With his 2026 sci-fi horror film Backrooms, director Kane Parsons imagines a literal hole in the wall of a furniture store back room. Beyond the hole lies a series of unadorned rooms with maddening fluorescent lighting with no end in sight. While Backrooms is a major film with stars like Chiwetel EjioforandRenate Reinsve, this premise actually grew organically from internet creepypasta, which was the basis of Parsons’ YouTube series of the same name. The Backrooms concept began as internet posts of unsettling photos featuring liminal spaces, with various message board users adding their own contributions organically to the lore. Sometimes, hidden in the corners and shadows of these rooms, you could find threatening creatures, or “entities,” that seem to exist primarily as actual physical threats in the psychological void of the rooms themselves.

For years, YouTube has been a fertile ground for aspiring filmmakers, a place where they could demonstrate their skills outside traditional norms. While it has often been seen as unorthodox, this methodology is beginning to bear fruit. Recent films like Backrooms, Obsession, and Iron Lunghave proven to be some of 2026's biggest successes, and YouTubers like Kane Parsons, Curry Barker, and Markiplier are to thank. Backrooms has become A24's highest grossing movie ever, and Obsession is on track to become one of the most profitable films in recent years, earning over $200,000 on a $750,000 budget. However, it is the success of Backrooms that we've seen not just the director be the reason why, but the YouTube community itself.

There has been a lot of buzz about A24’s latest entry into the cinematic horror sweepstakes where it seems every weekend a new You Tuber or previously unknown young filmmaker becomes the next big thing. Coming off self-financed You Tuber Mark Fischbach’s $50 million grossing early 2026 success, Iron Lung, and in the last couple […]