May 31, 2026
The Two Unprecedented Horror Movies Upending Hollywood
Apple Podcasts 
Spotify 
Castro 
RSS Feed We saw both “Backrooms” and “Obsession” over the past two weekends and were blown away by the not only the movies themselves, but by just how many other people turned out to see them. “Obsession” continues to rise in its third week, a never before seen phenomenon. While “Backrooms” blew away the competition, bringing in a record breaking box office number by the youngest director in movie history. Both films cost very little to make, and are likely to change the way we make movies going forward.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey, folks, it is Sunday, May thirty first, and Hollywood has a huge hit on its hands and that might be a huge problem for the future of the industry.
00:00:15
Speaker 2: And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. This is sounds like a wonderful thing. A twenty year old kid has the number one movie at the box office.
00:00:27
Speaker 3: This is an amazing story.
00:00:29
Speaker 4: I just got chills. That is a crazy thing to think about, especially.
00:00:32
Speaker 5: Because I have a twenty year old, a twenty three year old, and it's impressive. It's unheard of, and it's historic.
00:00:42
Speaker 2: It is this is the according to the studio at least, this is the youngest person to ever direct a number one box office film. And if folks, you might not know it, but your kids do. The movie is called back Rooms. We're just getting the numbers, so we're jumping on. We're gonna explain the phenomenon because a lot I was not familiar. Robes, I am now because we just saw the movie. But let's tell you now, Robes, tell the folks what's happening at the box office this weekend, which is an absolute phenoe.
00:01:12
Speaker 5: It's insane. So yes, back Rooms is number one and it's and it's by leaps and bounds biggest opening ever for the production company A twenty four, which we're starting to hear more and more of. You'll see that name everywhere now, and yes it is. Eighty percent of the audience was under twenty five. That's remarkable, and sixty two percent of the audience was men.
00:01:38
Speaker 2: You don't hear those numbers as the reason you're hearing those numbers now because this audience literally moved from the Internet and specifically from YouTube to the movie theater. This is unprecedented what we have seen at the movie theater the past three weekends. Really, between this movie and the other one Obsession, they have robes. They have the potential to change Hollywood because these movies were not produced, these ideas were not come up, did not come out of Hollywood. These kids are from the Internet, including this one. This is the name you need to know, folks. His name is Cain Parsons. He is twenty years old and he just directed a couple of Oscar nominees and what is a phenom movie that is pulling off something unprecedented at the box office.
00:02:28
Speaker 5: Do you know what I read about Caine Parsons that made my jaw drop.
00:02:31
Speaker 4: Other than the fact that he's twenty years.
00:02:33
Speaker 5: Old, he was born two months after YouTube officially launched. He is younger than YouTube, and he is clearly known in the YouTube world. That is how many of his ideas took root from, even from a Reddit thread.
00:02:49
Speaker 4: I mean, it's so out of the box from.
00:02:53
Speaker 5: What we're used to seeing and how movies are created and produced, and this flies in the face of the way it's been done for decades.
00:03:03
Speaker 3: So this movie is going to be number one for the weekend.
00:03:05
Speaker 2: The unofficial official results have just come out, but this movie is going to be number one. It's going to make eighty one an estimated eighty million dollars, if you will, here in the US, but one hundred and twenty nearly worldwide, one hundred and twenty million dollars for a movie that was plucked off of a YouTube series. Now, the other thing we want to get into Obsessions whe already did an episode about that. It was the other phenom, but it's been out three weeks. We'll get into the history it's making, but let's start with back rooms. I had to look up the synopsis. I had to get an idea of how to explain this movie to people roads because after seeing it, anybody would have asked me, I would have said, well, so we should explain what the movie is first of all.
00:03:48
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, here's the official synopsis.
00:03:51
Speaker 5: After a therapist's patient disappears into a dimension beyond reality, she must venture into the unknown to save him. Another one says, A strange doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom. That was basically that last one was all I knew going into it, and we went in watching it with just a complete open mind. And I can only speak for myself, but we did have many discussions efforts.
00:04:18
Speaker 4: I walked out with a very confused mind.
00:04:21
Speaker 3: It was you, me, Sabine.
00:04:23
Speaker 2: We all looked at each other and we had different ideas of what they were trying to get at. We literally were walking out of the theater these huge escalators and walking down the street. In the entire time, Sabine was on her phone trying to look up what the hell we just saw. Now the movie, as far as the review goes, it's different, it's unique, it's eerie, it's well acted, it is creepy as hell.
00:04:46
Speaker 3: Takes.
00:04:47
Speaker 2: It scares the hell out of you, not by making you jump, but by making you uncomfortable, and you're uncomfortable almost the whole time.
00:04:54
Speaker 4: That's a good way to put it.
00:04:55
Speaker 5: It is totally uncomfortable, and yet from what we've read, Kane Parsons was it was relatable because basically from what I gathered, you know how we all just have blips of memories from our childhood, maybe a feeling or a scene of a certain house, or the way someone looked or what someone said, but you don't really have the context for these flashes.
00:05:16
Speaker 4: That's kind of what it feels like the movie is. And there are just flashes.
00:05:21
Speaker 5: It's almost like you're walking through someone's brain that's disjointed and not connected and you're trying to piece it together and it's scary and it's shocking, but yet somewhat familiar.
00:05:32
Speaker 4: That's kind of how the movie felt.
00:05:34
Speaker 2: Now that sounds crazy if for the uninitiated, which we are, but there are millions.
00:05:40
Speaker 3: Of people who knew exactly what this was.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: It has been an online sure, let's call it a phenomenon that's been thrown around a lot, even in the first five minutes of this episode. But I didn't know this idea of liminal spaces robes. I did not know, but this kid started an online series years ago back rooms found footage, and he has been fascinated by this idea online and he just took it to a next level. People fascinated by these liminal spaces is what they call them, but it's they can be literal physical places, or maybe in your mind, there's transitional areas that aren't reality. They're just where things like big storage spaces or big office spaces, big empty spaces that are depicted on film or on video or online where just fragments live, fragments of nothing, nothing you can understand, it's unexplained. And that was kind of the mystery and the draw online that became a phenomenon, and this damn kid takes that idea to another level. I didn't know this was going on online.
00:06:51
Speaker 5: And it's funny as we're watching now, or at least we're reading, people trying to make sense of it and trying to figure out where this kid's head was and how he figured all this out. And I've even seen people trying to draw connections to the Shining and Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King and certainly all of those directors and writers and creators may have influenced him, and they talked about The Shining being amazed and that people were upset by even that film, that that was too out there and too crazy.
00:07:22
Speaker 4: And taken it.
00:07:22
Speaker 5: He's taken that to a whole other level, which he certainly has. If you think about The Shining being a virtual and a real labyrinth at the end of the movie. For those of you who are familiar with that movie, which we very much are, I did see a slight connection. But I thought, man, I think we're just trying to explain the unexplainable.
00:07:39
Speaker 4: I think us.
00:07:39
Speaker 5: Older folks are trying to get what was it about that film? What was it about this concept that drew so many young, young people to the theaters? Isn't that what we've all been trying to do in broadcasting on television, in movie theaters in the entertainment industry period. We're trying to bring younger people to the table, and we haven't been able to be successful until now. You have one of their own making it happen.
00:08:04
Speaker 2: And it's not just so we don't want to just say it's because he's young and he's no. No, this is please don't e us suggest that a twenty four just was Yeah, it's a bit of a roll of the dice, but this kid has been added for a decade plus, honing his skills online, using free apps, using free programs online. To start work, he didn't have any money, so he learned on programs he'd used what was available to him online. He said, he started working on this dustance. He was eleven years old.
00:08:39
Speaker 4: That's insane.
00:08:40
Speaker 2: Eleven years old. The series itself launched in twenty twenty two. The back rooms found footage online, but it's been going for the past three years. Ropes, he said, he launched this thing. He actually put it up. He was sixteen years old. A month later people started calling. Yep, Hollywood started coming because he had produced something original that not other people had been doing this, but Robes something that jumped out at me.
00:09:05
Speaker 3: He says.
00:09:06
Speaker 2: There wasn't good production value and a lot of stuff out there. He added good production value and the craving that people had for this one thing. They found a place where it was being done well. And this is an He was sixteen years old. He starts getting calls from Hollywood about his series online.
00:09:24
Speaker 3: I love this story so much.
00:09:25
Speaker 5: Yeap bib I started just reading I told you this as I was reading articles. He's been interviewed obviously quite a bit with this movie and his brain.
00:09:34
Speaker 4: Listening to him speak and explain this.
00:09:37
Speaker 5: This this kid, I say kid because he's twenty, is off the charts brilliant. I mean I had to actually reread some of his sentences to fully comprehend what he was saying. That's how intelligent and creative this kid is.
00:09:51
Speaker 3: Creer.
00:09:51
Speaker 2: And you know the part I really I appreciate Robes is that he does say he did this in his bedroom and he was self taught. There is no he had to make a decision between pursuing this and going to college, and this is what he chose. Andes, this kid did not go to some film school. This kid has not been trained. He's not under the wing of somebody. He doesn't have Hollywood connections, he doesn't have a last name that goes with a famous mom, a dad who's in Hollywood. This kid created something that people loved, and he did it in a quality way and it worked. Dave, that is a wonderful, a wonderful scenario for Hollywood.
00:10:33
Speaker 3: That's always right. You piss spend.
00:10:35
Speaker 2: All this money on this film and then to promote the film, and then it's a bust and then people's careers are over and whatnot. Robes, they went and got a hit. The rolling of the dice was to give it to a twenty year old. By the way, he was nineteen when he started. When he got the gig, he was nineteen. He's twenty now. He will turn twenty one next month. He can't even drink, but he's got some celebrating the dude, I buy him a bottle. But this is a great, great story. So Kane Parsons, you love the form online is cane Pixels is what he goes by.
00:11:10
Speaker 3: Even that is kind of appropriate. But Rose this was not.
00:11:14
Speaker 2: And that was some question about whether or not, once he got involved with Hollywood, if it was going to be taken away from him, but he argued, no, I kept my creative control. But Robes, he is not Robes. The folks who are on board here with this a twenty year old kid, excuse me, he was nineteen directed Oscar nominees.
00:11:35
Speaker 4: That's insane, that's insane.
00:11:38
Speaker 5: Like he has he had so many people who were legit and awarded to come on board because they saw the quality of the script and sure saw the unbelievable following.
00:11:49
Speaker 4: He had Roberto Patino screenwriter. He also did a.
00:11:53
Speaker 2: Film called Animal the TV I love that show, West World show.
00:11:58
Speaker 4: Great James, we know him well, conjuring.
00:12:02
Speaker 3: He's a producer on the film.
00:12:03
Speaker 4: Right, this is not And I saw his name.
00:12:06
Speaker 2: Okay, it's obviously somebody we trust anything he wants to put his name too.
00:12:11
Speaker 3: But she would tell that you for twelve years a slave. This is an Oscar nominee.
00:12:15
Speaker 4: He was so good.
00:12:16
Speaker 2: This is a well known actor. You starred in The Doctor Strange, big blockbuster. He's been in blockbusters. And forgive me the young lady. I can't get her name right from sentimental values.
00:12:26
Speaker 4: Yes, so good.
00:12:27
Speaker 3: She win.
00:12:28
Speaker 4: She didn't know.
00:12:29
Speaker 5: I don't know if she won because I don't know how to say her name either, Renate Rins Rins, I don't.
00:12:38
Speaker 4: Know how to say her name. But her face is so familiar.
00:12:40
Speaker 5: And yes, we did watch her Oscar nominated film, and she is quite the star of the show. In fact, in all of the a lot of what you see, it's her face with like blood and she looks distressed.
00:12:52
Speaker 2: She has all of the we need to know her name. She has quickly become one of my favorite actress.
00:12:58
Speaker 4: She's so good and she was great in this.
00:13:00
Speaker 3: Film and in sentimental valuement.
00:13:02
Speaker 4: Of value, my god, it's gutting.
00:13:04
Speaker 3: That's not my type of film.
00:13:05
Speaker 2: And I was blown away by her acting all of their acting in that film. So our point here is this is not a film that was just some independent thing he decided to throw out or No, it got backing, and it got a significant Hollywood backing because they knew they had something. Now, this one back rooms they say costs about ten million dollars to make. Obviously it's made its money. The other Obsession costs only about seven hundred and fifty thousand to a million dollars to make.
00:13:37
Speaker 4: That's incredible that it so.
00:13:39
Speaker 2: These two films right now, folks are doing better than a Star Wars movie that came out loud.
00:13:45
Speaker 4: That's what I was gonna say.
00:13:46
Speaker 5: It crushed a Star Wars movie. That's incredible. And by the way, I have to pronounce the pronouncer on her name. I wanted to get it right.
00:13:54
Speaker 4: It was it's Ranata Reinspa, Ranata rhin spa.
00:13:58
Speaker 2: An apologist to Ranata, not mess this up again. She is in a force. I love this woman on film, so ropes and look our review. Look, we were it's slow. It's a slow build initially, but once it got going we were like, oh, hell yeah, here it comes, and we were loving it and then we just got confused.
00:14:22
Speaker 5: Yes, it's mind bending, I think is a good way to put it, and going into it knowing that it's confusing and knowing that you're not going to walk away like, oh now I understand, you're still going to be confused.
00:14:32
Speaker 4: But it is incredibly thought provoking.
00:14:34
Speaker 5: And I will say there aren't many films you can walk out of and walk all the way home or drive all the way home and you've talked about nothing but the film that says something about the film and it gets you just thinking about what you saw and what it made you feel and what the scariest or craziest or most surreal part was. The acting was phenomenal, the cinematography was incredible. Everything was good. My only frustration was that I wanted to understand more. But maybe that's the point you're not supposed to. It was a what The audience score eighty and the critics were at eighty nine now on Rotten Tomatoes. I'd let you know, everybody seems to like this movie, but yeah, it was. It was creepy, it was weird, it was.
00:15:18
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if we'd be into it online, but I want to go check this kid out now.
00:15:23
Speaker 5: Oh yes, And I would watch anything else that he created, just to consume it, to see it, to just actually be a part of it, because it is something pretty phenomenal. To witness something so out of the ordinary, something so creative, something so unusual that you've really never seen anything like it before.
00:15:42
Speaker 4: That's pretty cool.
00:15:42
Speaker 3: And we'll tell you why.
00:15:44
Speaker 2: This weekend at the box office, last weekend and the weekend before that were things we have never seen before. Stay here, right, we continue here on Amy and TJ. Robes has been a hell of a few weekends at the box office. Obsessions came out three weekends ago. Another horror film, Obsessions. If you have not seen that, we keep saying, do not walk, I need to run to the theater. This is a phenomenal horror movie with phenomenal performances.
00:16:16
Speaker 3: But Robes.
00:16:18
Speaker 2: That film did gangbusters at the box office, to the point Robes its second weekend, which was last weekend, it did better than its first weekend. That is unheard of essentially in modern day box office. Here it is on its third weekend, Robes, it's gone up ten percent, again unheard of. The Last time anything like that happened was in nineteen eighty two. What movie was that? And now I give you you're not gonna guess it. It was freaking' et robes e t was the last time we had a movie do so well that in its third weekend it was still going up. This obsession is nuts. So you add that with back rooms. Hollywood is paying.
00:17:05
Speaker 5: Attention absolutely, and it's funny when you look up backrooms, you can't read anything about backrooms without also reading something about obsession, because the two go hand in hand. That you have two young YouTubers making these films that are drawing unheard of numbers. Younger audiences predominantly men as well to these films, and these were audiences that Hollywood couldn't figure.
00:17:32
Speaker 4: Out how to connect with.
00:17:33
Speaker 5: And now you've got these two horror films, and you know, you've got two horror lovers here talking about them, and this is so exciting, because you know, you sometimes you have to break the mold to start anew and to have something draw people back in again. And these two movies have done that. But what it's going to do to Hollywood and how films are made and how scripts are reviewed, It's going to change everything. Everyone is paying attention to these two young YouTubers.
00:18:02
Speaker 2: Roams this k was talking about Kae Parsons twenty years old. The filmmaker is twenty six. I think for Obsession, So what what what's the point then of doing a I saw the comparison with Spielberg's blockbuster about to come out, Disclosure Desks. Well, how much is that one cost one hundred and fifty plus million to make?
00:18:20
Speaker 4: We saw the preview for it, and it looks cool. We'll definitely go see it.
00:18:23
Speaker 5: But I said, wow, that looks like a high budget film, and so the pressure to then get the numbers they have to get to just break even is overwhelming. You can do films that make that kind of money for under a million dollars. Obsession was made for seven hundred and fifty thousand it was you said it was purchased for fourteen million to distribute.
00:18:44
Speaker 4: They've well, they've made their money back.
00:18:46
Speaker 2: And then some brooks this is going to be the new formula. They're a scouring the internet looking for the next great creator. And these guys are smart. They're good storytellers. There are plenty of them out there, but they added some good production value and they built up audience his over years.
00:19:02
Speaker 3: This is not a quick hit. This is not some just this. I hate anybody. I think, what do they call me?
00:19:09
Speaker 4: A one hill overnight over nighty?
00:19:11
Speaker 3: There you go wrong.
00:19:12
Speaker 2: It's not that these kids have been working and now demand respect because they have built their audiences that they could tell their audiences come see my movie, and the kids went, I love it.
00:19:27
Speaker 4: I do too. It's a very cool story. But I'm laughing. I'm thinking about all the parents.
00:19:30
Speaker 5: I'm thinking about as a parent who everybody wants their kids to go to college, right and especially you know, even I had one who had dreams and still has dreams of doing things on the big screen in the small screen.
00:19:41
Speaker 4: I said, you have to go to college.
00:19:43
Speaker 5: I don't care what do whatever you want with the degree, but you will get a degree. This kid no film school, no college, no connections, no name.
00:19:51
Speaker 3: It's okay, and that's okay, now wrong. These are one off. These are he is a genius.
00:19:57
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm sure if he took an IQ test he would be off the chart.
00:20:00
Speaker 2: But I say, maybe I'm gonna take away but Rose when I see that he started with a laptop and he literally was using every tool that was free robes. He educated himself. There ain't a film school that's going to teach him better than from the age of ten to sixteen, he was staring at.
00:20:20
Speaker 3: A screen and learning how to edit. Rose. He even has this thing, this program he used, this three dimensional thing.
00:20:25
Speaker 2: He said, yeah, I could put actors into it and has mad suits because I don't have to show features and faces and everything.
00:20:32
Speaker 3: Like, what the hell?
00:20:33
Speaker 4: That's brilliant this kid, Yeah, that's awesome.
00:20:37
Speaker 5: All he did was think outside the box every step of the way because he had to because he didn't have You know, that does speak to when someone has to People say, boredom is the uh is the birthplace of creativity. When you don't have everything at your tips and you can't access whatever you want, you figure it out when you have a passion, when you have a mission. And he's obviously a hard work or two. I don't want to actually say, oh he's so smart. He just came up with this, so he worked his ass off on top of it.
00:21:03
Speaker 4: He used every and his passion was there, and it paid off big time.
00:21:09
Speaker 2: Educated himself longer than I was in college doing this. He educated himself sitting in his own room. And somebody's gonna have to start respecting this one caveat here robes. The only hits so far hap in horror movies. So wait a second, what about other genres? Horror is a finicky little genre. Robes that can have big hits. They're low production, they don't cost a lot. So the wonder is if this can some Is this going to translate into another genre?
00:21:43
Speaker 3: Can you do that? Can you do an action film on YouTube?
00:21:47
Speaker 4: Not sure?
00:21:47
Speaker 3: Probably not?
00:21:48
Speaker 4: Can you do a romance? Can you do a comedy? You know?
00:21:51
Speaker 5: I think I look, I'm excited to see what happens next. I mean, look, we're horror movie fans, so I don't mind if all the cool next big hits are because that's pretty much all we watch anyway. It takes a lot for us to watch something other than a horror genre.
00:22:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, or even at home. Yeah, you're right, you're right here.
00:22:09
Speaker 4: In general, pretty much we just go straight to the horror. Maybe a horror comedy.
00:22:12
Speaker 5: Comedy might be the only thing we venture out of it, unless there's a big, big hit out there. But this is exciting but probably also very scary for a lot of people who make their money making big hits.
00:22:24
Speaker 2: How can you justify now, Robes, Yeah, I need one hundred million dollar budget when I got a YouTuber sitting over here who will take nine hundred thousand and put this together for me? Okay, we shall see, But congrat This is a very fun, very exciting time, even if you're not a horror movie fan. Absolutely Obsession and back Rooms, Robes. This is not your typical slasher stuff or somebody's chasing somebody down in the woods and there's a bunch of gore and a bunch of killing and a bunch of jump scares.
00:22:49
Speaker 1: It's not.
00:22:50
Speaker 3: Nope, you got to see it.
00:22:51
Speaker 4: We have a psychological horror.
00:22:52
Speaker 3: And great storytelling.
00:22:54
Speaker 5: Oh so good, so good, So yes, I think first of all, we say run to go see Obsession and.
00:22:59
Speaker 4: Go to see back Rooms just.
00:23:02
Speaker 5: To understand what's going on, not to understand what actually happened in the film.
00:23:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they are worth We are at a moment here in movie making in Hollywood at the box office robes that is an exciting one.
00:23:13
Speaker 3: So congrats to these kids who just.
00:23:16
Speaker 5: Pulled off what they pulled off, all right, And with that everyone, thank you so much for listening to us.
00:23:21
Speaker 4: I'm made Robot alongside TJ. Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Hey, folks, it is Sunday, May thirty first, and Hollywood has a huge hit on its hands and that might be a huge problem for the future of the industry.
00:00:15
Speaker 2: And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. This is sounds like a wonderful thing. A twenty year old kid has the number one movie at the box office.
00:00:27
Speaker 3: This is an amazing story.
00:00:29
Speaker 4: I just got chills. That is a crazy thing to think about, especially.
00:00:32
Speaker 5: Because I have a twenty year old, a twenty three year old, and it's impressive. It's unheard of, and it's historic.
00:00:42
Speaker 2: It is this is the according to the studio at least, this is the youngest person to ever direct a number one box office film. And if folks, you might not know it, but your kids do. The movie is called back Rooms. We're just getting the numbers, so we're jumping on. We're gonna explain the phenomenon because a lot I was not familiar. Robes, I am now because we just saw the movie. But let's tell you now, Robes, tell the folks what's happening at the box office this weekend, which is an absolute phenoe.
00:01:12
Speaker 5: It's insane. So yes, back Rooms is number one and it's and it's by leaps and bounds biggest opening ever for the production company A twenty four, which we're starting to hear more and more of. You'll see that name everywhere now, and yes it is. Eighty percent of the audience was under twenty five. That's remarkable, and sixty two percent of the audience was men.
00:01:38
Speaker 2: You don't hear those numbers as the reason you're hearing those numbers now because this audience literally moved from the Internet and specifically from YouTube to the movie theater. This is unprecedented what we have seen at the movie theater the past three weekends. Really, between this movie and the other one Obsession, they have robes. They have the potential to change Hollywood because these movies were not produced, these ideas were not come up, did not come out of Hollywood. These kids are from the Internet, including this one. This is the name you need to know, folks. His name is Cain Parsons. He is twenty years old and he just directed a couple of Oscar nominees and what is a phenom movie that is pulling off something unprecedented at the box office.
00:02:28
Speaker 5: Do you know what I read about Caine Parsons that made my jaw drop.
00:02:31
Speaker 4: Other than the fact that he's twenty years.
00:02:33
Speaker 5: Old, he was born two months after YouTube officially launched. He is younger than YouTube, and he is clearly known in the YouTube world. That is how many of his ideas took root from, even from a Reddit thread.
00:02:49
Speaker 4: I mean, it's so out of the box from.
00:02:53
Speaker 5: What we're used to seeing and how movies are created and produced, and this flies in the face of the way it's been done for decades.
00:03:03
Speaker 3: So this movie is going to be number one for the weekend.
00:03:05
Speaker 2: The unofficial official results have just come out, but this movie is going to be number one. It's going to make eighty one an estimated eighty million dollars, if you will, here in the US, but one hundred and twenty nearly worldwide, one hundred and twenty million dollars for a movie that was plucked off of a YouTube series. Now, the other thing we want to get into Obsessions whe already did an episode about that. It was the other phenom, but it's been out three weeks. We'll get into the history it's making, but let's start with back rooms. I had to look up the synopsis. I had to get an idea of how to explain this movie to people roads because after seeing it, anybody would have asked me, I would have said, well, so we should explain what the movie is first of all.
00:03:48
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, here's the official synopsis.
00:03:51
Speaker 5: After a therapist's patient disappears into a dimension beyond reality, she must venture into the unknown to save him. Another one says, A strange doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom. That was basically that last one was all I knew going into it, and we went in watching it with just a complete open mind. And I can only speak for myself, but we did have many discussions efforts.
00:04:18
Speaker 4: I walked out with a very confused mind.
00:04:21
Speaker 3: It was you, me, Sabine.
00:04:23
Speaker 2: We all looked at each other and we had different ideas of what they were trying to get at. We literally were walking out of the theater these huge escalators and walking down the street. In the entire time, Sabine was on her phone trying to look up what the hell we just saw. Now the movie, as far as the review goes, it's different, it's unique, it's eerie, it's well acted, it is creepy as hell.
00:04:46
Speaker 3: Takes.
00:04:47
Speaker 2: It scares the hell out of you, not by making you jump, but by making you uncomfortable, and you're uncomfortable almost the whole time.
00:04:54
Speaker 4: That's a good way to put it.
00:04:55
Speaker 5: It is totally uncomfortable, and yet from what we've read, Kane Parsons was it was relatable because basically from what I gathered, you know how we all just have blips of memories from our childhood, maybe a feeling or a scene of a certain house, or the way someone looked or what someone said, but you don't really have the context for these flashes.
00:05:16
Speaker 4: That's kind of what it feels like the movie is. And there are just flashes.
00:05:21
Speaker 5: It's almost like you're walking through someone's brain that's disjointed and not connected and you're trying to piece it together and it's scary and it's shocking, but yet somewhat familiar.
00:05:32
Speaker 4: That's kind of how the movie felt.
00:05:34
Speaker 2: Now that sounds crazy if for the uninitiated, which we are, but there are millions.
00:05:40
Speaker 3: Of people who knew exactly what this was.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: It has been an online sure, let's call it a phenomenon that's been thrown around a lot, even in the first five minutes of this episode. But I didn't know this idea of liminal spaces robes. I did not know, but this kid started an online series years ago back rooms found footage, and he has been fascinated by this idea online and he just took it to a next level. People fascinated by these liminal spaces is what they call them, but it's they can be literal physical places, or maybe in your mind, there's transitional areas that aren't reality. They're just where things like big storage spaces or big office spaces, big empty spaces that are depicted on film or on video or online where just fragments live, fragments of nothing, nothing you can understand, it's unexplained. And that was kind of the mystery and the draw online that became a phenomenon, and this damn kid takes that idea to another level. I didn't know this was going on online.
00:06:51
Speaker 5: And it's funny as we're watching now, or at least we're reading, people trying to make sense of it and trying to figure out where this kid's head was and how he figured all this out. And I've even seen people trying to draw connections to the Shining and Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King and certainly all of those directors and writers and creators may have influenced him, and they talked about The Shining being amazed and that people were upset by even that film, that that was too out there and too crazy.
00:07:22
Speaker 4: And taken it.
00:07:22
Speaker 5: He's taken that to a whole other level, which he certainly has. If you think about The Shining being a virtual and a real labyrinth at the end of the movie. For those of you who are familiar with that movie, which we very much are, I did see a slight connection. But I thought, man, I think we're just trying to explain the unexplainable.
00:07:39
Speaker 4: I think us.
00:07:39
Speaker 5: Older folks are trying to get what was it about that film? What was it about this concept that drew so many young, young people to the theaters? Isn't that what we've all been trying to do in broadcasting on television, in movie theaters in the entertainment industry period. We're trying to bring younger people to the table, and we haven't been able to be successful until now. You have one of their own making it happen.
00:08:04
Speaker 2: And it's not just so we don't want to just say it's because he's young and he's no. No, this is please don't e us suggest that a twenty four just was Yeah, it's a bit of a roll of the dice, but this kid has been added for a decade plus, honing his skills online, using free apps, using free programs online. To start work, he didn't have any money, so he learned on programs he'd used what was available to him online. He said, he started working on this dustance. He was eleven years old.
00:08:39
Speaker 4: That's insane.
00:08:40
Speaker 2: Eleven years old. The series itself launched in twenty twenty two. The back rooms found footage online, but it's been going for the past three years. Ropes, he said, he launched this thing. He actually put it up. He was sixteen years old. A month later people started calling. Yep, Hollywood started coming because he had produced something original that not other people had been doing this, but Robes something that jumped out at me.
00:09:05
Speaker 3: He says.
00:09:06
Speaker 2: There wasn't good production value and a lot of stuff out there. He added good production value and the craving that people had for this one thing. They found a place where it was being done well. And this is an He was sixteen years old. He starts getting calls from Hollywood about his series online.
00:09:24
Speaker 3: I love this story so much.
00:09:25
Speaker 5: Yeap bib I started just reading I told you this as I was reading articles. He's been interviewed obviously quite a bit with this movie and his brain.
00:09:34
Speaker 4: Listening to him speak and explain this.
00:09:37
Speaker 5: This this kid, I say kid because he's twenty, is off the charts brilliant. I mean I had to actually reread some of his sentences to fully comprehend what he was saying. That's how intelligent and creative this kid is.
00:09:51
Speaker 3: Creer.
00:09:51
Speaker 2: And you know the part I really I appreciate Robes is that he does say he did this in his bedroom and he was self taught. There is no he had to make a decision between pursuing this and going to college, and this is what he chose. Andes, this kid did not go to some film school. This kid has not been trained. He's not under the wing of somebody. He doesn't have Hollywood connections, he doesn't have a last name that goes with a famous mom, a dad who's in Hollywood. This kid created something that people loved, and he did it in a quality way and it worked. Dave, that is a wonderful, a wonderful scenario for Hollywood.
00:10:33
Speaker 3: That's always right. You piss spend.
00:10:35
Speaker 2: All this money on this film and then to promote the film, and then it's a bust and then people's careers are over and whatnot. Robes, they went and got a hit. The rolling of the dice was to give it to a twenty year old. By the way, he was nineteen when he started. When he got the gig, he was nineteen. He's twenty now. He will turn twenty one next month. He can't even drink, but he's got some celebrating the dude, I buy him a bottle. But this is a great, great story. So Kane Parsons, you love the form online is cane Pixels is what he goes by.
00:11:10
Speaker 3: Even that is kind of appropriate. But Rose this was not.
00:11:14
Speaker 2: And that was some question about whether or not, once he got involved with Hollywood, if it was going to be taken away from him, but he argued, no, I kept my creative control. But Robes, he is not Robes. The folks who are on board here with this a twenty year old kid, excuse me, he was nineteen directed Oscar nominees.
00:11:35
Speaker 4: That's insane, that's insane.
00:11:38
Speaker 5: Like he has he had so many people who were legit and awarded to come on board because they saw the quality of the script and sure saw the unbelievable following.
00:11:49
Speaker 4: He had Roberto Patino screenwriter. He also did a.
00:11:53
Speaker 2: Film called Animal the TV I love that show, West World show.
00:11:58
Speaker 4: Great James, we know him well, conjuring.
00:12:02
Speaker 3: He's a producer on the film.
00:12:03
Speaker 4: Right, this is not And I saw his name.
00:12:06
Speaker 2: Okay, it's obviously somebody we trust anything he wants to put his name too.
00:12:11
Speaker 3: But she would tell that you for twelve years a slave. This is an Oscar nominee.
00:12:15
Speaker 4: He was so good.
00:12:16
Speaker 2: This is a well known actor. You starred in The Doctor Strange, big blockbuster. He's been in blockbusters. And forgive me the young lady. I can't get her name right from sentimental values.
00:12:26
Speaker 4: Yes, so good.
00:12:27
Speaker 3: She win.
00:12:28
Speaker 4: She didn't know.
00:12:29
Speaker 5: I don't know if she won because I don't know how to say her name either, Renate Rins Rins, I don't.
00:12:38
Speaker 4: Know how to say her name. But her face is so familiar.
00:12:40
Speaker 5: And yes, we did watch her Oscar nominated film, and she is quite the star of the show. In fact, in all of the a lot of what you see, it's her face with like blood and she looks distressed.
00:12:52
Speaker 2: She has all of the we need to know her name. She has quickly become one of my favorite actress.
00:12:58
Speaker 4: She's so good and she was great in this.
00:13:00
Speaker 3: Film and in sentimental valuement.
00:13:02
Speaker 4: Of value, my god, it's gutting.
00:13:04
Speaker 3: That's not my type of film.
00:13:05
Speaker 2: And I was blown away by her acting all of their acting in that film. So our point here is this is not a film that was just some independent thing he decided to throw out or No, it got backing, and it got a significant Hollywood backing because they knew they had something. Now, this one back rooms they say costs about ten million dollars to make. Obviously it's made its money. The other Obsession costs only about seven hundred and fifty thousand to a million dollars to make.
00:13:37
Speaker 4: That's incredible that it so.
00:13:39
Speaker 2: These two films right now, folks are doing better than a Star Wars movie that came out loud.
00:13:45
Speaker 4: That's what I was gonna say.
00:13:46
Speaker 5: It crushed a Star Wars movie. That's incredible. And by the way, I have to pronounce the pronouncer on her name. I wanted to get it right.
00:13:54
Speaker 4: It was it's Ranata Reinspa, Ranata rhin spa.
00:13:58
Speaker 2: An apologist to Ranata, not mess this up again. She is in a force. I love this woman on film, so ropes and look our review. Look, we were it's slow. It's a slow build initially, but once it got going we were like, oh, hell yeah, here it comes, and we were loving it and then we just got confused.
00:14:22
Speaker 5: Yes, it's mind bending, I think is a good way to put it, and going into it knowing that it's confusing and knowing that you're not going to walk away like, oh now I understand, you're still going to be confused.
00:14:32
Speaker 4: But it is incredibly thought provoking.
00:14:34
Speaker 5: And I will say there aren't many films you can walk out of and walk all the way home or drive all the way home and you've talked about nothing but the film that says something about the film and it gets you just thinking about what you saw and what it made you feel and what the scariest or craziest or most surreal part was. The acting was phenomenal, the cinematography was incredible. Everything was good. My only frustration was that I wanted to understand more. But maybe that's the point you're not supposed to. It was a what The audience score eighty and the critics were at eighty nine now on Rotten Tomatoes. I'd let you know, everybody seems to like this movie, but yeah, it was. It was creepy, it was weird, it was.
00:15:18
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if we'd be into it online, but I want to go check this kid out now.
00:15:23
Speaker 5: Oh yes, And I would watch anything else that he created, just to consume it, to see it, to just actually be a part of it, because it is something pretty phenomenal. To witness something so out of the ordinary, something so creative, something so unusual that you've really never seen anything like it before.
00:15:42
Speaker 4: That's pretty cool.
00:15:42
Speaker 3: And we'll tell you why.
00:15:44
Speaker 2: This weekend at the box office, last weekend and the weekend before that were things we have never seen before. Stay here, right, we continue here on Amy and TJ. Robes has been a hell of a few weekends at the box office. Obsessions came out three weekends ago. Another horror film, Obsessions. If you have not seen that, we keep saying, do not walk, I need to run to the theater. This is a phenomenal horror movie with phenomenal performances.
00:16:16
Speaker 3: But Robes.
00:16:18
Speaker 2: That film did gangbusters at the box office, to the point Robes its second weekend, which was last weekend, it did better than its first weekend. That is unheard of essentially in modern day box office. Here it is on its third weekend, Robes, it's gone up ten percent, again unheard of. The Last time anything like that happened was in nineteen eighty two. What movie was that? And now I give you you're not gonna guess it. It was freaking' et robes e t was the last time we had a movie do so well that in its third weekend it was still going up. This obsession is nuts. So you add that with back rooms. Hollywood is paying.
00:17:05
Speaker 5: Attention absolutely, and it's funny when you look up backrooms, you can't read anything about backrooms without also reading something about obsession, because the two go hand in hand. That you have two young YouTubers making these films that are drawing unheard of numbers. Younger audiences predominantly men as well to these films, and these were audiences that Hollywood couldn't figure.
00:17:32
Speaker 4: Out how to connect with.
00:17:33
Speaker 5: And now you've got these two horror films, and you know, you've got two horror lovers here talking about them, and this is so exciting, because you know, you sometimes you have to break the mold to start anew and to have something draw people back in again. And these two movies have done that. But what it's going to do to Hollywood and how films are made and how scripts are reviewed, It's going to change everything. Everyone is paying attention to these two young YouTubers.
00:18:02
Speaker 2: Roams this k was talking about Kae Parsons twenty years old. The filmmaker is twenty six. I think for Obsession, So what what what's the point then of doing a I saw the comparison with Spielberg's blockbuster about to come out, Disclosure Desks. Well, how much is that one cost one hundred and fifty plus million to make?
00:18:20
Speaker 4: We saw the preview for it, and it looks cool. We'll definitely go see it.
00:18:23
Speaker 5: But I said, wow, that looks like a high budget film, and so the pressure to then get the numbers they have to get to just break even is overwhelming. You can do films that make that kind of money for under a million dollars. Obsession was made for seven hundred and fifty thousand it was you said it was purchased for fourteen million to distribute.
00:18:44
Speaker 4: They've well, they've made their money back.
00:18:46
Speaker 2: And then some brooks this is going to be the new formula. They're a scouring the internet looking for the next great creator. And these guys are smart. They're good storytellers. There are plenty of them out there, but they added some good production value and they built up audience his over years.
00:19:02
Speaker 3: This is not a quick hit. This is not some just this. I hate anybody. I think, what do they call me?
00:19:09
Speaker 4: A one hill overnight over nighty?
00:19:11
Speaker 3: There you go wrong.
00:19:12
Speaker 2: It's not that these kids have been working and now demand respect because they have built their audiences that they could tell their audiences come see my movie, and the kids went, I love it.
00:19:27
Speaker 4: I do too. It's a very cool story. But I'm laughing. I'm thinking about all the parents.
00:19:30
Speaker 5: I'm thinking about as a parent who everybody wants their kids to go to college, right and especially you know, even I had one who had dreams and still has dreams of doing things on the big screen in the small screen.
00:19:41
Speaker 4: I said, you have to go to college.
00:19:43
Speaker 5: I don't care what do whatever you want with the degree, but you will get a degree. This kid no film school, no college, no connections, no name.
00:19:51
Speaker 3: It's okay, and that's okay, now wrong. These are one off. These are he is a genius.
00:19:57
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm sure if he took an IQ test he would be off the chart.
00:20:00
Speaker 2: But I say, maybe I'm gonna take away but Rose when I see that he started with a laptop and he literally was using every tool that was free robes. He educated himself. There ain't a film school that's going to teach him better than from the age of ten to sixteen, he was staring at.
00:20:20
Speaker 3: A screen and learning how to edit. Rose. He even has this thing, this program he used, this three dimensional thing.
00:20:25
Speaker 2: He said, yeah, I could put actors into it and has mad suits because I don't have to show features and faces and everything.
00:20:32
Speaker 3: Like, what the hell?
00:20:33
Speaker 4: That's brilliant this kid, Yeah, that's awesome.
00:20:37
Speaker 5: All he did was think outside the box every step of the way because he had to because he didn't have You know, that does speak to when someone has to People say, boredom is the uh is the birthplace of creativity. When you don't have everything at your tips and you can't access whatever you want, you figure it out when you have a passion, when you have a mission. And he's obviously a hard work or two. I don't want to actually say, oh he's so smart. He just came up with this, so he worked his ass off on top of it.
00:21:03
Speaker 4: He used every and his passion was there, and it paid off big time.
00:21:09
Speaker 2: Educated himself longer than I was in college doing this. He educated himself sitting in his own room. And somebody's gonna have to start respecting this one caveat here robes. The only hits so far hap in horror movies. So wait a second, what about other genres? Horror is a finicky little genre. Robes that can have big hits. They're low production, they don't cost a lot. So the wonder is if this can some Is this going to translate into another genre?
00:21:43
Speaker 3: Can you do that? Can you do an action film on YouTube?
00:21:47
Speaker 4: Not sure?
00:21:47
Speaker 3: Probably not?
00:21:48
Speaker 4: Can you do a romance? Can you do a comedy? You know?
00:21:51
Speaker 5: I think I look, I'm excited to see what happens next. I mean, look, we're horror movie fans, so I don't mind if all the cool next big hits are because that's pretty much all we watch anyway. It takes a lot for us to watch something other than a horror genre.
00:22:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, or even at home. Yeah, you're right, you're right here.
00:22:09
Speaker 4: In general, pretty much we just go straight to the horror. Maybe a horror comedy.
00:22:12
Speaker 5: Comedy might be the only thing we venture out of it, unless there's a big, big hit out there. But this is exciting but probably also very scary for a lot of people who make their money making big hits.
00:22:24
Speaker 2: How can you justify now, Robes, Yeah, I need one hundred million dollar budget when I got a YouTuber sitting over here who will take nine hundred thousand and put this together for me? Okay, we shall see, But congrat This is a very fun, very exciting time, even if you're not a horror movie fan. Absolutely Obsession and back Rooms, Robes. This is not your typical slasher stuff or somebody's chasing somebody down in the woods and there's a bunch of gore and a bunch of killing and a bunch of jump scares.
00:22:49
Speaker 1: It's not.
00:22:50
Speaker 3: Nope, you got to see it.
00:22:51
Speaker 4: We have a psychological horror.
00:22:52
Speaker 3: And great storytelling.
00:22:54
Speaker 5: Oh so good, so good, So yes, I think first of all, we say run to go see Obsession and.
00:22:59
Speaker 4: Go to see back Rooms just.
00:23:02
Speaker 5: To understand what's going on, not to understand what actually happened in the film.
00:23:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they are worth We are at a moment here in movie making in Hollywood at the box office robes that is an exciting one.
00:23:13
Speaker 3: So congrats to these kids who just.
00:23:16
Speaker 5: Pulled off what they pulled off, all right, And with that everyone, thank you so much for listening to us.
00:23:21
Speaker 4: I'm made Robot alongside TJ. Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.