Anyone not familiar with Kane - who was 16 when he started making his "found footage" films in Blender - the guy is a truly brilliant mind. Listening to him talk... you can close your eyes and he speaks like someone middle aged. It's almost uncanny.
Anyhow, in addition to his genuinely excellent Backrooms videos, I highly recommend you turn off the lights and take in his The Oldest View series as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjY897CCu4g&list=PLVAh-MgDVq...
He painstakingly recreated a random demolished suburban Texas mall from archival footage. It's wild how good he is at this.
Major studios were too afraid to produce something fresh instead of numberless sequels and reboots in the last decade or so.
I think calculus somewhere has changed that is allowing these small/mid sized movies to be made again.
Cost ranges from $5-30. Fewer dirt cheap sales than Steam, but the standard price point at launch is lower, in exchange.
(Having to explain “buying movies” makes me feel old!)
Last year it was basically F1 and Minecraft (and while not sequels, both are arguably well known "franchises" outside of movies - but I guess MJ and Wuthering Heights are too ;-)).
Not to say that it isn't an improvement, but we're still pretty far from seeing American cinema catching up to the world stage in originality, let alone to the golden Hollywood era.
Backrooms was a quite successful web series on YT which in turn originated in 4chan boards.
Only the medium being sourced from is changing from successful Broadway shows, popular novels or comic books in the years past. The calculus remains the same - properties with name recognition even from other formats tend to be green-light.
In general, there is sooo much free money on the ground for large, hierarchical American corporations to do the following
1. Give young talented people resources and freedom
2. Don't put them through endless bullshit internal status games
The reason why the tech industry in the US thrives so much is partially due to the fact that it is one of the few industries that gives people high salaries and agency in their roles without a huge amount of experience.
Almost everywhere else is just an artifically gated series of internal politics, nepotism and pointless rituals in too-big-to-fail industries, which attract people who prefer these games over actual results.
Yeah it's pretty good. I am in my late 30. Excited for Backrooms which isnt yet available
The movie was great but it's not a stand-alone movie, it is a small piece of the full story so don't go in thinking that everything will be explained and tied up in a neat little bow.
The movie takes place in Kane Pixel (the movie director's) youtube series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVAh-MgDVqvDUEq6qDXqO...
It makes a lot more sense if you watch the full youtube series first.
It looked a lot more polished than what I'd expect from an indie producer, though.
I liked it, and it's a shame that it was killed. Kind of a "slow burn," though, so I think I know why it was killed.
Probably worth a watch if you enjoy the genre. If you’re someone who just enjoys a good story, this is a pretty easy skip.
<:)
Liminal spaces I get. Reminds of Severance. And anyways, how is this worth going to a theater for? <Shrug> A24 has done well. Is 81M considered breaching 'mainstream'? Because these niche horror things being portrayed as part of the greater 'culture' is tiring.
If you can get over your preconceived notions, I'd bet that you'd really enjoy this movie. It's extremely well executed and genuinely unsettling without ever getting gory, comedic or stupid.