Entertainment
Backrooms Is For Diehard Fans, And Your Mom, And This Is A Good Thing
By Robert Scucci
| Published
For years, I’ve been saying that YouTube creators, specifically those focusing on analog horror, will be the future of cinema. This past weekend, Backrooms proved my point, and I’m fighting back the urge to spend this entire article gloating about it. But the truth is, I have no right to brag. I’m just a guy who watches a lot of movies. The real hero of the story is Kane Parsons, who built out the Backrooms lore on YouTube and now has his name attached to a directorial debut that brought in $118 million on its opening weekend against a $10 million budget.
He proved the concept that I have been championing for some time now: kids on YouTube have their finger on the pulse, and Hollywood doesn’t.
So, does Backrooms live up to its hype? In so many words, yes. In addition to absolutely cleaning up at the box office, the film currently boasts an intimidating 90 percent critical score on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s worth noting, however, that the Popcornmeter score currently sits at 74 percent. As far as I could surmise, this dip in reception comes from long-time fans of the YouTube series who felt underwhelmed by the film.
Of course, you’ll get avid defenders of all things Backrooms saying that the haters “lack media literacy.” The problem is that nobody knows what “media literacy” means. People are allowed to dislike or feel underwhelmed by things that you like, and calling them “media illiterate” is just a cheap way to avoid engaging with valid criticism, and opening up a wider discussion on something that we’re all rooting for.
As somebody who has been following The Backrooms YouTube series since the early days, I think Backrooms played out exactly how I expected. But I am expecting more at some point, and I’m framing this review around its potential rather than what I got. Kane Parsons has said that he’s not finished, so let’s celebrate the fact that the concept has been proven and see where he takes it.
Needs To Be Appraised Through The Lens Of Potential
There have already been countless thought-pieces on Backrooms, so here’s my take. Parsons triumphantly took his vision to the big screen, but it felt like there were caveats. Not in the form of studio interference or anything like that, but in the form of trying to get this thing to appeal to a wide, mainstream audience. The original series on YouTube is a niche thing for an online audience. Distilling its essence down to the most oversimplified terms, it’s found-footage content of a person running through an endless labyrinth of yellow corridors. The environment is oppressively liminal. Its eeriness comes from the fact that everything looks so familiar, yet so uncanny at the same time.
It’s House of Leaves, if House of Leaves could ever successfully be turned into a visual project (it can’t).
But therein lies the problem. While The Backrooms became incredibly popular with online communities, there’s no way to make it appeal to a wide audience without some concessions being made. Think about it. If you’re primed for innovative found-footage experiments set in a liminal hellscape, then you’re already all in.
For a wide release to work, however, there needs to be characterization and some semblance of a story arc. Yes, there’s lore about the Async Research Institute in the original web series, but that’s not enough to get the average person, who maybe watches two or three horror movies a year, invested. So what’s the solution? Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve).
The film tells the story of a bitter, divorced, alcoholic furniture store owner facing bankruptcy, and his accidental discovery of the Backrooms while searching for an electrical disturbance at Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire, the furniture store in which he currently lives after losing his house. There’s obvious tension between him and Mary, who doesn’t believe him when he says he found a seemingly endless stretch of yellow hallways beneath his store, and the film spends a lot of time playing with that dynamic and its inevitable fallout.
While Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve deserve all the praise that’s being thrown at them, their characters’ individual stories are not what drew people into the original YouTube series. It’s the liminal spaces and the never-ending sense of dread that something is always creeping around the next corner, ready to pounce, forcing you to run without thinking, only for you to find yourself even more lost and even more terrified. It’s a feedback loop of nightmare fuel that works exceptionally well in the form of an online mini series.
However, the concept of a Backrooms feature film first had to be proven to put Kane Parsons on the map. There needs to be an actual story to introduce this universe to a mainstream audience, and Will Soodik’s screenplay does so by giving us a compelling narrative about Clark, Mary, and the few other characters they interact with. They both experience a slow-burn psychological horror buildup driven by past traumas and present shortcomings, which manifest within the mysterious realm hidden beneath Clark’s furniture store. In my efforts to keep this spoiler-free, I’ll leave it at this: we get a good story, but I don’t think that’s what people want here.
The Concept Has Been Proven, And We Need To Let It Grow On Its Own Terms
I’m conflicted in my assessment of Backrooms because I feel like Parsons and Soodik had a pretty impossible task ahead of them. They had to reconcile the sheer vibe and mystery of the YouTube series with a mainstream audience’s need for conventional storytelling. We’re talking about an intellectual property centered around an insidious company trying to map out an endless, theoretically impossible space that looks like an alternate reality that some people just so happen to walk into without any rhyme or reason.
That’s an incredibly hard sell.
That’s like saying, “Hey Mom! You love horror. You have to check out this new movie.” And when she asks you what it’s about, you answer, “Hallways and stuff.” That’s not how a low-budget horror movie makes back 12 times its budget (and counting).
Knowing this, Soodik and Parsons give us Clark and Mary, along with Mark Duplass’ Phil, one of the researchers working for Async. It succeeds with a mainstream audience because it attaches a human element to a place that lacks humanity. And if you want up-and-coming filmmakers to have a chance at all, their debut can’t just appeal to your niche interests. Your mom, or whoever in your mind is a casual genre fan, needs to buy into it too.
So, did Backrooms live up to the hype? Absolutely. More importantly, it proved that esoteric concepts coming from teenagers on YouTube are helping pave the way for a horror renaissance, and we have Kane Parsons, who was 17 years old when he started posting the shorts to YouTube, to thank for that. He took something niche and put it in front of a wide audience, and generally speaking, they’re gobbling it up. Now that the concept has been proven, I hope Parsons is given total creative freedom he deserves to continue building this thing out.
For now, I feel confident in my assessment that Backrooms needed its storytelling to succeed and capture the world’s attention and imagination. Now that general audiences know what the Backrooms are as a concept, I think Parsons is smart enough to run with the premise and keep building it out however he sees fit. This is the start of something beautiful, and any disappointment you have about how the storytelling was handled in the film should be gut-checked with the following question: If the whole thing played out like an extended version of the YouTube shorts, would your mom even consider watching it?
In this case, we need to think about Backrooms, not in terms of the movie that diehard fans want to see, but rather the movie that mainstream audiences need to see.
Backrooms saw its theatrical release on May 29, 2026.
Entertainment
The Controversial, R-Rated Sci-Fi Thriller That’s Better Than The Book
By Joshua Tyler
| Published
In 2006, the Wachowskis, the minds behind The Matrix, poured the proceeds of their success into a lie. A lie they hoped would reveal the truth.
At first, it seemed to work. People bought tickets, critics liked it, and there was hope that their idea might lead to change on a significant scale. Now, 20 years later, the exact opposite has happened. The dark future their movie predicted is closer than ever.
This is why V For Vendetta failed.
V For Vendetta Was a Conventional Success
By any conventional measure, V for Vendetta was not a failure; it was a moderate success. It got generally positive reviews, performed solidly at the box office, and more than made its budget back.
But V for Vendetta isn’t a conventional film. So before we determine why it failed, let’s define what V for Vendetta is.
V’s Truth And His Vendetta
Based on the same-named comic series written in 1982 by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, V for Vendetta tells the tale of a near-future England run by an oppressive government and a man, known only as V (Hugo Weaving), who sets out to destroy it. V is a terrorist, and he achieves his goals by murder, subterfuge, and blowing things up. He bursts onto the scene clad in dark clothes, hidden behind a Guy Fawkes mask, and spouting dialogue so complex and full of high-dollar words that it’s nearly another language.
While skulking London’s deserted, under-curfew streets, he rescues a waifish girl accosted by Fingermen, the government’s assault-hungry secret police. The girl is Evey (Natalie Portman), and it’s the 5th of November, a day the people of Britain will remember.
V takes Evey under his wing as he embarks upon a strategy of governmental destruction. He’s a terrorist, but he’s not terrorizing the people. Instead, his goal is to awaken and empower them, while striking fear into the heart of England’s totalitarian government. “If you want to see who is responsible, look no further than a mirror,” he tells the country’s citizens. “I understand, you were afraid,” he says by way of forgiving them.
It’s the people who put Britain’s corrupt, hate-driven government in power, and it’s the people who must stop it. “People should not be afraid of their governments,” pronounces V, “governments should be afraid of their people.”
V for Vendetta is a visually rich, dark, and resonant film; one that uses style to convey substance under the guise of pure entertainment. The Wachowski brothers’ script is a faithful adaptation of its source material, tweaked just enough to update it and properly translate it to the screen.
Is the movie political? Yes, but not necessarily in a way specific to any modern political party. It was, after all, written in 1982. These are the same political paradoxes that have been plaguing man for centuries. If you’re British, you’ll almost certainly find a way to apply it to Keir Starmer or Tony Blair, but that’s only because the film’s themes are universal.
Hugo Weaving is incredible as V, acting underneath a stiff, somewhat silly mask that completely covers his face, his eyes, or anything else he might use to convey the slightest emotion. Yet somehow, V is the film’s most passionate, powerful character.
Hugo uses his voice and physicality to convey that, to bring an awkward, faceless creation to electrifying life. V calls himself an idea, and with Weaving playing him, he’s a very powerful idea.
But Natalie Portman’s Evey becomes the real heart of the movie. V is an unstoppable force; Evey is a real person, caught up in his deadly rebellion. Her conversations with V, not the movie’s one or two action bits, are the driving force of the Wachowskis’ script. Evey resists V’s crusade against oppression; her mind rebels at what he says out of fear and self-preservation. So will you.
V For Vendetta’s Forbidden Message
Referencing the still unseen film back in the days before it was released, one member of a politically minded film forum was quick to declare: “You can’t make a movie about a terrorist now without endorsing bin Laden.” It’s that mindset that makes V for Vendetta so unsettling.
Sometimes, it almost feels like you’re watching something forbidden, like you’re seeing something you shouldn’t be allowed to see. It’s shocking that a movie like this ever actually got made. It’s even more unbelievable that a major Hollywood studio made it. Would the Wachowskis have been allowed to make it if they were making it now? I doubt it.
It’s fun to accuse Hollywood of excessive activism. Most of the modern message-pushing they do isn’t bravery; it’s adopting a trend and claiming to be a rebel. Not so with V for Vendetta. It’s a purposefully uncomfortable film, one that will affect different people differently depending on what you bring in with you.
Yes, V for Vendetta is rebellious and risky, subversive and dangerous. But it’s not cynical. V’s naïve take on the world is one that believes in the basic strength and goodness of people as strongly as it believes in the intrinsic corruptness of big government. It’s a viewpoint that almost certainly has no basis in reality, but that’s alright.
What makes the film great is that you’re not asked to subscribe to its philosophy, only think about it and take note. It’s not a call to rise up against your rulers, but a warning about the way fear can be used to give a person or organization too much power. It’s an old lesson, but one that bears frequent repeating.
Why V For Vendetta Failed
“By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.” – V’s personal motto
V for Vendetta is an idea. An idea’s success or failure must be measured by its impact on the world around it. V for Vendetta had none.
The movie planted a few quotes in the minds of those who saw it. People love repeating that “governments should be afraid of their people” one. But at no point did V for Vendetta cause anything to change.
By any measure, governments have only grown more powerful and less afraid of their people since 2006. In response, people have rushed to hand off even more power to centralized authority figures, citing safety, equity, or some other concern as justification.
Had V for Vendetta flopped and become a cult classic, people would be whispering its words in secret late-night showings. Had it been a box-office juggernaut, it would have cemented its place as a permanent fixture in our culture. It did neither, so it fades away, taking not just its message, but the message of the comic on which it’s based, along with it.
V for Vendetta’s idea has been neutered, and mid-level success was the tool used to do it.
Entertainment
Grab the Magic: The Gathering Foundations Jumpstart Booster Display Box on sale for under $100 at Amazon
TL;DR: Amazon has the Magic: The Gathering Foundations Jumpstart 2025 Booster Box on sale for $99.62, down from its current standard price of $105.59. That gets you 24 ready-to-mix Jumpstart boosters, with every pack including 20 cards, all the lands needed to play, and at least one Rare or Mythic Rare card.
Credit: Magic: The Gathering
$99.92
at Amazon
$105.59
Save $5.67
If you’ve been thinking about getting into Magic: The Gathering without immediately needing to learn every corner of deckbuilding, Jumpstart is still one of the easiest ways to get started with the trading card game, and you can now do so with its biggest box on sale.
As of June 3, Amazon lists the Magic: The Gathering Foundations Jumpstart 2025 Booster Box for $99.62, with the item shipped and sold by Amazon itself rather than a third-party seller. This is a 90-day low price; Amazon’s typical price for the 24-pack box is $105.59, saving you $5.97 with this sale price.
On the other hand, you can save even more when shopping outside of Amazon. TCGplayer listings starting at $89 with shipping included, dropping below its $89.09 market price. Slightly higher, Walmart sits at $89.99 via Flipside Gaming.
Magic: The Gathering Foundations Jumpstart Boosters are built around the idea of getting started simply by opening two boosters, shuffling them together, and starting to play — with no drafting, no decklist research, and no digging through your bulk box for lands required.
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Each of the included 24 Jumpstart boosters contains 20 Magic cards with all the lands already included. Every booster also comes with one anime-inspired card and at least one Rare or Mythic Rare, which is a plus for collectors.
There are over 46 possible themes, too, including Goblins, Dinosaurs, Ninjas, and other chaotic little pairings that can make each game feel different.
To get ready for what’s to come in MTG, you can preorder the 30-pack Marvel Super Heroes Play Booster Box for under $140 — a record low price. Right now, though, you can also buy the Magic: The Gathering Aetherdrift Bundle on sale for $40.
If you’re also a Pokémon TCG fan, although it is currently not available on Amazon, the newly announced Pitch Black expansion — Booster Packs, ETBs, Display Boxes, and Booster Bundles — is available to preorder at TCGplayer.
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Entertainment
Samsungs 32-inch Odyssey G5 QHD gaming monitor has dropped to a record low price on Amazon
TL;DR: Amazon has slashed the price of the Samsung 32-inch Odyssey G5 (G50F) QHD gaming monitor to $219.99, $130 off its original $349.99 price; that’s its lowest price with the retailer ever, and it still offers a 1440p gaming display with a 180Hz refresh rate.
$219.99
at Amazon
$349.99
Save $130
With the rise of OLED and 4K gaming monitors, HD and QHD models are getting more affordable than ever — and you can now score $130 off a top-tier 32-inch unit from Samsung.
As of June 3, the Samsung 32-inch Odyssey G5 (G50F) QHD gaming monitor is on sale at Amazon for only $219.99, down 37% from its usual list price, and is sold and shipped by Amazon directly. With that $130 drop, this gaming monitor is now at its lowest Amazon price ever, as confirmed by price-tracking site camelcamelcamel.
For this massively lower price, the G50F offers QHD 2560 x 1440 resolution, similar to standard HD but with 1.7 times the pixel density for a fuller display, without making the more expensive jump to 4K. Whether you’re catching up on RPGs like Crimson Desert or linear action-adventures like 007: First Light, everything will still be sharper and pleasing to the eyes.
For lovers of fast-paced multiplayer games like Fortnite, the fast IPS panel also brings a 178-degree viewing angle to help keep the picture clear, while the 180Hz refresh rate and 1ms GtG response time keep gameplay both buttery smooth and far more responsive
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Despite not being 4K, the Odyssey G5’s display still includes HDR10 for brighter highlights and deeper-looking shadows. Plus, the included AMD FreeSync and NVIDIA G-Sync compatibility helps keep any visuals intact by reducing screen tearing as much as possible.
On the off chance you’re open to diving into 4K, LG’s 32-inch OLED UltraGear monitor has been cut to just under $800 on Amazon, too.
For a model that’s a bit smaller, the 27-inch, 1440p LG OLED UltraGear gaming monitor is now only $500, down nearly half.
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If you’re also a Pokémon TCG fan, although currently not available on Amazon, the newly announced Pitch Black expansion — Booster Packs, ETBs, Display Boxes, and Booster Bundles — is available to preorder at TCGplayer.
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The Controversial, R-Rated Sci-Fi Thriller That’s Better Than The Book
Grab the Magic: The Gathering Foundations Jumpstart Booster Display Box on sale for under $100 at Amazon
