Mark Duplass publicly defended director Kane Parsons on Tuesday, replying on X to a user who wrote, "we all know Kane Parsons absolutely didn’t direct this movie."
Duplass answered bluntly: "Hmmm, with all due respect I don’t remember seeing you on set." He added that "when I was there, Kane was 100% in control" and that the young filmmaker was "more so than many directors 3x his age."
The pushback landed as Backrooms — A24’s feature adaptation of the online horror concept — reached theaters this week. The Hollywood Reporter said the film hit theaters Friday, and Deadline listed a May 29 premiere date. Backrooms stars Duplass alongside Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Finn Bennett and Lukita Maxwell, and follows a therapist tracking down a missing patient in a bizarre dimension of liminal space.
The detail that matters most to supporters of Parsons is his authorship. Parsons, who is 20 years old and becomes A24’s youngest feature director with Backrooms, first began uploading a Backrooms YouTube series as a teen in early 2022. The project itself traces back to a 2019 creepypasta on 4chan, and Parsons adapted that idea into a web series when he was 16, according to Deadline.
Parsons has described the film as using the existing series and online lore as a jumping-off point. At CCXP Mexico he said the production built 30,000 square feet of actual backrooms and that the movie is "a pretty lonely film," adding that "in the film, there is rarely a moment where there’s more than one or two characters on screen at a given time." Parsons has also told outlets that there "really not been many barriers to creative control" in his collaboration with A24 and called the relationship "a very bizarre dream that it’s also been as seamless as it has been."
The speculation about Parsons’ role has roots. Backrooms’ producing team includes established filmmakers such as James Wan, Shawn Levy and Osgood Perkins, and some social-media skepticism has centered on whether a teenager-turned-director could hold creative sway on an A24-backed feature. That tension — between the pedigree of veteran producers and the youth of the credited director — is the friction point behind the online chatter.
Duplass’ intervention matters because he was on set and because his comments cut to the central question: who actually made the film the version audiences will see. Parsons’ on-record descriptions, combined with Duplass’ on-set testimony, line up: the director says he retained creative control and Duplass confirms it. Voices sympathetic to creators from YouTube have long argued they face added scrutiny. YouTuber-turned-producer Markiplier put it plainly when he said, "There still is a stigma against YouTube," and that change requires repeated examples — "It has to be toppled and then toppled again, until it becomes normalized." He noted that when that normalization happens, it will be "boring" that a YouTuber can do this, because there will be nothing left to question.
Deadline also reported Parsons’ account that A24 "very much respected and appreciated how much to just lean into this one version," and that the studio understood what drew people to the original idea and where Parsons’ specific interpretation lay. Taken together, the cast testimony, Parsons’ own statements and Duplass’ on-set remark point to the same conclusion: the director credit reflects actual control on set.
Yes — despite online speculation and the presence of veteran producers, the evidence in public record supports that Kane Parsons directed Backrooms and maintained creative authority over the project; Duplass’ direct, on-set corroboration delivers the clearest answer to the question dogging the film as it opened in theaters this week.
