Last weekend saw the most unlikely battle between David and Goliath. The little film that could was none other than the psychological horror film Backrooms. It was made on a microscopic budget (in relative terms) of $10 million, yet went on to gross a staggering $81.4 million in the US alone in its opening weekend. And the big film that couldn’t was the not-so-eagerly awaited The Mandalorian and Grogu, which had a 70 percent drop at the box office from its (relatively) underwhelming opening weekend. Unless something wholly unexpected happens, it will conclude its run as the lowest-grossing Star Wars property, confirming the predictions of those who suggested that Disney have run the brand into the ground spectacularly.
Yet the unpredicted triumph of Backrooms might be the change that the Hollywood industry so desperately needs if mainstream cinema is to evolve and survive. It was directed by Kane Parsons, aka Kane Pixels, a 20-year-old YouTuber who has had a series of successful short films and web series, including a 2022 prototype for what became Backrooms. (And yes, this means that Parsons/Pixels was finding huge success online while he was still a teenager, if you want to feel old.) While there has been some chatter on social media about whether Parsons really was solely responsible for the film himself, given the starry list of producers – including The Conjuring’s James Wan and Deadpool & Wolverine’s Shawn Levy – he has set numerous records, including being the youngest director ever to have a number one hit at the box office.
Leaving aside Parsons’s obvious talent as a filmmaker, he has been fortunate enough to ride the crest of a wave when it comes to horror pictures, which are increasingly coming to dominate the box office. The runner-up, Obsession, comes from similar stock. It has been directed by the excellently named Curry Barker – someone who also has a following from YouTube – and has been a mega-hit, grossing over $150 million worldwide against a budget of less than $1 million.
In 1999, the similarly low-budget, rough ’n’ ready Blair Witch Project was another mega-hit, and it was predicted such horror pictures would change the face of cinema. It has been a long time coming, but now, young filmmakers who were not even born when The Blair Witch Project first terrified audiences are being given a crack at the big time and are grabbing it with both hands. It is quite clear that viewers are not interested in bloated, unnecessary slices of cash-grab IP. Instead they want to see something that speaks to their generation, made by people who have grown up with YouTube and streaming services, rather than by those who regard Star Wars as the lodestar of everything that is important in contemporary cinema.
The irony of this shift is that George Lucas himself was once a young and relatively experimental filmmaker.
The irony of this shift is that George Lucas himself was once a young and relatively experimental filmmaker. His first film, THX 1138, is a dour Orwellian science-fiction parable that has aged reasonably well but was financially unsuccessful. The only reason that he was allowed to make Star Wars was because he had had a big hit with the slice of nostalgia that was American Graffiti. If Lucas was youthful and working in cinema today, it is likely that he, too, would have gone down the route of Parsons and Barker and begun his career in micro budget YouTube short films, before developing into something more ambitious and – crucially in Hollywood – profitable. And as the series that he birthed declines ever further into a failed cash-grab, Lucas, who banked billions when Disney purchased the company that bears his name, can only look on the industry and sigh. I suspect he would enjoy Backrooms a good deal more than The Mandalorian and Grogu in any case.
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