The $400 Million Hit Its Director Won't Call a Horror Film
Backrooms, a $400 million hit that spun off Kane Parsons's web series inspired by online “creepypasta” horror content, is billed as horror almost by reflex. Parsons told a panel at the Zurich Summit on Saturday that he does not see the film as aligned with the genre at all — and he is the one who directed it, so the objection carries weight that a critic's taxonomy never does.
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The label fight is really about lineage. The film's family tree runs through a creepypasta web series, so “horror” describes where the material came from, not what Parsons was aiming at.
That is generous. The billing travels with the release whether or not the director agrees with it, and a $400 million hit is precisely the kind of film a genre tag sticks to permanently.