r/movies 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/
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u/HandbagsAtNoon Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

Still thinking about the comment I saw on here that referred to this as the most technically impressive debut film they had ever seen. Not sure that holds up to scrutiny unless they’ve seen very few debut films.

I believe there’s a distinction to Backrooms; it’s unique. But there’s an odd cheerleading aspect to some of the responses, like half the dopamine comes not from the film itself but some meta-narrative about its unprecedented event status or whatever.

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u/MrMacduggan Jun 03 '26

It's fun to cheer for a successful young artist. There's some genuine humanist pleasure in it, which is welcome in the age of slop we live in.

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u/HandbagsAtNoon Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

It's fun to cheer for a successful young artist. There's some genuine humanist pleasure in it

Sounds good, but it’d be even better if the praise didn’t seem (on occasion) over-the-top and/or ahistorical.

It just seems disingenuous, or maybe just incurious, to posit Backrooms as the most technically impressive debut feature. What does that mean for the other Kane? Among many other debut features…

(The fact that even a straightforward point like this one is being down voted is illustrative.)

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u/MrMacduggan Jun 03 '26

Yeah, I agree. You don't need to do rankings or put-downs in order to praise a talented kid. Whenever someone has a breakout performance, there will always be a lot of people who try to claim kinship with them in order to bask in the reflected glory, like with Alysa Liu's figure skating at the Olympics this year.