The most fascinating thing about “Backrooms” is not how big its opening weekend was, but that it hasn’t been bigger.
Popularity was baked into “Backrooms” long before the movie hit the screens.
Unlike most movies, “Backrooms” has vast, well-established and keen subcultural fandom. Fandom here is not people only, but also stories, aesthetics, vibes, mythology, language, memes, places, and characters. Fandom, given the opportunity to experience object of its fascination in a new format and in a novel interpretation, rarely passes it.
In my second book, Hitmakers: How Brands Influence Culture, I describe a lot of what ultimately underlined the success of “Backrooms” — the existing fandom, the clear and recognizable aesthetics, the urban mythology, the portfolio of decentralized cultural products.
“Backrooms” fandom goes back to 2019, when someone posted a grainy photo of a yellow office space with caption “approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in” in the murky waters of 4Chan.
From there, the photo multiplied, as memes tend to do, across message boards, forums, subReddits, podcasts, Substacks, TikTok and YouTube, where the grainy photo became known as The Backrooms: creepy, drab, “liminal” empty spaces. Kane Parsons, then a high school student, serialized The Backrooms as the “found footage” homemade videos. His YouTube channel became ultra-popular, leading to producers calling, and to him making “Backrooms,” the movie.
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The movie is doing exceptionally well: during the opening weekend, it amassed $81.5M at the domestic box office, and over $118M worldwide. The numbers are exceptional compared to other box office openings. Compared to the sum of The Backrooms internet fandom, they are fine.
This is an important distinction. By the time “Backrooms” reached movie theaters, the context for its success was already set.
When it comes to success of cultural products, context is the only thing that matters.
When the context is right, almost anyone can create a hit. When it isn’t, almost no one can (see: Mandalorian). In sociology, there’s analogy of forest fires to describe this. A fire happens when there are dry woods, strong winds, dense shrubbery between the trees. Any spark can light a fire then. In society, hits are a matter of susceptible, interested and receptive subcultures:
Fan as a Creator. “Backrooms” is the work of fan fiction. Parsons is a fan obsessed with The Backrooms, turned video creator, turned movie director. At 20, he is one of the
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