'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut

I'm a long-term "OG" Kane Pixels fan. I took a friend to see the opening night preview and we both loved it.

Anyone not familiar with Kane - who was 16 when he started making his "found footage" films in Blender - the guy is a truly brilliant mind. Listening to him talk... you can close your eyes and he speaks like someone middle aged. It's almost uncanny.

Anyhow, in addition to his genuinely excellent Backrooms videos, I highly recommend you turn off the lights and take in his The Oldest View series as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjY897CCu4g&list=PLVAh-MgDVq...

He painstakingly recreated a random demolished suburban Texas mall from archival footage. It's wild how good he is at this.

All they had to do was simply hire a talented person who knows how to make compelling narrative art. This is lost on the movie industry, though Hollywood has been treading water for over a decade now, failing to examine its failures and coasting on inertia.

In general, there is sooo much free money on the ground for large, hierarchical American corporations to do the following

1. Give young talented people resources and freedom

2. Don't put them through endless bullshit internal status games

The reason why the tech industry in the US thrives so much is partially due to the fact that it is one of the few industries that gives people high salaries and agency in their roles without a huge amount of experience.

Almost everywhere else is just an artifically gated series of internal politics, nepotism and pointless rituals in too-big-to-fail industries, which attract people who prefer these games over actual results.

That really shows the hunger for original stories and IC among cinephiles.

Major studios were too afraid to produce something fresh instead of numberless sequels and reboots in the last decade or so.

I practically never watch any movies because they are almost always trash, but decided to go watch Obsession after seeing a youtuber (penguinZ) talking positively about it

Yeah it's pretty good. I am in my late 30. Excited for Backrooms which isnt yet available

I really enjoyed it. I had no idea what a “backrooms movie” would end up being, but it was exactly what I could have hoped for having enjoyed his other work. Honestly creators from youtube putting out movies recently has probably been the most interested in going out to see something in years.

I saw it. I'm not a young Internet kid. And I enjoyed it - it's quite clever, I never cringed at terrible dialogue, people behaved in ways that you would expect them to in strange circumstances. Worth seeing. Amazing it was made by a 20 year old.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is a phenomenal actor, that probably helped. This is more of an indictment of Hollywood’s creative bankruptcy than anything, strip-mining Star Wars or Marvel will only take you so far.

I think people are excited for new ideas in cinema. A24’s track record is far from perfect, but I respect their willingness to try things. In my opinion, this movie is no exception. Very meandering and largely devoid of any real plot. Did a good job holding the tension at points, but ultimately fell flat in delivering on that tension.

Probably worth a watch if you enjoy the genre. If you’re someone who just enjoys a good story, this is a pretty easy skip.

Now that Backrooms has been a hit, I wonder if we’ll ever get a House of Leaves movie, which was somewhat of an inspiration for the original backrooms lore.

Showing alongside Obsession, another horror film made by a YouTuber.

[dead]

[dead]

The what? Horror something? ....started on 4chan? Yeah, immediate aboutface here. And reading wiki articles about it that throw around words like "creepypasta" like that's widely understood?

Liminal spaces I get. Reminds of Severance. And anyways, how is this worth going to a theater for? <Shrug> A24 has done well. Is 81M considered breaching 'mainstream'? Because these niche horror things being portrayed as part of the greater 'culture' is tiring.