Kane Parsons was 17 years old when he uploaded his first Backrooms video to YouTube. Now, at 21, he's sitting on an 84% Rotten Tomatoes score and a 75 on Metacritic for his feature film debut with A24—and traditional film school paths everywhere just got a lot less relevant.

The reviews are in, and critics are calling Backrooms everything from "disturbing, visually unforgettable, and intellectually ambitious" (HeyUGuys) to a film that "feels like the arrival of something genuinely new in mainstream horror" (The Prague Reporter). Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve lead a cast navigating the film's liminal nightmare spaces—those unsettling, fluorescent-lit hallways that have haunted the internet since the creepypasta first emerged.

But here's what should keep studio executives up at night: Parsons didn't go to USC or NYU. He learned Blender from YouTube tutorials. He built a following by making atmospheric horror shorts in his bedroom. And when A24 came calling, he translated that internet-native sensibility into 30,000 square feet of practical sets that critics are comparing to David Lynch's Eraserhead.

"Parsons announces himself as a filmmaker worth watching closely, delivering what may be the strongest creepypasta adaptation yet," writes Slash Film's BJ Colangelo. The film's DNA is pure internet horror—the kind that understands existential dread comes from familiar spaces made strange, from the anxiety of endless corridors and buzzing lights and carpet that shouldn't exist in basements.

IndieWire notes the film and predicts it will be for a generation of viewers. That's the real story here. While has been trying to figure out how to adapt video games (badly) and mine IP from decades-old franchises (tediously), went straight from internet culture to the big screen without losing what made his work resonate.