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

The production design by Danny Vermette and Parsons's direction have earned particular praise. "Immaculately creepy, mind-boggling production design," says NextBestPicture. Deadline's Pete Hammond calls it "a visually stunning nightmare" where "the walls and doors are the real stars."

Not every critic is convinced—The Times throws some shade about the "boy wonder" thing, and The Toronto Star found it "unsettling but rarely terrifying"—but even the mixed reviews acknowledge Parsons is doing something different. Slant Magazine positions Backrooms as "a future load-bearing pillar of the internet-born horror movement."

Here's the thing about internet-native horror: it understands how we actually experience fear in 2026. It's not jump scares (though Backrooms has those). It's the uncanny valley of spaces that feel wrong. It's the creeping dread of isolation in environments designed for crowds. It's liminal space as existential terror.

And Parsons built a feature film around it before he could legally order a drink in the States.

The kid had James Wan, Shawn Levy, and Osgood Perkins lining up to produce. A24 gave him real money and real sets. And he delivered a film that The Independent says "might very well end up defining a generation."

In Hollywood, nobody knows anything—except when a 21-year-old goes from Blender tutorials to 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, the industry's traditional gatekeeping just got a lot harder to justify. The Backrooms are infinite. So, apparently, are the ways to break into filmmaking now.

Welcome to the future. It's fluorescent-lit and unsettling, and it came from YouTube.