Backrooms is a reminder that the internet is the future of cinema
The film Backrooms, directed by Kane Parsons, highlights the growing influence of internet creators in cinema. At just 17, Parsons transitioned from YouTube shorts to a feature film, showcasing a unique horror experience. The movie reflects a trend where Hollywood increasingly draws talent from online platforms, emphasizing the evolution of filmmaking.
- ▪Kane Parsons gained fame with his Backrooms short on YouTube, which has nearly 80 million views.
- ▪At 17, he was selected by A24 to direct a feature-length version of Backrooms.
- ▪The film explores unsettling liminal spaces and builds on the creepypasta concept popularized online.
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| Original publisher | Engadget |
| Canonical URL | https://www.engadget.com/2183952/backrooms-is-a-reminder-that-the-internet-is-the-future-of-cinema/ |
| Publication time | Sat, 30 May 2026 13:00:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-30T13:04:37.979Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-30T13:04:37.979Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | a79ht9ECLsFs |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Entertainment Backrooms is a reminder that the internet is the future of cinema Kane Parsons joins plenty of other YouTubers who’ve made their way to the big screen. By Devindra Hardawar May 30, 2026 9:00 am EST A24 The story behind the Backrooms is almost as trippy as the film itself. Kane Parsons taught himself how to use Adobe After Effects and Blender as a teenager, experimented with online short films, and rose to online fame with his first Backrooms short in 2022 (which now has nearly 80 million views). At just 17, he was tapped by A24 to direct a feature-length version of the story. As I write this, Parsons is still not old enough to drink.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Engadget.
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