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Analyzing the YouTuber-to-filmmaker boom amid "Backrooms" box office success 88%
6/2/2026, 6:27:00 PM
BS Summary: This video contains 30 faulty reasoning types, including Post Hoc (False Cause), Anecdotal, and Appeal to Authority, with Hasty Generalization as the most egregious example at 33.8% saturation with 225 hits. Analysis detected 2,015 faulty-reasoning hits from 666 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 80.1% and a BS Rank of 88% (2,802 of 21,887 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 87.20% of the video peer group.
The sci-fi horror flick, Backrooms, is the number one movie in America right now.
It shattered the record for best opening weekend at the studio, A24.
So, who's the filmmaker behind this movie? A
20-year-old YouTuber.
With only a $10 million budget, Kane Parsons' film made $81 million domestically in the weekend ending May 31st.
Globally, that number is $118 million.
Parsons is now the youngest director with a number one film globally.
The content content creator adapted the film from his viral YouTube series of the same name.
At 20 years old, Parsons was born just a few months after YouTube was launched.
In a recent article, New York Times chief Hollywood correspondent Brooks Barnes writes that Backrooms is part of a growing wave of breakout films from young directors who honed their skills on YouTube rather than inside the Hollywood ecosystem.
And Barnes joined us now.
Thank you so much for being here.
So, it's all figured that that shows 50% of Backrooms ticket buyers cited A24 as the main reason to see it.
I mean, what does that tell you? And why is this seeing so much success?
>> A24, more than any movie company, has really fostered a relationship with young moviegoers, you know, hiring directors that have never made a movie before, whether they come from a film festival experience making a short or a play right or now YouTube videos.
And so, that that for movies for us, by us, ethos has really connected with Generation Z, you know, teenagers, young 20s moviegoers.
And paid off this weekend, as we can see.
>> Well, and Steven Spielberg was what, 26 when he directed Jaws? I mean, in in your point in your piece, you point out that most of the successes seen from these YouTube to Hollywood movies is in horror, which you note is the cheapest genre to produce.
Um is is our major studio studios not taking that genre seriously?
>> They were until the weekend. They were taking it seriously until the weekend.
Right? Like, you know, oh it's easy to dismiss or is um you know, cheap.
It's uh pretty easy comparatively to express a horror idea in a short video.
Um much more so than to convey a Devil Wears Prada or something like that. And
so, uh you know, there was some skepticism going into the the weekend, but with uh numbers like that, you know, $82 million opening weekend on a movie that only cost $10 million and and almost nothing to market
um is something that every every studio uh you know, dropped their jaw to.
And and also I'd point out that some there are there is a history of horror newcomers um going on to direct very very big movies.
David Fincher,
uh for example, was a was a you know, the sort of the previous era of this a previous era was MTV creating um new voices [snorts] uh in the '90s and early 2000s.
So, people like David Fincher came in, directed an Alien movie horror, and went on to, you know, many things.
Um James Wan um came up with Saw and uh has directed, you know, one of the best performing Fast and Furious movies.
So,
>> I have to be quick with you on this, but some have said this democratizes the industry. Are you seeing that?
>> People think that that will happen.
Right? Like, whether uh it will happen,
we'll see. But, you know, the the the
great democratization of storytelling has definitely happened.
Right? The YouTube, the audience in many ways has moved to YouTube from professional storytellers like Holly in Hollywood.
And so, now this is an effort by Hollywood to to bring that audience into the traditional and YouTubers to you know, grow and expand in their careers from videos to feature-length movies.
>> Brooks Barnes, thanks so much.
>> Sure.
Analysis
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