#104: Backrooms is a horror movie for children

Skibidi Toilet: The Movie

Death by Consumption

5/26/26 - 6/1/26

I’m writing to you from a work trip to Madison, WI. Coincidentally, this is where I went to college, and I haven’t been back here in almost a decade. Between meetings, I’ve been wandering the streets having existential flashbacks on nearly every corner. Practically every 5 minutes I’m like: That’s my first apartment! That’s where I worked! That’s where my friend got fingered! It’s very odd to be a solo business traveler in a town that was very formative to you, in the state you grew up in. It’s a little like I’m Anna Kendrick in Up In The Air but also I’m Aubrey Plaza in My Old Ass. Basically: I can’t wait for my next therapy session!!!!!

This week: I saw the two big new horror movies from child auteurs and felt existential dread, I watched a sexy Brian de Palma classic, I got scared by the modern LA clown community, and I read about a Catholic cult that controls the world.

Backrooms (2026) — at Nitehawk Prospect Park

Backrooms is a horror movie made by kids, for kids. Written and directed by a person named Kane Parsons when he was a literal teenager, Backrooms is inspired by internet “creepypasta,” and is basically an extra-long YouTube video that randomly stars Oscar-level actors. Watching it in a packed theater, surrounded by literal children screaming, squealing, laughing, and applauding, I felt the scariest feeling of all: the realization that I’m old as fuck.

How it feels to watch Backrooms as a full-grown adult

As an actual film, Backrooms is a bit of a disaster. The plot, as it is, is minimal: Chiwetel Ejiofor is a depressed furniture salesman who discovers the “Backrooms,” a seemingly parallel universe accessible by walking through a wall in the basement of his furniture store. The Backrooms is a seemingly endless maze of beige/yellow vaguely corporate spaces, where something sinister possibly lurks. After he disappears, his therapist Renate Reinsve finds her way into the Backrooms to find him. As a concept, it’s fine! There are some genuinely eerie or scary moments in the Backrooms, with a lot of very good visual creepiness. Kane Parsons — who may I remind you is a child — clearly has an eye and a raw talent for creating dread-inducing moments of horror, particularly when he’s borrowing the language of found-footage horror (he was born nearly a decade after The Blair Witch Project, FYI — terrifying!). Whenever we were in the Backrooms, I was having a good time at the movies. But whenever we were out of the Backrooms, and the movie was attempting a legitimate plot, I was in hell.

The character development in Backrooms is by far the weakest part of the film, and the surest sign that you are watching a movie made by a child. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s character is depressed, and even though that depression is key to the story, we never really learn much of anything about it. He’s sad because of some mixture of money problems, job concerns, and relationship issues — you know, boring adult stuff! Renate Reinsve’s character also has issues that relate to her mother, but those are equally vague and unexplored, despite the plot largely hinging on both these characters’ problems. I don’t believe for a second that Kane Parsons had any real interest in the interior lives of his characters — anytime there’s a scene with dialogue or emotions, it feels like you’re watching a kid playing house with a couple of toys. Like: “Barbie, I’m sad because of my job.” “GI Joe, I’m sad because of my mom!”

Despite all that, I legitimately do believe that Backrooms is the future of movies, for better or worse. The theater was absolutely packed, and mostly with teenagers or even literal children (one little girl, who could not have been older than 10, left clutching her dad’s hand after the first big scare — I was shocked to see a child that young at a horror film, but she probably also has an upcoming directorial debut with A24). And let me tell you, the kids were having the time of their lives. They screamed, jumped, shrieked, laughed, and burst out into applause as the credits hit. They fucking loved this movie, so it’s no surprise it’s on track to become one of the most profitable movies of all time. It’s the first box office smash to be funded primarily by allowances and lunch money!

So maybe I should stop being a curmudgeon about all this. The movie was bad, but the movie doesn’t care what I think. It has found its audience, and they’re eating it up. (It’s also showing the studios that there’s a ton of profit in finding ways to get things from the internet onto the big screen — and let me just say how happy it makes me that Mr. Beast is watching this former YouTuber’s massive success from the sidelines. Sorry, flop, you’re old now, too!)

But for all my bitching, I will say these were some of the best-behaved teens I’ve ever seen in a theater. Typically they’re acting like assholes, scrolling on their phones, watching TikTok at full volume. But this audience was rapt — it was possibly the first 2-hour stretch in these kids’ entire lives in which they didn’t touch their phones. So if Backrooms is the gateway drug to getting these kids interested in film, and if it injects a bunch of life and money into our slowly failing movie industry (it is very satisfying how thoroughly this small-budget movie made by a child is kicking the ass of Disney’s Whatever the Fuck and Grogu) — fuck it, good for Backrooms! The future of filmmaking has arrived, like it or not, and I am nothing but dust.

Obsession (2026) — at Regal Union Square

The other horror movie made by a wunderkind that’s out right now! Made by a decrepit 25-year-old, Obsession is a much more conventional and therefore better movie than Backrooms, which also unfortunately makes it less interesting. It’s fine! I had fun! But there’s nothing groundbreaking here — this is a solid, enjoyable horror flick with some good scares and some promising new little actors, and if you like scary movies that are About The Times We Live In, you’ll have a good time. Unfortunately, I do think — thanks to this and Backrooms coming out at the same time and both destroying the new Star Wars — studios are going to learn all the wrong lessons from their success, and we’re about to see a whole bunch of shitty big-budget horror movies made by 20-year-olds. Basically: if you’re a film student at NYU, and A24 isn’t knocking on your dorm room door with a 3-picture deal, you’ve already failed.

Body Double (1984) — on Criterion

Possibly the most “Brian De Palma” Brian De Palma movie of all time. Garish, sexy, lurid, flamboyant, insane, unpredictable — I loved it! At one point, the movie inexplicably becomes a musical on the set of a porn film, all to the song “Relax” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood, and if I hadn’t already fallen in love with this big, fun, stupid movie by that point, that scene sent me head-over-heels. For all its strangeness, Backrooms has nothing on the genuine, bone-deep weirdness of Body Double. Finally: a movie for adults!

“The Rise of the Fool” by Allison P. Davis — in NYMag

I hope the purchase of NYMag by one of the Murdoch boys (ugh) doesn’t destroy it, because no one is doing it like them week after week. Case in point: this exploration of the LA clown community. Midway through the article, Allison P. Davis’s thoughtful, brilliant writing about the art of clowning (sorry: the art of clown — only amateurs and idiots use the gerund, apparently) had almost sold me on the value of clown. But then she’d present a scene that instantly reminded me that, no, I’m really really not a clown guy. Just take this (long-ish) excerpt from when she sits in on a clown class:

Up next: a gamine brunette — in a spandex unitard and what appeared to be lace-up wrestling shoes — and a guy in cargo pants whom I had recently seen in a bit part on a network sitcom. Out the gate, the guy took the expressway to his innermost fears. “I’m scared of failure, loneliness,” he said. “I’m scared that one day I’m gonna, like, snap and have a mental breakdown and forget everything and everyone in my life.”

“Go off, 40-year-old king,” the brunette responded; she was doing vigorous calisthenics.

“I don’t want to be king,” he said.

“Go off, king!” she shouted.

They were not communicating well.

It went on like this for some time: him, stuck and upset, while she carried on. But soon she was crying, and it didn’t appear to be part of the game.

“I feel like a loser,” she said. “I’m crying,” she said, while crying more.

Gilkey cut in and asked them to unpack what was going on. The sitcom guy felt awful — he’d genuinely upset her. He realized now how alone she’d felt. She told him how she’d needed him to show up for her and he hadn’t. I wondered if the two were dating or if this was still somehow a clown act. The intensity made me squirm. It felt like I was watching Couples Therapy: The Clown Show.

Look, it’s brave to get on stage and bare your soul in any artistic capacity, and I can genuinely appreciate the value of professional fools making fun of a deeply evil and stressful world, but, also: I’m really scared!!!

Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church, by Gareth Gore (2024) — library ebook

If the long-ass subtitle doesn’t make it clear, this gripping and fascinating book is an investigative history of Opus Dei, the secretive and terrifyingly powerful cult inside the Catholic Church. The book is a wild, stressful read, tracing the history of the cult from its early days — when it was sheltered and helped by the reign of Francisco Franco — to its modern incarnation, where it has almost single-handedly taken over the Supreme Court and the current, psychotic Republican party. Yikes! Sadly, I don’t think this book had much of any impact in the real world — the GOP has made it very clear over the last 10 years that they’re actually super cool with cults of all sorts; in fact, they kind of prefer it! — but it’s still a nice little terrifying read to keep you up at night. The lack of splash this book made is a sign that things have gotten so bad no one can even take this on right now, emotionally. Yes, our lives are all substantially affected by a secretive bunch of extremely bigoted and rich Catholics who whip themselves at night while working to control the entire world: what do you want me to do about it???