Why every indie filmmaker should make a movie like this

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]A24 is releasing Backrooms [music] this year, and let me tell you this isn't just a step for the studio. This is a massive leap for indie filmmaking. For those of you who don't know, Backrooms was an indie sensation online. This spurred on an entire wave of people recreating that liminal world.

[00:00:16]>> Hello.

[00:00:20]>> So, I've been doing more deep dives into Backrooms and realized that it's not just these little short films that are online. People have been making feature-length fan films set in that universe. This is a platform where filmmakers who have been studying how to use Blender want to have some sort of aesthetic style, but need a backbone to base out of. This has been like their film school.

[00:00:43]>> Be quiet. You have me there, just fight.

[00:00:45]I think we're close.

[00:00:46]>> I think the craziest thing about this entire deal isn't the fact that Backrooms is like one of the most unique-looking A24 films and perhaps one of the most unique-looking movies we'll see this year.

[00:00:55]I think the craziest part is that it is made and created by Kane Parsons, a 19-year-old filmmaker who probably when they shot this was closer to 17 years old. And to put this kind of into perspective, he got between 6.5 and 11 million dollars to make this movie, which makes him probably one of the youngest filmmakers to get that amount of money for their first feature film.

[00:01:16]And what really perked my ears up wasn't the fact that this was a big, bold A24 film or that they were funding a very young, novice filmmaker. It was the fact that they were putting money behind a YouTuber.

[00:01:38]>> Not like hold it.

[00:01:40]>> And this isn't the first time the studio has backed a YouTuber. In 2022, they released Talk to Me by the RackaRacka brothers, and then later released their follow-up feature Bring Her Back in 2024. And seeing the success of both of these films, along with other studio-backed releases like Shady Oaks by Neon and Curry Barker's Obsession.

[00:01:58]This shows that YouTube filmmakers have a runway on the main stage. But there's also something that I noticed within this pattern. They're all horror films.

[00:02:10]Shelby Oaks was originally built off of Chris Stuckmann's Indiegogo campaign or Kickstarter campaign that raised a record amount of money and then he went out and shot it and then Mike Flanagan got behind it and then Neon did and they gave him more money to reshoot it. So there's like that approach.

[00:02:26]>> [laughter] >> Or you go down Curry Barker's approach >> [music] >> with the newly released Obsession. This was fully backed by a big studio and they went out and made it and now it's got [music] like 96% on Rotten Tomatoes.

[00:02:40]So you could just get fully backed by someone with your original IP.

[00:02:46]And then there's like this third category which we're seeing Kane Parsons do which is having original IP, something that's gained some notoriety online, and then getting acquired by a studio, like reached out by that studio specifically being like, "Hey, we want to give you money to make something much larger." And then there's also Iron Lung, a film that we've heard about so much. Iron Lung became a major box office success grossing over $21 million worldwide in its opening weekend against roughly a $3 million budget. It debuted at number two behind Disney's Send Help and it earned seven times its original budget within the first [music] week. This was fans getting behind a filmmaker, reaching out to local theaters to get this movie seen which inevitably got it into 3,000 theaters across the US. [music] And all this data gives me two points.

[00:03:33]One, movies don't need to be made in one fashion anymore. There's no more gatekeepers. You can go down a slew of different options. And number two, there's a big appetite for independent horror. Horror genre has been the most bankable success genre ever. If you look at any of your favorite filmmakers who are directing massive box office hits, chances are they made a horror film to start. Look at Marvel's roster of directors from James Gunn to Sam Raimi to the guy who made Doctor Strange. Even the new Batman movie was shot by Matt Reeves who cut his teeth on Let the Right Ones In. This is a genre that gets snubbed at the Oscars and kind of shied away by many fans, but the crazy statistic is this is where most people make a launch. And I've experienced this too. My first feature was a first-person zombie movie applying that sort of YouTuber filmmaker style into a film and it ended up being acquired by studio out of LA and getting distribution and doing all that fun stuff. If you want to get an example of this, look at Steven Spielberg's Jaws.

[00:04:32]This genre teaches things like building suspense without seeing anything, collaborating with people like composers and production design people in order to build an environment, working on tight budgets to create big feelings, mood, atmosphere, performance. This genre is so, I think, underappreciated for the value it creates on the cinematic landscape as well as the types of filmmakers it's created in the process.

[00:04:58]And yes, there are a lot of bad horror films out there. Ones that with that are riddled with jump scares and cheap thrills, but I also think there's so much art to be applied within these.

[00:05:08]Backrooms is a beautiful canvas for this. You have a unique setting we've never seen on screen before, a shooting style that feels very fresh, atmosphere, music, performance. And on top of all of that, it's a global audience. You see, when you make any other genre, you're kind of catering to a specific type of demographic. For example, dramas are hard to reach outside of the bubble of which the country they were made in. If you make a North American drama, it's really applicable to those in North America, but overseas it doesn't translate as well as what may be a local drama would do for that country. And now, some do break through and we've seen many that have gained critical acclaim. It's much tougher for those ones to escape the boundaries or confines of their local market. Robert Rodriguez has a good argument on this about action films. He thinks those are the ones to break through the market.

[00:05:56]>> Action, action, action. We don't have enough action. The previous regime left us with no action.

[00:06:03]So, even at Netflix, there's a that distributor, you know, distributors, buyers all over the world, they want action. So, what we're going to do, make an action film.

[00:06:11]>> And I think those are great, but they cost a lot more money than something like a horror film does. And the reason for this is you don't need stunt performers, you don't need massive set pieces, and you don't need top-tier talent. You need atmosphere, a good setting, and suspense.

[00:06:26]>> Think about John Wick. John Wick 4, what did that cost?

[00:06:29]100 million dollars. Okay, that's a big budget movie. Everybody's making more money by then, I get it. You know how much the original John Wick cost?

[00:06:36]20 million.

[00:06:37]To start a billion-dollar franchise.

[00:06:40]>> Also, one of the cheapest, most effective production design elements is fake blood, and it doesn't matter what your budget is, you can typically afford that, and it makes so many shots just look way cooler.

[00:06:51]Recently, some of my friends actually produced an A24 film called Undertow.

[00:06:55]This was a low-budget movie shot for under half a million dollars, and it ended up being acquired by A24 and making over 9 million dollars at the box office within its first few weeks. And this is a movie without any gore, jump scares, A-list talent. There's like some people on the phone, but like it's all in one location, and really plays off of sound design. Like that's kind of its main thing. This is very tactile stuff that you can do on a low budget. To be honest, I think as audience members want this. We want movies that aren't high spectacle, that are super big.

[00:07:26]Contained, suspense-driven horror is kind of enough for us. But the cool thing about Backrooms is it feels large in scope because they're using things like visual effects and new techniques that he's kind of crafted within his own sort of wheelhouse to make it feel much larger than what it is. He's using a formula I like to call big world small universe.

[00:07:47]An idea that you can contain something but make it feel much larger than what it is. And this is exactly what Undertone does. He uses a large soundscape, builds a myth that you're really driving into. But at the end of the day, it is all in basically one living room and a bedroom. So, I think we're in a really cool era, not only for independent filmmakers and YouTubers, but the genre of horror. This is a genre that has stuck through time and not really gotten as much love or credit that it's deserved, even though it is one of the most successful genres of all time. Movies like Blair Witch Project and the careers that it's launched in Hollywood are great examples of why this genre is so important to the blood flow of filmmaking.

[00:08:26]>> [music] >> And this has propelled the next project that I want to go make. We're currently working on a new feature film that is both like horror sci-fi thriller. Um I'll talk more about it in a future video. We actually shot a proof of concept for it. Um so, you can find a link to in the description below. Movie that we shot for like a hundred bucks.

[00:08:43]Fake blood and just a lot of uh favors came out to help us do that sort of [music] camera test. And there's a lot of other genres that explode the independent revolution like dramas and comedies. But as a filmmaker who just came back from making a drama thriller, I can tell you that it's a fun experience and if you make it, you make it. But there are far more indie dramas that slip through the cracks than there are indie horror films that somehow get a little bit of an audience. Well, I'm so proud of the feature that we just made. You can see it on major streaming platforms and one of my proudest works I've ever worked on. I'm now like eager to tap into a genre that is just so rich and has such a large fan base. Let me know what you guys think about all these horror movies coming out. Is there any other genre that's lacking in the film world that we're just not seeing as much of? I could just be a crazy person here who absolutely has a biased opinion over horror films and I absolutely love them.

[00:09:35]But let me know what you guys think and thank you so much for watching. I'll see you all in another video.

[00:09:46]>> [music]