Published May 31, 2026, 10:44 AM EDT
Rohan Naahar is a News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he’ll watch anything once. He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema.
Pandemonium erupted at the box office this weekend, with the holdover hit Curry Barker’s Obsession delivering yet another weekend-on-weekend increase in revenue, and still finishing second on the charts. The number one movie globally this weekend was fellow horror title Backrooms, which summarily destroyed pre-release projections and set records that will be difficult to beat. It delivered the biggest opening-weekend haul in the 14-year history of indie outfit A24, grossing nearly thrice as much as the previous record-holder Marty Supreme’s opening weekend haul from 2025. Additionally, Backrooms director Kane Parsons is now the youngest filmmaker ever to deliver a number one opening at the global box office. At 20, Parsons is much younger than the previous record-holder, Josh Trank, who was 27 when ***Chronicle ***debuted at the top spot.
Parsons still isn’t old enough to drink, but has made history with Backrooms — a $10 million horror that has delivered a domestic debut in the range of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, and James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash.* Backrooms* is based on Parsons’ web-series of the same name, and stars Oscar nominees Renate Reinsve and** Chiwetel Ejiofor** in the lead roles. Like Obsession, which was also directed by a young man who honed his talents on YouTube, Backrooms opened to excellent reviews.
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
It now holds a “Certified Fresh” 89% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics’ consensus reads, “A startlingly assured feature debut from director Kane Parsons, Backrooms bends the liminal spaces that have haunted the internet for years into a horror film that’s as mesmerizing as it is terrifying.” Collider’s Aidan Kelley was just as enthusiastic, evoking masterpieces in his review. He wrote, “The slow burn of Alfred Hitchcock, the surreal visuals of David Lynch, and the human stakes of Stanley Kubrick are all on full display here, making for one of the unique and intriguing horror properties of the decade, let alone of the year.” Backrooms was initially projected to make around $25 million in its opening weekend, a number that was later increased to $45 million, and then $75 million. In actuality, the movie grossed a humongous $81 million in its domestic debut, and just under $120 million worldwide. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.