouTube. Uruguayan filmmaker Fede Alvarez caught Hollywood’s attention with his 2009 alien invasion short, Panic Attack, and went on to direct the 2013 Evil Dead remake and 2024’s Alien Romulus. Danny and Michael Philippou leapt to fame via their YouTube channel RackaRacka, which gradually morphed from brutal backyard wrestling clips to ingenious, effects-filled shorts inspired by Street Fighter and Star Wars. They went on to make their startlingly assured debut Talk To Me in 2022, and followed it up with this year’s Bring Her Back – both highly effective horrors.
Like those directors, Parsons is skilled with both a camera and VFX; the spooky interiors seen in The Backrooms were created almost entirely with the free-to-use 3D software package, Blender. The results are so convincing that few would probably even realise it’s CGI.
More on The Backrooms as it comes in.
