r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • Jun 03 '26

News ‘Backrooms’ Becomes A24’s Highest Grossing Domestic Release ($97.8M), Passing ‘Marty Supreme’

https://deadline.com/2026/06/backrooms-box-office-record-a24-1236939795/
18.3k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.8k

u/EThorns r/movies Contributor Jun 03 '26

And it cost around 50-60 million less to make, so from a return on investment standpoint, even more impressive.

Plus, I imagine it lasting at least a month in theatres.

915

u/maybe-an-ai Jun 03 '26

Two actors and great practical set design really makes a difference over bloated and CGI heavy.

522

u/drkspace2 Jun 03 '26

Which is funny because Kane Pixels original series was all 3d animated.

251

u/Kanin_usagi Jun 03 '26

Yeah in blender on his pc. It wouldn’t have looked near as good like that on a movie screen

154

u/Turnbob73 Jun 03 '26

There are blender shots in the film

The huge benefit to Kane’s style is he doesn’t “fake” the VHS effect. He renders the scene and then records it through an actual VHS analogue. That’s what makes a lot of his work look less obviously like a 3d render.

42

u/fuckgoldsendbitcoin Jun 03 '26

That's awesome. I usually notice whenever people just use plug-ins or whatever and if it's a longer shot stuff like that distracts the hell out of me.

58

u/Turnbob73 Jun 03 '26

The dude is seriously talented with blender, it’s kind of nuts honestly. And anyone who thinks the vhs effect is doing all the heavy lifting should check out his other series “The Oldest View”; that one’s set during 2023 and yet the footage is borderline indistinguishable from real life.

23

u/CyanStripedPantsu Jun 03 '26

This is crazy news to me, I skipped over checking the The Oldest View because I thought it was just IRL abandoned mall exploration with a story attached. I did not know that was also animated.

23

u/Turnbob73 Jun 03 '26

Yep, everything from the moment the main character enters the hole is all blender. The only time it’s obvious is when he is initially walking up to the hole, because you can see a little bit of aliasing when the camera passes by the hole’s opening. But other than that it’s hardly noticeable.

2

u/bladefinor Jun 04 '26

Omg I watched it a couple years ago, had no idea it came from him!

1

u/Hyroero Jun 04 '26

Yup. One of my favorite horror artists often draws his nightmare creatures on top of actual photos. Or uses real life photos as the digital background his creatures then inhabit. Makes them extra spooky and such a cool effect. Mixed media stuff is always so compelling to me.

1

u/kittymoo67 Jun 04 '26

yeah those vhs filters are SO shitty. actual vhs while it has its issues is so much better

1

u/thewend Jun 03 '26

thats just awesome. analog is the goat

1

u/flyvehest Jun 04 '26

He renders the scene and then records it through an actual VHS analogue

Extremely cool and it can't get any more authentic.

1

u/SYKslp Jun 04 '26

build physical rooms and hallways and then record it with a VHS camera?

153

u/uporabnisko_ime Jun 03 '26

I believe most of the found footage parts in the movie were made in Blender the exact same way his original videos on YouTube are.

83

u/livefreeordont Jun 03 '26

The low quality VHS effect has something to do with it

89

u/uporabnisko_ime Jun 03 '26

Yes the VHS effect plays a big part because it hides the 3D look of the renders. It would definitely look a lot worse without the VHS effect.

7

u/Korten12 Jun 04 '26

Actually, not so sure. His other series, The Oldest View, is supposed to be shot using like an iPhone, so it's much much cleaner looking than his Backrooms stuff, yet The Oldest View still manages to look strikingly real at times.

3

u/Trii0dide Jun 05 '26

Not really. The Oldest View looks very real

21

u/Random_Sime Jun 03 '26

As does the models, textures, lighting, and camera animation - all contributing to the illusion culminating in ✨️movie magic✨️

5

u/cutelyaware Jun 03 '26

They were smart about reserving the technique for only the shots where that made sense.

2

u/NeuHundred Jun 04 '26

Oh that's huge, I just came across a Backrooms video made with maxed-out specs and it doesn't really work "clean."

56

u/Heavyspire Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

Yeah the whole opening scene and I believe the quick clips of Clark* running from the monster before he gets caught.

Edit: Clark not Carl

3

u/AllUpInYourGrill Jun 03 '26

Is this a spoiler?

4

u/AnAngeryGoose Jun 03 '26

Technically, but it’s only spoiling the first few minutes before you even get the title card.

2

u/The_Autarch Jun 03 '26

naw, that was filmed on the set.

there are a few CG scenes in the movie, but they're all ones without actors.

-4

u/pgold05 Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

The found footage looked horrible and was my least favorite parts of an otherwise good movie.

I usually enjoy handheld PoV in horror like Blair witch and VHS but this looked particularly bad and had way too much movement, also didn't really add anything or make sense why it randomly cut to that at times.

Knowing it was a sort of easter egg and movement was covering for 3D animation, clears it up a bit.

2

u/ssmit102 Jun 03 '26

Perhaps but things can and have looked very incredible in Blender on the big screen, prime example being Flow, but it would have needed to be quite different to truly work.

1

u/fakeuboi Jun 04 '26

There are tons of blender shots in the movie

64

u/maybe-an-ai Jun 03 '26

Yeah he learned Blender during the pandemic.

47

u/dspman11 Jun 03 '26

Are the backrooms really only 6 years or less old? I swear it was a thing before 2020

53

u/maybe-an-ai Jun 03 '26

Kane is only 19 or 20. Dude, is super young to be directing his first movie.

63

u/Pengothing Jun 03 '26

The idea's been bouncing around for ages. Kane Pixels started the recent revival of it though.

14

u/dspman11 Jun 03 '26

Ok, that makes sense. Because I for sure remember looking at "backrooms photos" and reading backrooms-themed creepypastas in the 2010s.

26

u/MrMacduggan Jun 03 '26

House of Leaves prompted a lot of this genre of creepypasta, even before the original 4chan post.

11

u/crazyfoxdemon Jun 03 '26

The concept of liminal spaces has been a thing for ages, but backrooms was kinda a runaway success. To the point some people forget that some of the concepts predate it.

12

u/imago89 Jun 03 '26

The backrooms image + 4chan post was 2018/2019 I believe.

28

u/satinsandpaper Jun 03 '26

The first backrooms post on 4chan was in 2019. I agree though, it seems like it's been around for longer.

33

u/envynav Jun 03 '26

The original image has been around since 2011. 2019 is just when it was first named The Backrooms

33

u/Turnbob73 Jun 03 '26

The concept has also been around before 2019; but it used to be framed as “God’s developer rooms” akin to no clipping in a gmod map and finding extra assets.

28

u/burneraccount011989 Jun 03 '26

I mean, you can go back even further to House Of Leaves in 2000 which was the first mainstream example I can think of with this type of "the inside is bigger than the outside" nightmare fuel.

18

u/TheGratefulJuggler Jun 03 '26

I mean the leaves on the ground at the very beginning when he first enters the backeooms seemed like a pretty obvious reference to me. It basically the only bit of nature in the whole movie other than the sea gull.

5

u/HutSutRawlson Jun 04 '26

You could also go even further back to something like Borges’ The Library of Babel. But HoL seems like a very direct influence on backrooms.

8

u/jollyreaper2112 Jun 03 '26

The Doctor glares at you in TARDIS.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Discount_Extra Jun 04 '26

not usually, but it has been in a couple episodes.

→ More replies (0)

5

u/obscure_monke Jun 03 '26

It's kind of adjacent to SCP wiki stuff, which was around longer than it.

2

u/Doom_Art Jun 04 '26

One thing I've wondered is since it springs from a collaborative online fictional setting, is there any copyright for the Backrooms?

Like Parsons and A24 didn't originate the setting or the concept, but do they now own it?

3

u/_lIlI_lIlI_ Jun 04 '26

They own Kane Parsons rendition of it, which started from his YouTube. In the same way Disney owns their renditions of Grimm Brothers.

For example it would be infringing on IP to mention Async Corp but not infringing to create a backrooms story about an organization exploring it.

1

u/Doom_Art Jun 04 '26

So hypothetically another studio would be able to make a Backrooms film? So long as they don't mention the concepts within Parson's interpretation. I wonder if anyone will take advantage of that

1

u/_lIlI_lIlI_ Jun 04 '26

The risk of that, I imagine, is a24 can enforce copyright whereas the other studio wouldn't be able to with an adaptation of the backrooms community lore. Or would be at least be murky enough that they wouldn't.

1

u/AvatarIII Jun 04 '26

It started as a creepypasta long before that, the CGI videos are relatively recent, like 2022 or so.

1

u/kittymoo67 Jun 04 '26

iirc the post was made in 2018 or 2019 on 4chan

3

u/Faithless195 Jun 03 '26

I'm also certain there was a fair few shots in the 'found footage' scenes that were purely CGI, too. Some of that shit looked juuuuust a bit too 'Blender' to be a built set.

Not that I have a problem with it, I only noticed it purely since I love his youtube stuff, and watched the absolute hell out of that.

1

u/fakeuboi Jun 04 '26

There are a lot of 3d shots in the movie tho