No, Osgood Perkins Did Not Secretly Direct 'Backrooms'

Backrooms is going to be a huge hit. I’m not sure A24, which is distributing the film, is aware of how massive this horror could be. It’s based on a popular internet horror meme (or creepypasta) that originated on 4chan and quickly became a sprawling mythology that spanned YouTube, forums, fanfic, social media, and beyond. Kane Parsons is a YouTuber who made his own series of Backrooms short films that became so popular it led to him getting the chance to make a feature film about it. Oh, and he’s only 20 years old. Parson is not old enough to drink yet but he got to make an A24 movie with two Oscar nominees in the leads roles. I’m 35 and my knee hurts.

Parsons has a lot of people in his corner. The producers of Backrooms include Shawn Levy, James Wan, and Osgood Perkins. Still, it is rare for someone this young to get a major distributor in his corner and a reported $10 million budget for a film intended to play in thousands of cinemas. Orson Welles made Citizen Kane at 26. So, Parsons is in excellent company, but with that comes all of the usual snickering and insistences that he didn’t really direct Backrooms. One popular theory spreading on social media is that Perkins, who directed Longlegs and The Monkey, either shadowed him or outright did all the hard work. One of the movie’s stars took to Twitter to debunk that.

Mark Duplass, who’s also a celebrated indie director in his own right, succinctly refuted one semi-trolling blue check account’s claim that “Kane Parsons absolutely didn’t direct this movie.” He replied, “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.”

And that’s that.

Look, it is unusual for someone to get this kind of movie deal at this young an age, but it’s not entirely unheard of. Sam Raimi started working on The Evil Dead when he was barely 20. Steven Spielberg was only 26 when Duel was released. And right now, we’re seeing a boom in young talent emerging from platforms like YouTube. Obsession, which is a massive hit right now, was made by a 26-year-old. Surely it’s a good thing that there are more opportunities for young creatives outside of the usual system of nepo babies and overpriced film schools?

I think a lot of the tinhatting is also somewhat inspired by envy. There’s a prevailing narrative right now that Parsons “stole” the Backrooms from its original creator, and that he doesn’t have the right to make a movie out of a community-driven story. His movie is an adaptation of his version of the mythos and he’s never claimed that it’s the definitive Backrooms story. There are tons of other versions online, as well as several video games and an episode of American Horror Stories. If you weren’t mad at Ryan Murphy for jumping on a trend, you can’t be angry at one of the guys who helped to refine and popularise the entire concept. Besides, Parson’s YouTube work is scary as hell.

Backrooms will be released on May 29th.