These Movies Finally Got Gen Z Into Theaters
episodePreviously titled “‘Backrooms’ Turns an Online Obsession Into Box-Office Gold” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026
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What sparked the interest in the movie 'Backrooms'?
All spring, our colleague Ben Fritz's 14-year-old son has been bugging him to see one particular movie.
My son knows that I sometimes can snag tickets to premieres or early screenings.
Ben covers the entertainment industry, and the movie in question was a horror film called Backrooms.
That's how I first learned this film existed, which he started asking me if I could get him into the earliest possible screening, ideally into the premiere.
Backrooms started as an idea on the internet. And along with millions of other teenagers, Ben's son had closely tracked Backrooms' evolution online.
This wasn't just like, oh, this is a cool movie. This is like, you know, a big screen expansion of this whole mythology that has been really meaningful to him for several years.
Ben actually did get tickets to the premiere. And he was amazed by how much his son had to say about the film.
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.
Ben was struck by all this excitement. His son's a member of Gen Z, a demographic that Hollywood has been struggling to crack for years. Gen Z just doesn't go to the movies the way previous generations have. That might be changing, though. Back Rooms wasn't expected to be a major hit, but in just a few weeks, Gen Zers have turned out in droves to make it one of the most profitable movies of the year. And how significant is that for Hollywood in this moment?
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.
Are we watching kind of the dawn of the Gen Z movie era?
Yes, we definitely are watching the dawn of the Gen Z movie era.
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Friday, June 12th. Coming up on the show, Gen Z goes to the movies, finally.
Back Rooms is a psychological horror film.
How did 'Backrooms' evolve from an internet phenomenon?
It's about a furniture store owner who discovers a mysterious portal in his shop's basement that leads to another world.
I found something in the store. Okay.
That world is a series of abandoned rooms and hallways that are hung with yellow wallpaper and flooded with fluorescent light. It looks a lot like reality, but it's off-kilter, uncanny. All these places and buildings, rooms, misremembering themselves. I saw the movie myself last week, and it doesn't have as much gore or as many jump scares as a lot of horror films do, but there was a pervasive sense of creepiness and being trapped. How did Backrooms come about?
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.
That single photo inspired all kinds of content. People posted similar images and had discussions on Reddit, uploaded videos on YouTube and TikTok, and even made Roblox games.
I think I found the backrooms.
There exists a world that you can only reach between 3.30 and 3.33 a.m.
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.
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