Kane Parsons Knows ‘Backrooms’ Has an Ending: “You Can’t Go On Forever”

Kane Parsons has more Backrooms stories to tell, but he also has an ending in mind.

Appearing on The Kyle Buchanan Show, the filmmaker discussed the future of his horror franchise and the point at which he’ll have said everything he wants to say.

“I feel like there’s a limited amount of meaning extraction based on what I feel about the thing,” explained Parsons. “There is an end to it. You can’t go on forever.”

He added that the franchise’s stories would eventually come together, reaching a point where he’d said what he wanted to say. He distinguished that larger narrative from the smaller YouTube projects, which could potentially continue longer.

As Dread Central exclusively reported, Parsons has already signed on to direct Backrooms 2 for A24. That’s a done deal, and it will be his next movie.

The first film expanded his viral horror shorts into a huge theatrical hit. It follows a furniture store owner whose disappearance leads his therapist through a strange doorway and into an apparently endless network of interconnected rooms. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Lukita Maxwell, Finn Bennett and Mark Duplass star.

I’m a big fan of what Parsons did with it. I love ambient, weird, disruptive filmmaking. Anything that breaks from the norm and feels different. I love the idea of meandering through liminal space and not knowing what’s around every corner. And while I didn’t find Backrooms scary, I was fascinated by it and really enjoyed it.

A lot of people seemed confused by the ending and felt like they didn’t get an explanation. I thought it was pretty fucking obvious. If anything, I think they might have given away a little too much. But what it did was establish Backrooms as having its own cinematic universe, with plenty left to explore.