The filmmaker ‘Backrooms’ director Kane Parsons considers a mentor: “I’ve picked up a level of stubbornness”
Every year, a certain new horror release will have everyone caught under its grip. Audiences will naturally be divided – some will see it as overrated or ‘not even that scary’, while others will herald it as the best horror movie of recent years.
That has certainly been the case for Kane Parsons’ debut feature, Backrooms, which emerged in early 2026 and has been practically unavoidable ever since. In all honesty, the film itself isn’t a masterpiece, but the reason it has been on everyone’s lips all comes down to several reasons – the first is that Parsons was just 20 years old when he directed the movie, making him the youngest filmmaker to ever reach number one at the box office, and the second is due to its unusual origins.
Backrooms represents a new wave of horror as a direct consequence of unregulated social media access, especially when it comes to apps like YouTube, 4chan, and Reddit. Parsons was just a teenager when he started uploading videos inspired by the ‘creepypasta’ phenomenon of ‘The Backrooms’, a fictional location inspired by an image of an unsettling room that made its way onto 4chan.
The liminal, uncanny space seemed to make the perfect backdrop for a mysterious horror film, and Parsons recognised this in his YouTube videos, which eventually scored him a deal with A24 to turn ‘The Backrooms’ into a proper feature.
As a result, the young director has been thrown into the spotlight as one of cinema’s most promising new figures, even though he admitted in a conversation with Interview Magazine that he “wasn’t someone who fell in love with film as a kid.” Parsons is new to this whole world of cinema, really, and it’s pretty magnificent that he was thus able to make something so immersive.
Naturally, because Parsons is so young, he has found himself a mentor to look up to, and he credits a certain director with opening his eyes to the process of filmmaking and being in charge of a large cast and crew. Of course, it’s fellow horror director Osgood Perkins, who – despite being the son of Psycho icon Anthony Perkins – rose to fame with his 2024 movie Longlegs.
Perkins served as a producer on Backrooms, with Parsons revealing in the same interview, “He’s been a great ally and a great friend. There’s a very productive stubbornness that he has creatively. He’ll say no firmly to certain asks. He was very helpful in bringing an assertive nature to things.”
The director continued, “We were able to hold off on a lot of creative distillation or alterations from the original source material, and find the right tone to avoid becoming a tropey horror film. He’s obviously a director-first person, and everyone else needs to get out of the room. It’s not an uncommon sentiment, but I very much appreciate it, and I think I’ve picked up a level of stubbornness.”
The world of filmmaking is a strange and complex one, and even the most skilled directors find themselves feeling as though they’re out of their depth at times. So, having someone with more experience serve as a mentor is invaluable, and for Parsons, it was Perkins who helped to keep him afloat.
