Kafkaesque Backrooms

I wrote a thing about Kane Parsons Backrooms (Opens in a new window), combining Mark Fisher and Kafka with Simulacra Rooms and Soft Yellow. The film masterfully creates architectural horror through functional color, turning Fishers Capitalist Realism into an unescapable labyrinthian nightmare.

Here’s the intro. To read the rest, head over to Substack (Opens in a new window).

Something astounding happened. In summer 2026, at the same time a Star Wars movie came out, two low-to-mid budget horror movies dominated the box office, both of them brilliant new school visions of very young filmmakers. One of them, Backrooms, is an improbable movie featuring experimental architectural shots brimming with symbolism, deriving its horror from psychological trauma and the failed promises of neoliberalism.

That movie shot by a 20-something based on a niche internet phenomenon is the best performing film for A24, that super hip movie studio that gave us Everything Everywhere All At Once, Marty Supreme, Hereditary and Midsommar. At a budget of 10 million dollars it right now sits at $256,884,832 at the box office (Opens in a new window). The movie roots itself in internet lore of urban exploration and liminal spaces and is basically an adaptation of a cursed image (Opens in a new window) posted to 4chan in 2018 (Opens in a new window), first turned into a series of YT-vids (Opens in a new window), then into a movie by the same director.

That, alone, have all kinds of outlets talking about the effects this will have on Hollywood, some already speak of a landslide revolution, another New Hollywood era using Youtube as an incubator for fresh new voices. All of that is cool and great, albeit you have to wonder why Hollywood is discovering Youtube as a talent incubator now — it’s a more than 20 years old repository of moving images after all featuring plenty of filmmakers for quite some time. Better late than never i guess, and there’s plenty of articles out there discussing this stuff. Here’s some recent headlines: From ‘Backrooms’ to ‘Obsession’: Why YouTubers Are Turning Hollywood Upside Down (Opens in a new window), Is the future of Hollywood nestled inside the backrooms of YouTube? (Opens in a new window), Reddit Is Ready to Be Mined for Hollywood IP (Opens in a new window), Why Backrooms and Obsession Are the Future of Movies (Opens in a new window), ‘Backrooms’ and ‘Obsession’ Offer a Memo to Hollywood (Opens in a new window).

But right now, i’m not so much interested in the new talent economics of moviemaking as awesome as that might be. Right now, i’m interested in the secret main actor in Backrooms. I’m interested in color.

More on Substack (Opens in a new window)