In a huge win for Gen Z this weekend, 20-year-old director Kane Parsons’ Backrooms smashed expectations, bringing in $81 million domestically and $118 million total with international sales.
The movie follows Parsons’s hit YouTube series on the same concept, in which a furniture store owner is led into a world of endless, nondescript, yellow-tinged rooms that mirror drab office-building interiors.
The Daily Beast’s Nick Schager says the film “casts a surrealistic spell unlike anything else in contemporary cinema.”
“A descent into an uncanny-valley netherworld that’s both a warped reflection and deconstruction of the modern world, 21-year-old Kane Parsons’ debut feature is a waking nightmare that prioritizes atmosphere over jump scares, suggestion over explication,” Schager continues.
With a production budget of just $10 million, the film has broken numerous records with its staggering opening: the biggest opening weekend for A24, Parsons as the youngest director to have a No. 1 box office film, the biggest debut in history for original horror, and the best start for a first-time filmmaker behind a non-franchise film.
Obsession, also directed by Gen Z YouTuber Curry Barker, continued to impress in its third week, still holding second place at the box office with $26.4 million earned this weekend. The production budget for the flick was less than $1 million.
More disappointing was the shocking 70 percent drop in ticket sales for the Star Wars spinoff, The Mandalorian and Grogu.
It seems the franchise’s historic popularity just isn’t bringing the money in for Disney.
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