‘Backrooms’ Director Kane Parsons Reunites with Osgood Perkins for New Original Film!

When Kane Parsons was brought on by A24 to direct Backrooms, a feature adaptation of the viral YouTube shorts he created, he was still a teenager. Sixteen, maybe seventeen years old when the process began.

You can argue with me all you want about talent versus experience, but there is a zero percent chance that he had a complete understanding of how the business works, how to write a feature screenplay at a studio level, or how to navigate all of the expectations that come with directing a major motion picture. That’s not a knock on him. It’s reality. Most filmmakers spend decades learning those things.

Sure, there are outliers. People will point to films like The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity, but even those examples aren’t quite what people think they are. Those movies went through significant post-production shaping after they were acquired and aren’t exactly the same films that originally generated all the buzz.

Digressing.

One of the coolest stories to come out of Backrooms was learning that Osgood Perkins, who recently broke out in a major way with Longlegs and The Monkey, was brought in to mentor Parsons throughout the process. Parsons was still in high school when this all started, and Perkins had already been through the studio system while building a career as one of the more distinctive filmmakers working in horror today.

At least in my opinion, he’s kind of the perfect choice.

Parsons discussed the mentorship publicly on the red carpet. It wasn’t some conspiracy. It wasn’t hidden information. It happened, and frankly, it makes a whole lot of sense. Somehow, that simple fact got twisted into a bizarre narrative that Perkins secretly directed the movie himself.

Give me a fucking break.

That’s an argument for another day.

What we’re really talking about is a three- to four-year collaboration between Parsons and Perkins as they worked their way through a massive production. They obviously built a relationship during that process.