'Backrooms', a critique of a YouTuber's successful arrival in movie theaters

For years now, the film industry has been grappling with a serious problem: the difficulty in finding good stories to make movies.

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This is leading to continuous remakes of old movies and reboots of film series. Meanwhile, young people are watching less and less television and spending more time watching YouTube. Against this backdrop, a film that defies easy categorization, "Backrooms," premiered in the US on May 29th, a film that has become a global phenomenon. It premiered in Spain this Friday, and I just saw it.

The director of "Backrooms" is a young YouTuber about to turn 21: Kane Parsons. On January 7, 2022, on his channel Kane Pixels, this young man published a 9-minute short film titled "The Backrooms (Found Footage)," presented as a mock found footage. This video spawned a series of short films that have been very successful. You can watch the initial video here:

This short film now has almost 83 million views. A New York production company, A24, became interested in this work, and Parsons himself directed the feature film.

"Backrooms" is one of the strangest and most original films I've seen since the release of "Cube" in 1997. The plot is as follows: a man owns a large furniture store and one night discovers there's something beyond the basement wall, gaining access to what appears to be a very unusual office building. I'll stop there.

The film stars British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor and Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve. Both give good performances, but the true protagonist here is that inexplicable world beyond the wall. Parsons himself composed the soundtrack, along with Canadian composer Edo van Breemen. I found it to be an excellent film and I recommend it (though it's best not to go with children). Here's the trailer: