While making his feature debut as A24‘s youngest ever director, Kane Parsons had a horror heavyweight in his corner.
The writer and director of Backrooms, premiering May 29 in theaters, credited producer Osgood Perkins for being “a really great mentor figure” while working with his Phobos banner on the film, which is adapted from Parsons’ 2022 web series.
“When we started production up in Vancouver, I was working very closely, literally in the same office with Osgood Perkins,” he told DiscussingFilm. “So, he’s been a really great mentor figure in a number of ways, in that it’s very much the crew that he and Chris Ferguson put together over a number of years. And so, I think there’s a lot of secondhand resources I’ve been able to lean on while working on this thing.”
Parsons added, “And of course, there’s been all sorts of crazy stuff happening right now with people reaching out, but it’s generally been that group, and it’s been pretty insulated. It was a pretty quiet production, it was very peaceful and fun up there. So, we had a good time with it.”
In Backrooms, Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as furniture store owner Clark, who stumbles into an otherworldly dimension of never-ending office space that hides chilling secrets, only for his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), to come searching for him.
Originating as a 2019 creepypasta on 4chan, Parsons adapted Backrooms into a YouTube web series when he was 16 in 2022, prompting A24 to give him a feature adaptation.
With several horror titles under his own belt, Perkins has become one of today’s most acclaimed directors in the genre, thanks to films like Longlegs (2024), The Monkey (2025) and Keeper (2025), with his next film The Young People to be released this year by Neon. He’s also working on a new Longlegs installment with Nicolas Cage returning.
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