Vinson Cunningham: This is Critics at Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Vinson Cunningham. 
Alex Schwartz: I'm Alex Schwartz. 
Naomi Fry: And I'm Naomi Fry. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Hi, guys. 
Vinson Cunningham: Hello. 
Alex Schwartz: Hello. 
Naomi Fry: We're so back. 
Alex Schwartz: We're so back. 
Naomi Fry: Are we back? 
Vinson Cunningham: So back. 
Naomi Fry: Back and better.
Back and better than ever. So last year, we did an episode all about horror. Today, we're coming back to this topic because there is something pretty fascinating going on in the world of horror right now. In May of this year, two horror films, Obsession and Backrooms, became absolute phenomena. 
CLIP: The biggest story at the box office this weekend didn't come from a superhero or a galaxy far, far away. It came from YouTube. 
Naomi Fry: They prompted a huge conversation in Hollywood about the ways movies are being made and acquired and distributed, and they pretty much inaugurated this genre of what we might call Gen Z horror.
W- how would you guys kind of, like, typify this new sub-genre? 
Alex Schwartz: These are very small movies- Mm ... made for small budgets. Um, in the case of Obsession and Backrooms, which are the two that everybody has been pairing, 'cause they came out around the same time, they both made an enormous amount of money. I mean, Obsession, for example, I think at this point has grossed over $500 million worldwide, and its production budget was around 750,000.
Yeah. So you can just see what a huge deal that is, and the origins of the movies that we're calling Gen Z horror is often online. These are- Yeah ... creators who've been working often on YouTube, experimenting, coming up with stories, building a world, building an audience by making digital content on YouTube, and then they make the leap to the big screen.
Vinson Cunningham: And I guess we'll talk about this later, but the latter thing you said accounts in part for the former, because they've already built audiences- 
Alex Schwartz: Mm-hmm ... 
Vinson Cunningham: that followed them from YouTube into the movies, which is an interesting and perhaps novel way to build an audience for a film. 
Naomi Fry: And also, these filmmakers are super young.
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: Right? Yeah. I mean, Backrooms was made by Kane Parsons. He was- Yeah ... 20 when he, Yep. Curee Barker, who made Obsession, uh, was 26, I believe, when he made it. So I mean, come on. 
Vinson Cunningham: Tip for that. 
Naomi Fry: Like, what are we doing? 
Alex Schwartz: We all do what we can. 
Naomi Fry: We... listen, we do what we can with the tools we're given.
Alex Schwartz: At any age, but- 
Naomi Fry: At any 
Alex Schwartz: age ... but God bless. For real. 
Naomi Fry: I mean, God bless. There's an occasion to, today, to talk about this kinda Gen Z horror because there's a new entry in this genre, and it's titled It Ends. It's about a group of recent college grads, and what happens, very basically, is they take a wrong turn on the road.
They're all in a car, and they wind up driving down an infinite trail of horrors. 
CLIP: It Ends
It was directed by another newcomer named Alex Alam, who is 28, basically creaking in at 28 with a walker. It also, like the other movies we've been talking about, speaks to particular struggles and anxieties of Gen Z-ers, and that's part of what we're gonna be talking about today.
We're gonna be thinking about why these films are striking a nerve with younger viewers, who are obviously turning out to see them in, in droves. There's an, seems to be a need- Hmm ... for this kind of representation on screen. And also we're gonna be discussing the blueprint that these movies are starting to lay out for what filmmaking is looking like right now.
So that's today on Critics at Large. What is Gen Z afraid of?
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Okay, you guys. We are, we have here a Gen X-er, myself, and two, uh, millennials, right? Oh, yeah. And so we need some help, you guys. Uh, we need some help from a younger friend and fourth member of, of the pod, Alex Barasch, who is, uh, the Critics at Large advisor and horror correspondent. He also guested on our horror episode.
And also, he is a member of Gen Z, though he claims he's cusp. I think he is, at 29, kind of like the beating heart of Gen Z- That's about right, yeah ... let's say, and, uh, thus uniquely qualified to help us answer today's question Let's welcome our very special guest, Alex Barasch, come on down, or in- Hi, Alex ... I guess maybe.
Hi. He's here. He's here. What a 
Vinson Cunningham: smooth open to 
Naomi Fry: the 
Alex Barasch: studio door. Walking- I've had a lot of practice. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: Walking in bashfully- ... through that extremely heavy door. 
Alex Barasch: Hello. 
Naomi Fry: Hi. What's up? Thank you for being here today. You're a bit of a horror expert, and you've written about Obsession and actually spent time with the director, Craig Barker, which we're gonna get into.
You know, you see a lot of these films before the rest of us. When you saw Obsession way before kind of it became what it ended up becoming, this phenomenon, did you have an inkling that it was gonna be like this k- kind of like slam dunk of a movie? 
Alex Barasch: I, I would say I had my suspicions. Um, I was not at Toronto when it premiered, but it was one of the kind of midnight movies there last year.
Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. 
Alex Barasch: And people were losing their minds. Like, obviously we, we talk about festival fever, people get a little excited when they see it in that setting, and you're like, "Okay, we'll see if this really does become a thing," in the way that critics who are seeing it- Mm-hmm ... there believe that it will be. Mm-hmm.
But there was this huge bidding war. It became kind of the, the talk of the festival. I watched it a couple of weeks before release, and I was instantly like, "This is gonna be a phenomenon, and I need to talk to this guy, and I wanna be the one who profiles him first." So then I- And you 
Naomi Fry: did ... 
Alex Barasch: flew out to LA very quickly.
Naomi Fry: Yeah. 
Alex Barasch: I didn't know that it was gonna make $500 million, but- Yeah ... I, uh, I feel vindicated by history now. 
Naomi Fry: Okay. Definitely. I mean, that's a beautiful feeling. We're gonna come back to, to talk about Obsession and Craig Barker, your profile and, and all of that, but let's start by talking about It Ends. So it was written and directed by, yeah, the creaky, creaky jointed-
elder Alex Alam, who is 28 years old, and it's his directorial debut, and it's in theaters now. Who wants to, uh, do the synopsis honors? 
Alex Schwartz: I'd be happy to jump right in- 
Naomi Fry: Let's do it ... 
Alex Schwartz: and do it. Four friends get in a car, a Jeep, on their way to I'm not exactly sure where. I'm not sure if we know, maybe to set up one of their apartments.
Vinson Cunningham: One has ... is, is helping the rest to move out of the, move out of college. Move out of 
Alex Schwartz: college. Yeah, they're all, they're all done with- They're new grads ... they're new grads, that's the point, and they're all on their way in a rural environment somewhere, when they think they miss a turn and discover that the road that they've been taking, when they double back on it, has closed up behind them.
CLIP: It Ends
Alex Schwartz: There are trees where once there was another road, and suddenly there are all kinds of creepy, horrifying people popping out and screaming and clawing at them and trying to get into their car. And so they do what they must, which is continue to drive, and soon discover that the road is endless, but so is the gas in the car, so is their ability to survive without food and sleep, neither of which they seem to need anymore.
And the question opens up for them and for the audience, where does this all lead and how does this end? 
Naomi Fry: You guys, I mean, it's a horror movie. Were you scared? Yeah. Like, what, what were your feelings? Vinson, what do you think? 
Vinson Cunningham: Well, I, so I don't think it's too much of a spoiler alert to add to, uh, Alex's perfect synopsis that whenever they stop the car, they are confronted by hordes of other people who- Slash 
Naomi Fry: zombies, slash- 
Vinson Cunningham: Whatever they are, who are sort of ravenously trying to get into the car, make their way to the car.
And so there is some sort of classically sort of jump scare stuff in the beginning of the film. Later on, it's less fear than dread. 
Naomi Fry: Yes. 
Vinson Cunningham: You know? Yeah. It's like the fear of fear. I tried to explain this to my lovely partner a couple of weeks ago when we were on a plane and I'm doing my usual, like clutching the seats at every bit of turbulence.
Do I think the plane is going to fall? No, but I'm very afraid of being afraid. That's the feeling that this movie conveys. It's like there's just this growing, spreading sense of dread. Did I like it? Yes, mostly because of that sort of gentle approach to fear- 
Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm ... 
Vinson Cunningham: and how it corresponds with the dreads and fears of our own lives, but also because I think the best thing about the movie is the conversations that the friends have in the car.
Mm-hmm. Uh, Olum has tried to... It, and, and his... He hasn't been interviewed that much, but he's talked about wanting to create a kind of what he calls hangout horror. I don’t know, the conversations are funny, they’re beautifully written. We understand the, the characters very well very early on. It's just a, such a great concept that at first seizes you with horror, and then you realize, "I think this is just a description of life."
Naomi Fry: Right. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yes. Maybe I'm too old, but after a while I was like, "Oh, wait, they're in a car. They're with their friends, and they do it again over and over," and is it really that bad? 
Naomi Fry: Right. 
Vinson Cunningham: And so maybe I s- maybe I needed to be young to be even more afraid of this movie. But I was kinda like, "Yeah, that's, that's life, dude."
Naomi Fry: There's a nice also meta element to the conversations between these kids, who are savvy- Mm-hmm ... right? 
Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. 
Naomi Fry: The, the character who ends up, I guess, being the m- the protagonist- Mm-hmm ... a guy named James, he's the first one who tries to figure out, "What's going on here?" Mm-hmm. "Are we in purgatory? Are we in hell?"
Yeah. You know, realizing there was no turn, and they're on this no exit, you know, modernist kind of, like, waiting for Godot, like, he's not coming. Yes. The turn isn't coming. Right. And so they, they are trying to figure out what's happening. They are conversant in tropes. They're conversant in stories. Mm-hmm.
They're not like, "Oh, my God," you know? They're not like the cheerleader who's, you know, being g- stabbed from behind, and- Right ... there is an awareness that this means something.
Alex Barasch: Yeah. I, I like the genre savvy of it- Yeah ... as you're saying. And, and No Exit is a good frame of reference. This is the Jean Paul Sartre play from 1944… And, y- you know, obviously there is an interplay with the themes of that play. But, you know, in No Exit, they know instantly that they're in hell. Like, the first thing that they're told. Right. And they're sort of like, "Where are the instruments of torture?" 
Naomi Fry: Yeah.
Alex Barasch: Whereas here it's like, "Okay, what is happening to us?" Yeah. "Let's game this out." You know, James, the character you mentioned- Yeah ... he's kind of a philosophy nerd. 
Naomi Fry: Yes. 
Alex Barasch: He's, seems to be sort of an existentialist. He's like, "Okay, maybe this is purgatory. Maybe it is hell. Maybe we're dead. We don't know." And his friends, to varying degrees, are sort of like, "It doesn't matter."
Like, "Why do you need- Right ... to make meaning from this?" I mean, it's kind of as Vincent was saying, it, it is just about life. It's like a matter of, you know- Yeah ... uh, Alex Olam has talked about how The Endless Road is like the infinite scroll of being online, and it is this sense of being gen- you know, he started this movie when he was 22.
It's been a very long road to- 
Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm ... 
Alex Barasch: production and release. But he was graduating into the pandemic. He was sort of like, I, all of these structures that I thought would be there for me, and all of these opportunities and institutional supports that I had expected and/or had been primed to expect are no longer there.
And this sense of like, I'll buy a house one day or I'll have a nuclear family, all of these conventional things have sort of fallen away. Sure. And so there is this structurelessness that he was grappling with, and that he's translated into this movie. And the, the horror hangout thing, he's talked about it as like it's a horror movie that becomes a hangout movie. And it's like you are accepting the somewhat horrific terms of your existence, and figuring out how to cope with that or not. And you know, like, the, the friends on the road, they're, like, making memes about The Endless Road, uh, 
Naomi Fry: just to show to each other. That, that's pretty funny. It's like That's, there's, there's humor there, you know, this kind of like super close-up selfie is like, "Me when the road has no end."
Right. Or something. I forget the exact wording, but- It 
Vinson Cunningham: was like I took the, I took- Yeah ... I took, I took the drugs and n- now I'm on The Endless Road. Now I'm on The Endless Road, exactly. And her face is like all by the camera. Yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: Like me when the hordes attack. Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: Alex, what were your thoughts? Mm. I'm curious to hear what you thought.
Alex Schwartz: I really liked this movie. I, I am very impressed with Alex Olam's filmmaking. He made this movie on such a small budget, on $80,000 before editing. I think the shooting budget was $80,000. I really think that these filmmakers have such amazing ingenuity, visual sense, storytelling sense, and, um, and cinematic sense.
Mm-hmm. The framework of the 90-minute movie is what Olam has chosen to use, and he does it- And God bless him. 
Alex Schwartz: Well, he does a great job with it. I really like the character focus of this movie. Yes. And that, and that is one thing- I do ... that I'm really appreciating about, um, some of these newer crop of horror directors.
They have a really strong sense that character is what is gonna keep us with the movie and with the scenarios that they're creating, not just, like, the horror or the gore or the, or the scares or whatever, although that stuff is all very welcome. I liked all the characters. There are three guys in this car, and there's one girl whose name is Day.
They all seem vulnerable in different ways. Yeah. Two of the guys in the car are more intent on not seeming that way. James, who is the most stoic about the situation that they're in, and also the most sarcastic and abrasive to the others- Mm-hmm ... from the start, that's kind of the defining trait of his character, that he gives everyone shit and just acts as a wall for their own observations to bounce off of.
Um, I loved this character because he's, he really can't open himself up to acknowledging the horror of the scenario- 
Alex Schwartz: but he also is much more invested in the, in the idea of change and possibility. Mm-hmm. And so there's actually strange hope in the cynicism of his character. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And you guys are talking about the existentialists.
He, to me, is a bit of a classic existentialist, where he really does believe that human action can change the state of affairs. Yeah, 
Vinson Cunningham: he's like a mix of a scientist and a sort of also, like, he's re- he's religious in a certain way, and scientific. He's the one who's like, "Okay." Every time, he's like, "We're learning."
So something new happens, "This is something new." He- Well, he's a scientist, yeah. Mm-hmm. He r- he's a scientist, but then he's also the one that, like, you know, and you see how much the search for meaning either can attract or repel other people. I know we're gonna talk about other things, but I think one thing that I took from this that then started to color my ideas about the rest of Gen Z horror is, on the one hand, I was like, "This is too allegorical," you know?
These people almost reminded me of early man. In the second act of the movie, they start, you know- Yeah ... they're drawing on the wall. Yes. Cave drawings. It's like, they start to create culture- Yes ... art, in- Inside  the car, right? Mm-hmm. They decor- they, they adorn- Rituals ... the car with certain things. It's like, whoa.
Mm-hmm. And then it's like, this is very, this is a very almost one-to-one allegorical film. And I was like- Yeah ... what if allegory is one of, like, the chief aesthetic features of these movies, you know? It's like, what do these people grow up on? The Hunger Games, YA stuff that, like, when it's dystopian, it really is trying to say things about society here, here, here, here.
And so this, like, descriptive function of this allegory was something that was like, huh, I wonder if, you know, we're back, we're back at Pilgrim's Progress or something like that. Um, I, I gotta say, I just loved it. There were parts I didn't think- I thought it 
Naomi Fry: was great. My 
Vinson Cunningham: son- The end I thought was uncertain- He was, he was really into it
but man. Yeah. It was good, 
Naomi Fry: yeah. Yeah, a very, a very talented young filmmaker. 
Alex Schwartz: Doesn't it kind of feel like we're all in the car together? 
Vinson Cunningham: I know. 
Alex Barasch: How bad could it be? It's 
Alex Schwartz: four of 
Naomi Fry: us at the round 
Alex Schwartz: table. No exit. 
Alex Barasch: Oh 
Naomi Fry: my God, no exit. I think 
Alex Barasch: we'd thrive. 
Naomi Fry: Yes. 
Alex Schwartz: We'd absolutely thrive. Love this crew. Yeah, who would you wanna get trapped in a car with forever?
You guys. 
Naomi Fry: I could, this was- Oh my God. Okay, the endless ride of Critics at Large. We'll be right back.
:: MIDROLL:: 
Let's put It Ends in conversation now with the other two huge entries in this new Gen Z horror canon. Let's start with Obsession. So as we mentioned already, it was written and directed by 26-year-old Cory Barker. Love that name, for whatever reason.
Um, it stars Michael Johnston as Bear, Indy Navarretti As Nikki. Now Alex, as we mentioned, you wrote about Barker. You were the first- I was indeed ... to profile. You got the scoop to profile- Planting the flag ... Curry Barker for The New Yorker, and you spent time with him in LA on the coast. Um, how do you think, uh, he's approaching horror differently than his predecessors in, in the form?
Alex Barasch: I mean, it's interesting. I do think he, a- as I learnt when he and I met, he is a horror super fan. He is a scholar of the genre. He grew up watching all of these movies. He studied them, and he became eventually sort of frustrated by certain tropes that he saw recurring. The, I mean, this is a classic thing in horror where you're sort of yelling at the screen, being like, "Why on earth would you go into the darkened basement-
of this haunted house?" Like, what are you doing? 
Vinson Cunningham: Yelling at the screen. 
Alex Barasch: Right. And so he, he emerged with something that he described to me as the eye roll check, where he was basically like, "If I would be rolling my eyes at what's happening on screen." Like, he wants his characters to act with a certain amount of savvy or self-awareness in the way that a human being would respond to a situation.
So that's one thing. And then I think that's also compounded by the way he came up, you know? He always wanted to be a filmmaker. It's not that he was a vlogger or something, but he was on YouTube, he was on TikTok, he was making these shorts as a way to kind of get his start and get noticed. And he's to- he's spoken about how he would hope that people would detect things in the comments, and he found that, in fact, they would. And so he was like, "I can trust people. I can leave them the clues and let them figure it out, and I don't have to sort of dumb down what I'm doing for an 
Naomi Fry: audience." When you say detect, like, detect what?
Like detect clues or, I mean- 
Alex Barasch: Yeah, like understand the lore of something without overexplaining it or grasping tiny details and things that he's set up. 
Naomi Fry: Right. 
Alex Barasch: And so again, I think there was this trust in the audience and, and an anxiety that, a, a sort of generational anxiety to metabolize, as in the case of Alex Olum.
Mm-hmm. You know, if that was much more sort of existential, where do we go when we graduate? You know, the, the, the protagonists of Obsession are also kind of in this failure to launch period of life. They've all graduated from high school. Some of- I don't think any of them have gone on to college. One of them is, like, flirting with the idea of becoming a tattoo artist, but they're all working at this music shop together.
They don't really know what they're doing with their lives. Mm-hmm. And they're not really capable of advancing to the next stage, and I think that that colors everything that happens in the film. 
Naomi Fry: Vincent, do you maybe wanna give us a, a little synopsis of, of Obsession? 
Vinson Cunningham: Absolutely. So there's this kid named Bear, right?
This is who's played by Michael Johnston, and he is, speaking of sort of allegorical treatment of certain tropes in society, can we call him an incel? Can we call him a little bit of a loser? Ooh. I don't know if he's ever, I don't know if he's ever had the sex, but what I know about him- 
Naomi Fry: Bear, did you say the sex?
The 
Vinson Cunningham: sex. But what I know about him is that he is in love with Nikki, his friend, uh, played by India Navarretti, and He, first of all, misreads the situation terribly, as these types usually do. He's talking to her, they got a little rhythm. He makes her laugh, she makes him laugh. If he knew anything about life, he'd know how to make a move, but he doesn't.
And so, uh, surrounded in the, you know, again, this kind of hangout vibe. There's a couple of friends, they're a group of friends. But he decides instead of drawing on the resources of his friends, you know, getting a clue, talking to an older cousin about how to talk to a woman, you know, anything. Instead- 
Naomi Fry: And, and yeah, and, and that's completely right.
You're, you're not drawing on any personal experience. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Anything he could- I 
Naomi Fry: love the older cousin, like- 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Very 
Naomi Fry: specific. The specific- 
Vinson Cunningham: All the things that a young man is supposed to do in this situation. You know, and another thing that he is, is like the classic, quote-unquote, "nice guy." Yeah. But would a nice guy do this next thing?
I don't think so. He- 
Naomi Fry: It's giving cat person, kind of. It's... 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Right? He goes to some store with, you know, some kind of, you know, Wiccan location And he gets, and he gets this s- thing, it's like a wish stick. What's it called? A one wish willow. A one wish willow. One wish willow. You know, drawing on one of the classic tropes.
It's kind of a, a monkey, monkey's paw, but it's also, you know, i- if you, if you read this lore, there's a lot of breaking sticks. The breaking of the stick also happens in the, a recent horror film, uh, Weapons. It's a thing, it's out there. He says, "I want Nikki to love me more than anything." Well, boy, does she.
Nikki goes on an all-time tear. She wants him more than anybody should wanna be wanted. She's on him, and that, that obsession, that titular obsession- 
Alex Barasch: The eponymous obsession ... 
Vinson Cunningham: is the site of horror. Nikki undergoes a transformation for the ages. India Havredi really just carries this film with, uh, the sort of depth of her growing- A stoicism
willow induced psychosis. Um, and Bear, all you had to do was ask for help. 
Naomi Fry: From your older cousin. 
Vinson Cunningham: From your older cousin. From your older 
Alex Schwartz: cousin. Well, the thing is, Bear was getting help. The- 
Naomi Fry: From 
Alex Schwartz: his 
Naomi Fry: best 
Alex Schwartz: friend. Yeah. Brilliant, brilliant, Vinson. That was, that was simply brilliant. Um- We lear- we all learned a lot about- For antiquity
about a lot more than we, than we bargained on learning. Um, incredible. Yeah, it's the, this is such a great movie. I'm I'm obviously not alone in thinking that. I had such a great time when I saw this movie. Mm-hmm. I went in knowing I would have a good time, which of course helps- ... because legions of others had reported that the time indeed was great.
Um, and it opens with such a fun scene where Bear is, you think, finally professing his feelings to a girl he has an obviously enormous amount of, amount of affection for, and actually he's just rehearsing it, 
        CLIP: Obsession
And he's being coached by his friend Ian, played by Cooper Tomlinson, who also works at this music shop with him.
So he knows what to do. He just can't do it. Mm-hmm. And a huge problem in this movie is just vulnerability, being direct, exposing yourself, risking something. Yeah. Not even, like, not knowing how to do it, but being able to do it and to potentially embarrass yourself and have an undesirable outcome. That is the thing that Bear absolutely cannot risk.
He's very good-looking, and India Havredi asks him, her character, uh, Nikki, asks him quite pointedly at the start of the movie, "Do you have a thing for me? 'Cause now is the time to say it." And rather than risk anything of himself, he would rather snap his little twig, and as you say, Vinson- Yeah ... don't go around snapping twigs and making wishes.
You 
Vinson Cunningham: don't do that. 
Alex Schwartz: Bad plan. But I think one thing that's so, um, particularly great about this movie are, and makes it truly horrifying, is that sense that, um, Nikki, real Nikki, is trapped inside- fake Nikki and is trying to claw her way through, and that Bear would rather have this P- prison-like arrangement- Mm-hmm
where he's imprisoned someone to get a simulacrum of the person. What does it mean to be loved by this Nikki? Really is meaningless. Not only is it, has, have nothing to do with her own will, but her whole personality and everything he likes about her has completely disappeared. She's just, like, a, you know, a robotic form of herself to a point of psychosis.
Alex Barasch: She's like a bad AI. She's like- Yes ... "Is this what you want? Is this what you want?" Yeah. Like- Yes ... "I can dress like this. I can give you that." She's giving Megan. Yeah. Yes. Yes. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Exactly. Um, and that this kind of, I think maybe this speaks to the Gen Z-ness of it, that this simulacrum of experience, even though he knows it's not the real thing, is preferable.
Like, that's the horror. Yes. That, that it would be seen or chosen is preferable to the actual pain and elation and self-exposure that real experience requires. 
Alex Barasch: Yes. Yeah, exactly. He's afraid to risk anything of himself. And I do think the fact of, you know ... The fact Ian is advising him at the beginning and is saying, you know, he's, he's rehearsing his confession, and Ian is like, "Whoa, that's way too much."
Yes. "You're, like, putting way too much out there." Yeah. "Don't do it like this. Just, like, nag her a bit, you know, flirt with her." Mm-hmm. "Open the door." The game. "We don't have to do all of this." Yes. You know, play the game. And at first, it's like, oh, this guy is kind of a lout, like, he's not coming off great here.
But it, it, it ultimately emerges that Bear's obsession with being the nice guy or seeming to be the nice guy is so much worse and so much more monstrous. 
Naomi Fry: But Alex, you know, what you were saying about the kind of the toxicity of the nice guy- Mm-hmm ... or, or kind of like, "Oh, I can't, you know, I, I can't say that. I can't do that. I'm gonna be nice." Mm. You know? Or but then ending up being, like, the worst version- Right ... of, like, what a man can be essentially or one of the worst, I think that concern about toxic masculinity- Mm-hmm
is something Obsession shares with Backrooms- Yes ... which is this, the other movie that we wanna, we wanted to discuss, directed, as we said, by the 21-year-old Kane Parsons who was, uh, 20- Another great name ... another great name, who was 20 when the film was released- Wow ... and written by Will Sudik. I'm gonna just give a, a brief synopsis.
Please. This is a weirdly appear... I mean, for me it's not period. For me it's basically, um, the, the, the '90s beat in my heart as if they were just yesterday. But the movie is set in 1990. So we have, uh, a man named Clark, um, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor. He is, uh, a failed architect or a former architect who is now running a furniture store at kind of like a very seemingly unsuccessful, like, cavernous furniture store, and he has recently been tossed out of his own home by his wife, who was sick of his drinking and, you know, his rage and so on. And we meet him in kind of a therapy session with his, his, uh, his therapist, Dr.
Mary Klein, played by Renate Reinsve, and, uh, she is trying to kind of like have him break out of, of his kind of toxic pattern. 
        CLIP: Backrooms
He meanwhile is, because he has lost his, his home, he is sleeping also at, at this, you know, big furniture store he runs And one night he wakes up and he kind of starts exploring, goes down to the basement, and he walks through the wall.
I have learned since that in, uh, online parlance, this is called clipping? 
Alex Barasch: No clipping. 
Naomi Fry: No clipping. I'm sorry. 
Vinson Cunningham: Walking through walls is called 
Naomi Fry: no clipping? 
Alex Barasch: Yes. This, this comes from video games. It's sort of a, a glitch where you- Ah ... pass through the bounds of what you were supposed to be able- Mm-hmm
to pass through. 
Naomi Fry: Okay, this is very embarrassing. I didn't even get the term right, but yes. So he, he 
Vinson Cunningham: no clips. Yes. 
Naomi Fry: We're 
Alex Barasch: all learning. 
Vinson Cunningham: We're 
Naomi Fry: all learning. So we're all learning. This is why 
Vinson Cunningham: we're here. 
Alex Schwartz: There is no shame. 
Naomi Fry: There is no shame. Mm. Okay. So it's called no clipping. Safe place. So, so he enters into these back rooms, right?
Mm-hmm. Of this store, which is a, a, a weird architectural space, yellowed and disturbing. Mm-hmm. It looks like a kind of abandoned waiting room, but there's no, architecturally there's no rhyme or reason, you know? There might be like a, a, a shaft way going, you know, like up, up at the very top of near the ceiling where you can, like, suddenly go into, you know, the...
There's a door with three handles. There are, like, piles of furniture and old clothes and kind of like heaped around this space. Liminal space 
Vinson Cunningham: horror. Yes. 
Naomi Fry: It's a bit of a liminal space. Mm. And there's a bit of horror. Okay? 
Alex Schwartz: Sounds like more than a bit. 
Naomi Fry: And so a lot of terrible things start happening in the space.
There are all of these, like, inexplicable characters, half man, half, you know, mannequin. It's unclear if they're living or dead. Oh, wow. They start kind of like- 
Vinson Cunningham: Vincent, you look so upset. ... 
Naomi Fry: following- Oh, no. This isn't for Vincent. It's not for Vincent. Following Clark. 
Vinson Cunningham: Is it scarier than, uh, the other two?
Naomi Fry: It's scarier. It's not as, also not as good, which- Oh, okay ... which, Alex, I want to discuss- I apologize. I apologize ... with Alex, please. I agree. 
Vinson Cunningham: Please continue. I apologize. No, 
Naomi Fry: no, no, no. Not at all. Not at all. I don't like, 
Vinson Cunningham: I don't like the word mannequin, but go ahead. Yeah. It's, 
Naomi Fry: there is a man- yeah, you're not gonna like this, Vincent.
It's creepy. It's creepy, okay? Mm. It's creepy. Uh, this space, this, like, back room space is seemingly endless and, uh, there are untold horrors there. Okay? At some point- Quite ... Clark's- Untold ... therapist, Mary, comes looking for him. She also goes no clip mode.
Alex Schwartz: it is just melting down now. He's, he- In the fifth moment, yeah ... he's just getting out, he's just getting out the feelings. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah, that's great. Uh- I kinda wanna see 
Naomi Fry: it now, go ahead. She, it's in, there are interesting things about it, and she also entered the space- Mm-hmm
and really bad things start happening to her. Surprise! It's like, it becomes a house of horrors. There's a lot that's going on. Let's, I will say, first of all, the neatness of both It Ends and Obsession, what you call the allegorical- Mm-hmm ... element, there is allegory I believe too in, in Backrooms, but it's much messier.
Mm-hmm. Like, there's, there's no kind of like the elegance of the other two movies we discussed and, and the kind of cleverness and neatness- Mm-hmm ... of, of its, uh, kind of like symbolic quality is not present in this movie. I thought that it was very visually striking. I was, you know, stunned that a 20-year-old made this.
Mm-hmm. Um, but I struggled to understand what it was saying. But again, he was basically a fetus, Kane Parsons, in this movie. This is like, I mean this movie was also, I mean it was still relatively-
made on the cheap. 
Naomi Fry: 10 million or something. Uh, but it was 10 million. Yeah. Which, and it's a very impressive movie- Mm-hmm ... and of course made like hundreds of millions. Mm-hmm. So you know, the return on the investment is like stunning, I don't know that I totally loved it. Alex B, I, I wanna hear from you about this. And I also wanna hear a little bit about the backstory of Kane Parsons- Mm-hmm ... because I know he began as a teen- 
Alex Barasch: Yeah ... 
Naomi Fry: developing, I mean, Backrooms, as I understand it, is, is kind of like a term that he did not make up this term.
Yes. Right? 
Alex Barasch: Yeah, and I think that’s actually really important context for this. You may have heard the term “creepypasta” which basically describes a kind of online urban legend. These monsters or settings that don’t belong to any one individual but that are built out by people across all these different platforms in various ways. And so the Backrooms exist outside of Kane Parsons, they predate Kane Parsons. The earliest known instance is this 4chan image that was posted of a sort of yellowing office space, and then from that point, it ballooned into this thing where people were writing short stories on Reddit, they're making videos on YouTube and TikTok, there were, like, indie video games based on the concept of the Backrooms.
So in a way he's adapting IP almost. It's like- 
Alex Schwartz: Yes ... 
Alex Barasch: this is something- Would you 
Alex Schwartz: say that it's a bit like a bard named Homer deciding to write down- ... a story of a great war that has been told by many others- Many others ... over centuries? 
Alex Barasch: The Backrooms is- It, it may indeed be quite, quite similar. Okay. 
Naomi Fry: Um- Kane Parsons says, "Let me tell you the story of a complicated Backroom."
Alex Barasch: Yes. Exactly. A complicated office space. Um- Yeah ... and it really is ... You know, he, he is kind of the face of this phenomenon. His, he was making videos on YouTube set in the Backrooms. He is definitely, like, the best known kind of figurehead for this, uh, crowdsourced internet mythology, and his videos were sort of the most polished and the most popular, and so when it t- when the time came that producers were approaching someone to make this into a movie, of course it was going to be him.
I've seen, I've watched a lot of the YouTube videos and I think they're very interesting on their own terms. Mm-hmm. I think the visual signature is very striking. I like what he was doing there actually more than I like what he did in this feature film. Mm-hmm. So I, I, I actually do feel we are kind of completely aligned, Nomi, in terms of the merits of the thing.
Like, I think- Yeah ... aesthetically it's really original. He's not really a movie guy. From interviews, he’s talked a lot about playing video games like portal, which I have also played and loved and I can see the influence in this movie, like someone like Cary Bucket, this was always the goal. Someone like Alex Olam- Yes ... this was always the goal. For Kane it's like, "This is a different medium that I can be working in, but, like, I love YouTube.
Why would I leave YouTube?" And I almost felt that they were taking this very strange and singular unquantifiable mythology and Like ramming it into the shape of a conventional horror movie.
Mm. And I almost wish it had not tried to hit those beats at all and had just been allowed to breathe as its own thing. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. 
Alex Barasch: Um. 
Alex Schwartz: Well, just this morning I was poking around and I saw that Kane Parsons has released a new Backrooms YouTube video so he's back. 
Alex Barasch: He's back. He's back in the Backrooms. 
Alex Schwartz: He's back in his original Backrooms.
Naomi Fry: After the break what is Gen Z afraid of? That's in a minute on Critics at Large from The New Yorker
:: MIDROLL:: 
Alex Schwartz: I want to just pull back for a bit and talk about the movies more broadly. I, I was really interested in one thing that Alex Ullom said in a recent interview with Variety, um, and I found it very beautiful. He said, "I believe the theatrical experience is the last religious experience of my generation."
There, of course, has been great anxiety about the end of movies and the end of the theatrical experience, and like boom, here come these two young directors who've returned all these butts into seats. But one thing that's interesting to me about the filmmaker aspiration of it, um, like Alex Ullom, who I'm increasingly interested in 'cause I think he speaks very well about his ambitions, has talked about wanting there to be a new Hollywood moment.
Mm-hmm. Where the old system doesn't work anymore. Obviously, you know, we've seen some of these huge temple movies fail like, um, Mandalorian and Grogu. Is that, is that... Am I correct? Grogu. Yeah. I was like, how many Rs are in this thing? Is it like Roku? Like Mandalorian and Grogu- ... was a, was a big old goose egg, and at the same time, these young fleet films come- Mm
and get audiences, sweep audiences into, into theaters. Um, and so there is a sense that you can do things differently. I find that very cool and ambitious and exciting.  That this can be done differently. It can be done cheaper. Sure, if you wanna give me money, that's great, 'cause maybe I can do things with it that I couldn't otherwise.
But we need that kind of new artistic energy and hunger and people coming to say, "I don't really just wanna succeed at your game at this. I wanna use this medium and make new, exciting things." And I really am hoping that the success of these three filmmakers is going to usher more people into this space and get them excited about what they could do, too, and I think that happens- 
Naomi Fry: It's, it's exciting. Yeah. I think it's really exciting. And, uh, I want us to m- maybe kind of hone in a little bit on the Gen Z-ness of it, which of course we've mentioned- 
Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm ... 
Naomi Fry: over the course of the episode. I, I'm wondering if it's, like, what is it that makes all these movies, uh, Obsession, Backrooms, and It Ends particularly Gen Z creations, apart from the fact that they've been made by Gen Z filmmakers?
Um, Alex, what, what do you, what do you think? 
Alex Barasch: I think a lot of it is in what they're grappling with on screen and what they have sort of come up dealing with in their own lives. You know, we, we talked about the risks of intimacy as a kind of recurring thematic preoccupation. I think that's big in Obsession.
I think it's also big in It Ends. You know, we- the- Tyler, one of the characters who's the first to drop off in the endless road, at the beginning of the movie, he's talking about how he was seeing this girl, and he ended it because she wanted to pick pumpkins with him. And everyone else in the car is like, "What are you talking about?"
But it's like, but it's this anxiety of committing to a relationship and being serious And I think there's a way in which we all kind of know too much about each other, or there are too many rules and scripts in your head- Mm
and a sense of like, you need to be engaging in exactly this way, or you will be humiliated, or this will be the wrong outcome, or you will come off badly, And that is showing up in a lot of these movies. 
Alex Barasch: I think growing up in an age of kind of unreality and the ascendancy of AI and being very online, and there's a sort of depersonalization that comes with that that is showing up in all of these movies.
I think the pandemic is kind of a ghost over all of this too, you know? Like, Alex Olam graduated into it. Cory Barku was in film school when it happened and dropped out. Kane Parsons was in high school when it happened. Like, again, spending a lot of time online and not a lot of time in the world, because you can't at this crucial formative moment- I feel like that being the crucible of all of these filmmakers' lives shows up in their work in interesting ways.
And then yeah, es- aesthetically I think like the high concept thing- 
Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm ... 
Alex Barasch: is huge. Uh, uh, there's kind of a, a streak of moralism in a lot of these movies- Hmm ... that I find really interesting. Hmm. 
Naomi Fry: Interesting. 
Alex Barasch: Like I, when I was talking to Karra Kihe, he said, we were talking about the, the mechanics of the one-wish willow, and, you know, the convention of the monkey's paw is like it, whatever wish you make, it will make it bad in some way.
Like, it, it's a classic be careful what you wish for situation. But he was like, "No, the one-wish willow, if you wish for something like morally fine or neutral- It'll be fine ... you'll just get your wish." Yeah. The problem is the wish he made, which is this incredibly fucked up, you know, revoking of someone else's autonomy, and so that curdles because of the intention behind it.
I think there's something in, you know, the allegorical quality that Vincent was talking about, the desire to make sense of the world and- Yeah ... and externalize those anxieties and those rules and those beliefs about the right way to be in a kind of- Mm-hmm ... chaotic 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Alex Barasch: Yeah. Free-for-all of society. It's an 
Vinson Cunningham: i- uh, just to, I'm so interested in this.
It's like a, it's an ambiguous moralism though sometimes. Yes. Because I think another one of the other materials that these, this group seems to know how to use really well is discourse itself. 
Alex Barasch: Mm-hmm. 
Vinson Cunningham: It's like, um, all, so many of the arguments that I read particularly about obsession were, and it seems to be like, uh, intentionally stoked by obsession.
Mm-hmm. Is this a parable of li- um, sort of sexual assault and, and, or rape or other kinds of coercion? Is it... You know? So knowing how to strike a moral note in a way that will not end a conversation but begin one- 
Alex Barasch: Yes ... 
Vinson Cunningham: I think is, is a- also a part of this as well. 
Alex Barasch: Yes, exactly. Yeah. It's not a didactic impulse.
Yeah, yeah. It's a kind of let's figure this out together. Like, I'm figuring this out in real time, and I would like you to be part- Yeah ... of that conversation is the feeling that I get from, you know, someone like Karra Kihe. And I think seeing young people depicting people their own age trying to figure that out has a different valence than like the generation above being like, "Oh, the kids today."
Alex Schwartz: Absolutely. Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: It, it so 
Alex Schwartz: does. 
Naomi Fry: It is really interesting, and I was also interested, uh- Something I read with, um, Kane Parsons who, who directed Backrooms about his hatred of AI 
Naomi Fry: which I thought was really interesting because this is a kid who's obviously so online- Yeah ... is into making things cheaply and- Mm-hmm
quickly. Mm-hmm. It would seem kind of like something that AI would be very good for- Mm-hmm ... quote, unquote, and yet I was interested in this kind of like, "No, you gotta, like, do it real." 
Alex Barasch: Yeah. You know? No, I, I, I sort of, I appreciate his resistance to it. Yeah. And I think, you know, in Backrooms itself you can even see, you c- you could interpret it as being kind of anti-AI.
A lot of the, the monstrous creatures- Mm-hmm ... within the Backrooms have the quality of, like, something generated by AI that's a little bit off. Yes. It's like they have too many fingers or, you know, there's some distortion. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah. 
Alex Barasch: And I think, yeah, you know, he, he, like, built a practical set for this entire insane liminal space, I think.
A lot of people in Gen Z specifically are anti-AI, and I think some of it is it's like a rebellion against this world that has been so intangible. Mm-hmm. And it's like, "No, I want the real thing. I wanna- 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Yeah ... 
Alex Barasch: touch grass." 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, that's, I think... And I think that's, if we're talking about generational fears, I think that's one, that you won't interact with the real world- Yeah
and that you're gonna be given this kind of moving walkway of experience where things are increasingly easy- Mm-hmm ... in some sense, but also totally meaningless in another sense. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Um, and rebelling against this makes total sense. What a horrifying experience that would be. True horror. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: What, what do you think might be next, Alex?
Bearish, you know, it's like all of these things, it's like when there's something that is kind of like a subculture that immediately, like, corporate America, like, sniffs out- ... and, and is like- Hmm ... "Oh, now we're gonna, we're gonna be making some money." Obviously, we were talking about our hope for this, like, burgeoning new movement of these young filmmakers who seem very interesting and, and, uh, wanna do things in a new way.
But are, are you thinking about the kind of, like, potential co-opting of these fresh young voices? Like, is that something that you suspect will happen? Or- Yes. 
Alex Barasch: I mean, that, that's- Yes. If we look at the history of Hollywood. 
Naomi Fry: Yes, 
Alex Barasch: yes. Uh, yeah, this is, this is the true horror movie is the development meetings where someone is trying to explain the next creepypasta that they think is gonna make them $500 million. 
But I do... I, I mean, again, I hope the right lessons are taken from this based on... I, I've already seen these reports of, like, Steven Spielberg is EP-ing a creepypasta movie. Like, the guy who directed Weapons is- Mm-hmm ... Zach Cregger is writing a creepypasta movie. Like, clearly the money is flowing in that direction.
And I mean, both of them I would, I would trust, relatively speaking. But I do, I hope that the right- People get the right opportunities off the back of this, and I do worry that it'll just be like, "Let's find a random YouTuber who has a lot of subscribers." Because it's not- Sure ... I mean, like actually earlier this year before any of the, uh, Gen Z horror broke, there was, uh, a movie called Iron Lung- 
Alex Barasch: which was directed by a YouTuber known as Markiplier, and he funded it himself. It was basically he, he, he is like the only person on screen for 90% of this movie. It's not a good movie, I'll say, but it was this box office phenomenon. It ma- it, like it wasn't gonna get a theatrical release because no studio wanted it, and then his fans started calling theaters and being like, "Will you carry Iron Lung?"
And it ended up making like $50 million at the box office, which is considerable for what was, what was put into it- Mm-hmm ... and the fact it had no distribution system to speak of. But that is a case of like the YouTuber with the 39 million subscribers, they're the ones showing up to the theaters. I think for a lot of these other filmmakers, that's not what's happening.
It's people responding to a concept. It's people responding to another member of their generation speaking directly to them in this way, and I hope that that is what is sought and funded and rewarded in this new era that is coming and not just we're looking at the social numbers, and that's gonna determine what we green light.
Alex Schwartz: Definitely. 
Naomi Fry: Right. 
Alex Barasch: Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: You guys, which of these three films, Obsession, Backrooms, and It Ends, would you least like to find yourself in? 
Vinson Cunningham: It, it, that depends on who I am. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah. 
Vinson Cunningham: You know what I mean? As previously discussed, if I'm in that car- It ends is fine. But you know what I don't wanna do? 
Alex Schwartz: Mm. 
Vinson Cunningham: Live in the woods forever.
And be one of the outside people. But you wanna stay in the 
Naomi Fry: car. You're okay with 
Vinson Cunningham: the car. I wanna stay- You 
Alex Schwartz: drive for the rest of your life. 
Vinson Cunningham: I would drive. I kept on thinking about the song, life is a highway. I was like- I'm 
Naomi Fry: gonna ride it all night 
Vinson Cunningham: long. As long as I'm in that car, the movie's fine. 
Naomi Fry: So you wouldn't wanna be in the woods.
Alex Barasch. Thoughts? 
Alex Barasch: I feel like I'd be fine in Obsession with Backrooms. In Backrooms, I'm just not- You'd be fine in Backrooms ... going into the liminal space. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm like Okay ... I will be walking out. This is the thing that's crazy about that movie. He keeps going back in. 
Naomi Fry: But 
Alex Barasch: he- He leaves and come back.
But 
Naomi Fry: A- He's like- But Alex ... let me map. He's, he's fucked up. That's the thing, he's fucked up. 
Alex Barasch: And he does have a terrible therapist. But- 
Naomi Fry: Yes. 
Alex Barasch: As, as a therapist- Never say his name ... individual, I think I'd be fine. 
Naomi Fry: Okay. Alex, Alex Schwartz. 
Alex Schwartz: Oh, being s- in the car. I don't wanna be in the car. I haven't seen Backrooms.
I'd probably wanna be there even less than I wanna be- Yeah ... in the car. I- if I could choose one, I'd be in Obsession because even though I'd be killed, I'd have some like fun along the way. And that would be okay. 
Alex Barasch: There are house parties, you know? 
Alex Schwartz: Before my head explodes, it would, yeah, I'd get to go to a house party.
Naomi Fry: I feel like I would be like corralled into going into the Backrooms. Like I'd be- ... like the assistant. I'd be like his, his furniture store assistant. 
Alex Schwartz: Much as you were in Morti Supreme? 
Naomi Fry: Yes. There I would be like lost forever in that third space.
Alex Schwartz: Wow. Wow. I think you need to give yourself more credit. 
Alex Barasch: Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: Okay. 
Alex Barasch: You would stand up in that. 
Alex Schwartz: Yes. 
Naomi Fry: Okay. Maybe I'd stand up. Okay. Alex Barasch, thank you so much for joining us and helping us figure out what Gen Z kids are afraid of.
Alex Barasch: Always a joy. Yay, 
Naomi Fry: Alex. 
Alex Barasch: Think about it all the time. Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Alex.
Naomi Fry: This has been Critics at Large. Alex Barasch is our consulting editor, and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Our show is mixed by Mike Kutchman, and we had engineering help today from Pran Bandy, with music by Alexis Cuadrado. You can listen to all of our episodes anytime at newyorker.com/critics.
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