Backrooms Director’s Next Project Could Finally Adapt a Masterpiece Sci-Fi Game

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Kane Parsons’ first horror film, Backrooms, was an incredible success. At just 20 years old, he directed the film, which earned $81.4 million in the US and $118 million worldwide during its opening weekend – a new record for A24. This made Parsons the youngest director ever to top the global box office. What’s even more impressive is that Parsons created the entire story behind Backrooms as a teenager. He started by posting a popular series of short, found-footage videos online in 2022, inspired by the internet’s ‘creepypasta’ about endless, fluorescent-lit hallways. The finished film, featuring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, proved his creative vision could succeed on a larger scale, and it also received excellent reviews.

The success of Backrooms has created many opportunities for Parsons in Hollywood, and he’s already thinking about his next project. He told The New York Times that he’d love to direct a Portal movie, calling it a lifelong dream. He’s not just hoping for the chance, though – he’s actively exploring the possibility of securing the rights to the Portal franchise from Valve. Parsons previously shared with Letterboxd that Portal has been the biggest inspiration for his work.

Why Kane Parsons Is a Great Choice to Make a Portal Movie

The Portal video game series, starting with the original in 2007 and continuing with the highly praised Portal 2 in 2011, follows the story of Chell. She finds herself trapped inside the massive, cold Aperture Science Enrichment Center. There, she’s led, mocked, and put in danger by GLaDOS, a dangerous artificial intelligence. GLaDOS controls the facility and forces Chell to solve increasingly complex puzzles using a special device that can create portals. The environment is both sterile and confining—a maze of sealed rooms and noisy machines where the building itself feels like an enemy. Like the Backrooms, Portal creates a sense of unease by placing players in a structure that seems endless, uncaring, and indifferent to the person trying to escape it.

Beyond sharing similar themes, Parsons’ film Backrooms demonstrated the technical ability needed to successfully adapt Portal. Despite working with a significantly smaller budget than typical Hollywood productions, Parsons consistently created unsettling visuals of spatial disorientation, crafting environments that felt both ordinary and deeply disturbing. The feeling of dread in the Aperture Science facility comes from its emptiness, repetitive design, and the unsettling sense that its spaces don’t follow logical rules. A director who could achieve this with just $10 million and mostly plain sets has already proven capable of handling Valve’s intellectual property. Combined with Parsons’ clear passion for the Portal games, we hope A24 will support him in bringing his vision to life.

Backrooms is currently available in theaters.

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2026-06-05 14:10