Kane Parsons Directs A24's Backrooms Feature
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- Kane Parsons (born 2005) became A24’s youngest ever director, making his feature debut at age 20.
- Kane Parsons created the web series “The Backrooms: Found Footage” in 2022 at age 16, inspired by a 2019 creepypasta photo on 4chan.
- A24 began development on a feature adaptation starring Oscar nominees Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renata Reinsve, filmed in Vancouver last summer.
- Parsons and his VFX team used Blender, a free CGI tool he learned on a modest laptop with YouTube tutorials, to create the film’s visual effects.
- Parsons says the collaboration with A24 involved few barriers to creative control and maintained a 1‑to‑1 continuity with his original YouTube series.
- The film premiered on May 29 in theaters, presenting a horror story that visualizes the Backrooms as an impersonal, neglected corporate space.
Why it matters: Parsons’ debut gives self‑taught creators a proof‑point that a YouTube‑originated project can scale to a major studio horror film with minimal creative restrictions, while A24 gains a fresh, internet‑sourced property and audiences receive a theatrical take on a viral creepypasta.
