Jessica Mendoza

He was like, oh, well, you have to understand that in this scene, like, what this image represents is X. And it's kind of similar to his videos, but it's different in this way.

So was he talking to you the entire time this thing was happening?

No, he's, you know, we've raised him in Los Angeles.

He knows you have to keep your mouth shut in a movie theater.

Okay, good.

But afterward, he could not keep his mouth shut.

He couldn't stop talking to me.

It's really significant.

A lot of people believed that the only movies that get people into theaters these days are franchises.

People just want to see the 10th iteration of their favorite superhero or robot or toy adaptation or remake or whatever.

So to see something that's highly original and gets young people into theaters is a huge deal for the movie business.

Yes, we definitely are watching the dawn of the Gen Z movie era.

Backrooms started with a single photograph of a fluorescent lit room that was posted on the message board for Chan back in 2019.

And people started latching onto it.

Nah, this can't be real.

This can't be real, bro.

And it became a meme, and everybody was, they were sort of using it to express this feeling, I think, of ennui and feeling lost in the world and feeling kind of very exposed but not understanding what was happening.

And that really, I think, became relevant for Gen Z during the pandemic when everybody was stuck at home.

So I think the whole Backrooms mythology is built around this feeling that is very relatable to fans of being like, I'm not there.

I'm not here.