The new cerebral horror film “Backrooms” cleaned up at the box office this weekend, bringing in $81 million domestically and $118 million total including worldwide sales. Thousands of people have found themselves lost down the rabbit hole of the chilling movie, which happens to take place nearly entirely in a Bay Area strip mall.
The film opened with the largest box office haul ever for an original horror movie film and eclipsed distributor A24’s previous biggest hit (“Civil War”) by $55 million. The unlikeliness of its success is compounded by the fact that it was directed by Kane Parsons, a 20-year-old YouTube filmmaking phenom who grew up in Petaluma, attending the Marin School of the Arts at Novato High School.
Chiwetel Ejiofor (“12 Years a Slave”) stars as the disaffected manager of the furniture store Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire. Late one night he discovers a portal in the basement that leads to an alternate world of winding hallways, rooms that defy physics and unsettling creatures. The store is advertised as located in Santa Clara Valley, with a promotional flyer listing its address at Capitol and McKee, just off I-680 in San Jose. Although the film was shot in Vancouver, the address listed coincides with the Capitol Square shopping center, which currently includes a Target, Marshalls, Ross and several more retail outlets.
…