Episode 436: Backrooms

This week we yes-clip into the studio to chat psy-cosmic music festivals, unsolved Morse code, and an earth-shattering nepotism revelation, before walking into liminal horror reviewing Kane Parsons' "Backrooms".

Stream on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/14ioP0zfFczK8hKPsDUmko?si=cff351ada3944a9a

0:00 Cold open
0:33 The "endless" Montana compound, liminal spaces, and following your gut
2:42 Housekeeping: AMC Scream Unseen with Jacob
3:30 Mooshfest, Tywalker and the Humanoids, and Galactic Twang
7:05 The Captain Jack situation: cracking Morse code hidden in a Bluey card
8:00 Fire in the Mountains, the Blackfeet Reservation, and a Stanley Hotel winter retreat
10:58 Staff Picks: Cube (1997) and Dead Ringers (1988)
15:41 The Robert Pattinson / Jeremy Irons nepotism saga
19:26 BACKROOMS review begins
21:45 Who is Kane Parsons? A24's record-breaking opening
23:00 Liminal vs. analog horror, Jung, and the threshold self
26:23 Web series origins and the Osgood Perkins "shadow director" rumor
31:00 Spoilers begin: Clark, Mary, and the mono-yellow labyrinth
42:38 What does it all mean?
49:44 Highs, lows, and final ratings

ABOUT THE FILM
BACKROOMS (2026) is a science fiction horror film written, directed, and co-scored by Kane Parsons, adapted from his own viral YouTube analog-horror web series, with a screenplay co-written by Will Sudik. A jaded furniture salesman discovers a doorway in the basement of his store that opens into an endless, humming yellow labyrinth; when he vanishes inside it, his therapist follows him in. Made for roughly 10 million dollars, it is the debut feature from the self-taught 20-year-old Parsons and reportedly gave A24 the biggest opening weekend in the studio's history. Produced by A24, James Wan's Atomic Monster, Chernin, and 21 Laps, with Osgood Perkins aboard as a producer.

TALKING POINTS
Where a 20-year-old self-taught director fits into the A24 machine, the leap from analog-horror YouTube series to a 10-million-dollar feature, liminal vs. analog horror as the first genuinely Gen Z horror movement, the Jungian read (threshold spaces, the shadow self, leaving your old self before you've arrived at the new one), the Osgood Perkins "shadow director" rumor and Mark Duplass's defense of Parsons, whether the film earns its ambiguity or just withholds resolution, and Exit 8 and Skinamarink as fellow travelers.

STAFF PICKS
Byron: Dead Ringers (1988, David Cronenberg)
Kelly: Cube (1997, Vincenzo Natali)

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Produced by Byron McKoy

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This is an Audio Wool Original.