‘Backrooms’ Director Kane Parsons: What to Know About the 20-Year-Old Behind A24’s Biggest Hit

• What’s Kane Parsons’ Backstory?

  Born June 18, 2005, in Petaluma, California, Parsons taught himself video production as a child. He later attended Marin School of the Arts at Novato High School, where he studied film. In 2015, Parsons launched his YouTube channel, Kane Pixels, initially posting Minecraft videos and internet memes while continuing to expand his skills with software such as the 3D animation program Blender.

  “I’ve been a very online person most of my life,” Parsons IndieWire. “I started getting into VFX-driven channels that would help me realize it’s accessible and something that I could go do,” he said. “I started with the resources I had, like a laptop, I would pirate VFX software and stuff when I was 11 or so and started learning After Effects.”

  At 13 years old, Parsons was diagnosed with Arthritis and could barely walk at times, which influenced his filmmaking career, as he built 3-D sets to immerse himself in.

• What Was the Inspiration for ‘Backrooms’? 

  Image Credit: A24 / courtesy Everett Collection

  The idea for the film originated from an internet urban legend that grew out of an eerie image posted online and became part of creepypasta lore. Inspired by the phenomenon, Parsons created his own found-footage take on the concept, uploading The Backrooms (Found Footage) to YouTube in 2022. Between 2022 and 2025, the series went viral, attracting the attention of studios interested in developing it into a feature film while Parsons was still in high school.

  While applying to colleges, Parsons began fielding offers to adapt the project into a movie. As interest continued to grow, A24 made an offer, and he postponed university to pursue Backrooms.

  “It very much felt like, boom, suddenly there’s a new avenue that is still risky. It’s not stable at all. And I was assuming this will come and this will go, this will be over quickly. This is just what happens, and this is neat, but I’m going to try not to get too caught up in it because I see that happen to people all the time, and it usually turns into nothing. I was cautious of that,” Parsons told IndieWire. “And I was still applying to colleges and whatnot. And it wasn’t until we were actually pitching the thing to studios in fall of 2022 that I was making my decision about school. And I decided to pick that I was going to really hold on. It was after we went with A24 and they optioned the thing.”

• What Are Critics Saying?

  Image Credit: Courtesy of A24

  The film, which stars Ejiofor, Reinsve, Finn Bennett and Lukita Maxwell, with a script penned by Will Soodikan and Wan and Osgood Perkins among its producers, sits at an 89 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

  The Hollywood Reporter’s Angie Han wrote in her review, “Eeriness for its own sake has its limits. The longer we spend exploring the Backrooms, the less frightening and more random these oddities start to feel. They seem designed not according to some internal logic of this universe or psychology of these characters but simply as an attempt to keep us guessing; it works only until it becomes apparent that there are no meaningful answers forthcoming.”

  Click here to find out what more critics are saying.
  

• And Yes, Parsons Did Actually Direct It

  Image Credit: LISA O'CONNOR/AFP

  After online haters began stirring up rumors that Parsons couldn’t have actually directed Backrooms because of his age, one of the film’s cast members, Mark Duplass, quickly came to his defense.

  “Hmmm, with all due respect I don’t remember seeing you on set. When I was there, Kane was 100% in control. More so than many directors 3x his age,” Duplass responded to an X user who claimed, “Kane Parsons absolutely didn’t direct this movie.”

• He Wore Several Hats on ‘Backrooms’

  Parsons also contributed to creating the Backrooms score with Edo Van Breemen.

  “I ended up getting a little bit too much on my plate,” he told The New York Times, adding that he had “self-imposed” 21-hour workdays to perfect his feature. “I definitely abused my nervous system to the fullest degree I possibly could.”

• What Records Has Parsons Broken?

  Image Credit: Todd Williamson/JanuaryImages

  In addition to being the youngest director A24 has ever had and the youngest to have a No.1 film at the worldwide box office, in less than a week, Parsons has become the youngest filmmaker to top the domestic box office, crossing $100 million on a $10 million budget. Backrooms is also A24’s highest-grossing film of all time in North America. The title previously went to Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, starring Timothée Chalamet, which grossed $96 million domestically and was the studio’s most pricey production.

• Will There Be a Sequel? 

  Image Credit: A24

  Despite reports that Parsons was looking for a writer for a Backrooms sequel, the filmmaker denied those conversations during a Thursday episode of The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast. “I’m not sure where that got out; that seems more like a hallucination based off of a notion that I am very open to continuing this project. There’s no meaningful movement on that currently, though.”

  So, it seems unclear what Parsons will do next. However, it’s hard to believe that a sequel won’t ever happen, given how well the movie is performing. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

• Parsons Is Very Against AI

  As AI continues to expand in Hollywood, Parsons is making it clear he doesn’t want to be a part of that.

  “Art is a way of processing life. That’s inherently what it’s supposed to be for most people,” he told Gayle King on CBS Mornings Thursday. “I don’t see the value in outsourcing any element of that. And when I’m looking at someone else’s project, if I see an element of the environment, they use generative fill or whatever to to change something about the scene, even if it just shuts off the part of my brain that wants to know more about that world and wants to look for details because I would assume if they’re willing to make an arbitrary choice literally anything.”

• Who Else Is on the YouTuber to Filmmaker Pipeline?

  Image Credit: Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/Getty Images; Amanda Edwards/Getty Images

  Obsessions‘ Barker also got his start on YouTube, posting shorts with his collaborator Cooper Tomlinson (who also stars in Obsession). With his feature having a much smaller budget of $750,000 and selling to Focus Features for around $15 million, the film has also become a hit at the box office, sitting at $111 million-plus in its third week of release.

  THR called insiders to find out predictions on who else could be on track to follow in the young filmmakers’ footsteps. One of them was Dylan Clark, who is set to direct a Blair Witch Project reboot for Lionsgate. (Click here to see the rest.)

  “Their hope and desire and dream is to make cool movies,” Jason Blum recently said of young creatives going from YouTube to film. “Backrooms and Obsession are edgy and weird and fucking nuts. And to me, there’s almost this feeling of the ’70s, of a new generation of young people making edgy movies that are connecting in theaters in a crazy way. So many young people grew up in a time when they couldn’t go to the movies, and they haven’t had something made for them that gets them off their iPad and into theaters. Suddenly, they have two movies.”

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