What is Gen Z Afraid Of?

(upbeat music) - This is Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Vincent Cunningham. - I'm Alex Schwartz. - And I'm Nomi Fry. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Hi guys. - Hello. - Hello. - We're so back. - We're so back. - Are we back? - So back. - Back and better. - Back and better than ever. - So last year, we did an episode all about horror. Today, we're coming back to this topic because there is something pretty fascinating going on in the world of horror right now. In May of this year, two horror films, obsession and back rooms became absolute phenomenal. - The biggest story at the box office this weekend didn't come from a superhero or a galaxy far, far away. It came from YouTube. They prompted a huge conversation in Hollywood about the ways movies are being made and acquired and distributed and they pretty much inaugurated this genre of what we might call Gen Z horror. How would you guys kind of like typify this new subgenre? - These are very small movies made for small budgets. In the case of obsession and back rooms, which are the two that everybody has been pairing 'cause they came at around the same time, they both made an enormous amount of money. I mean, obsession, for example, I think at this point has grossed over $500 million worldwide and its production budget was around 750,000. So you can just see what a huge deal that is. And the origins of the movies that we're calling Gen Z horror is often online. These are creators who've been working often on YouTube, experimenting, coming up with stories, building a world, building an audience, and then they make the leap to the big screen. And I guess we'll talk about this later, but the latter thing you said accounts in part for the former, because they've already built audiences that followed them from YouTube into the movies, which is an interesting and perhaps novel way to build an audience for a film. - And also these filmmakers are super young, right? I mean, back rooms was made by Cain Parsons. He was 20, Corey Barker who made obsession was 26. I believe when he made it, so I mean, come on. Like, what are we doing? We all do what we can. We, listen, we do what we can with the tools we're given. - At any age, but God bless. - I mean God bless. There's an occasion today to talk about this kind of Gen Z horror because there's a new entry in the genre, and it's titled In Ends. And it's about a group of recent college grads. And what happens very basically is they take a wrong turn on the road, they're all in a car, and they wind up driving down an infinite trail of horrors. - We don't know where we are right now. I don't know of any roads that drive for six hours with no tires. We're just talking, and then we hit this dead end. It just feels like design, and maybe we crashed. Keep doing what you were doing when we doubted not kill us. - It was directed by another newcomer named Alex Allum, who is 28, basically creaking in at 28, with a walker. And also like the other movies we've been talking about speaks to particular struggles and anxieties of Gen Zers. And that's part of what we're going to be talking about today. We're going to be thinking about why these films are striking and nerve with younger viewers, who are obviously turning out to see them and groves. There seems to be a need for this kind of representation on screen. And also we're going to be discussing the blueprint that these movies are starting to lay out for what filmmaking is looking like right now. So that's today on Critics at Large. What is Gen Z afraid of? Okay you guys, we are, we have here a Gen Xer, myself, and two millennials, right? And so we need some help you guys. We need some help from a younger friend and fourth member of the pod, Alex Barish, who is the Critics at Large advisor and horror correspondent. He also guested on our horror episode. And also he is a member of Gen Z though he claims he's cusp. I think he is at 29, kind of like the beating heart of Gen Z, let's say, and that's uniquely qualified to help us answer today's question. Let's welcome our very special guest, Alex Barish. Come on down or in. - Hi Alex. - Hi, he's here. - He's here. - He's a smooth open to the studio door. - He's had a lot of practice. - Walking in bashfully through that extremely heavy door. - Hello. - Hi. - Thank you for being here today. You're a bit of a horror expert. And you've written about obsession and actually spent time with the director, Curry Barker, which we're gonna get into. You know, you see a lot of these films before the rest of us. When you saw obsession way before kind of it became what it ended up becoming, this phenomenon. Did you have an inkling that it was gonna be like this kind of like slam dunk of a movie? - I would say I had my suspicions. I was not at Toronto when it premiered, but it was one of the kind of midnight movies there last year. And people were losing their minds. Obviously, we talk about festival fever. People get a little excited when they see it in that setting and you're like, okay, we'll see if this really does become a thing in the way that critics who are seeing it there believe that it will be. There was this huge bidding war. It became kind of the talk of the festival. I watched it a couple of weeks before release and I was instantly like, this is gonna be a phenomenon. And I need to talk to this guy and I want to be the one who profiles him first. So then I flew out to LA very quickly. - Yeah. - I didn't know that it was gonna make $500 million, but I feel vindicated by history now. - Okay, definitely. That's a beautiful feeling. We're gonna come back to talk about obsession and Curry Barker, your profile and all of that. But let's start by talking about it ends. So it was written and directed by, yeah, the creaky, creaky jointed elder Alex Ohm who is 28 years old and it's directorial debut and it's in theaters. Now who wants to do the synopsis honors? - I'd be happy to jump right in. - Let's do it. - And do it. - Your friends get in a car, a Jeep on their way to, I'm not exactly sure where. I'm not sure if we know maybe to set up one of their apartments. - One is helping the rest to move out of the college. - Yeah, they're all done with their new grads. - Their new grads, that's the point. And they're all on their way in a rural environment somewhere when they think they miss a turn and discover that the road that they've been taking when they double back on it has closed up behind them. - Let me see you come. - Listen Tyler, fuck maps it. - If there's a dead end, we pass by our entrance on the way back. - Can we miss it twice? - It's fine, we missed a turn. Let's just turn back. - I missed a turn. - Yeah you did. No I didn't. - Yeah you did. - No, I didn't. - Guys, it's fine. We missed a fucking turn. - How else would we have hit a dead end? - There are trees where once there was another road and suddenly there are all kinds of creepy horrifying people popping out and screaming and clawing at them and trying to get into their car. And so they do what they must, which is continue to drive. And soon discover that the road is endless, but so is the gas in the car, so is their ability to survive without food and sleep, neither of which they seem to need anymore. And the question opens up for them and for the audience, where does this all lead and how does this end? - You guys, I mean, it's a horror movie where you scared, like what were your feelings? Vincent, what do you think? - So I don't think it's too much of a spoiler alert to add to Alex's perfect synopsis that whenever they stop the car, they are confronted by hordes of other people. - Ooh, slash zombies, slash. - Whatever they are who are sort of ravenously trying to get into the car, make their way to the car. And so there is some sort of classically, sort of jump scare stuff in the beginning of the film. Later on, it's less fear than dread. - Yes. - You know, it's like the fear of fear. I tried to explain this to my lovely partner a couple of weeks ago when we were on a plane and I'm doing my usual clutching the seats at every bit of turbulence. Do I think the plane is going to fall? No, but I'm very afraid of being afraid. That's the feeling that this movie conveys. It's like there's this growing, spreading sense of dread. Did I like it? Yes. Mostly because of that sort of gentle approach to fear and how it corresponds with the dreads and fears of our own lives. But also because, I think the best thing about the movie is the conversations that the friends have in the car. all on her. tried to and his he hasn't been interviewed that much but he's talked about wanting to create a kind of what he calls hang out horror and I don't know the conversations are funny they're beautifully written we understand the the characters very well very early on it's just such a great concept that at first seizes you with horror and then you realize I think this is just a description of life maybe I'm too old but after a while I was like away they're in a car they're with their friends and they do it again over and over and is it really that bad right so maybe I just maybe I needed to be young to be even more afraid of this movie but I was kind of like yeah that's that's life dude there's a nice also meta element to the conversations between these kids who are savvy right the the character who ends up I guess being the the protagonist the guy named James he's the first one who tries to figure out what's going on here are we in purgatory are we in hell yeah realizing there was no turn and they're on this no exit you know modernist kind of like waiting for Godo like he's not coming the turn isn't coming and so they they are trying to figure out what's happening they are conversant and tropes they're conversant and stories they're not like oh my god you know they're not like the cheerleader who's you know being good stabbed from behind and there is an awareness that this means something yeah I like the genre savvita of it as you're saying and no exit is a good frame of reference this is the Jean Paul Sartre play from 1944 and you know obviously there is an interplay with the themes of that play but you know in no exit they know instantly that they're in hell like the first thing that they're told right they're sort of like where are the instruments of torture yeah whereas here it's like okay what is happening to us let's game this out you know James the character you mentioned he's kind of a philosophy nerd yes he seems to be sort of an existentialist he's like okay maybe this is purgatory maybe it is hell maybe we're dead we don't know and his friends to varying degrees are sort of like it doesn't matter like why do you need to make meaning from this I mean it's kind of as Vincent was saying it it is just about life it's like a metaphor you know yeah Alex Olam has talked about how the endless road is like the infinite scroll of being online and it is this sense of being gent you know he started this movie when he was 22 it's been a very long road to production and release but he was graduating into the pandemic he was sort of like I all of these structures that I thought would be there for me and all of these opportunities and institutional supports that I had expected and or had been primed to expect and no longer there and this sense of like I'll buy a house one there I'll have a nuclear family all of these conventional things have sort of fallen away and so there is this structurelessness that he was grappling with and that he's translated into this movie and the horror hangout thing he's talked about it is like it's a horror movie that becomes a hangout movie yeah and it's like you were accepting the somewhat horrific terms of your existence and figuring out how to cope with that or not and you know like the the friends on the road they're like making memes about the endless road that's pretty funny there's there's there's humor there you know this kind of like super close-up selfie is like me when the road has no end or something I forget the exact wording but it's like I took the I took I took the drugs and now I'm on the other side exactly and her face is like oh my the kids when the hoards attack Alex what were your thoughts I'm curious to hear what you thought I really liked this movie I I am very impressed with Alex Ohm's filmmaking he made this movie on such a small budget on $80,000 before editing I think the shooting budget was $80,000 I really think that these filmmakers have such amazing ingenuity visual sense storytelling sense and and cinematic sense the framework of the 90-minute movie is what Ohm has chosen to use and he doesn't bless him well he does a great job with it I really like the character focus of this movie and that and that is one thing that I'm really appreciating about some of these newer crop of horror directors they have a really strong sense the characters what is going to keep us with the movie and with the scenarios that they're creating not just like the horror or the horror or the the scares or whatever although that stuff is all very welcome I liked all the characters there are three guys in this car and there's one girl whose name is day they all seem vulnerable in different ways two of the guys in the car are more intent on not seeming that way James who is the most stoic about the situation that they're in and also the most sarcastic and abrasive to the others from the start that's kind of the defining trait of his character that he gives everyone shit and just acts as a wall for their own observations to bounce off of I loved this character because he's he really can't open himself up to acknowledging the horror of the scenario but he also is much more invested in the idea of change and possibility and so there's actually strange hope in the cynicism of his character and you guys are talking about the existentialists he to me is a bit of a classic existentialist where he really does believe that human action can change the state of affairs he's like a mix of a scientist and this sort of also like he's religious in a certain way and scientific he's the one who's like okay every time he's like we're learning so something new happens this is something new he's a scientist but then he's also the one that like you know and you see how much the search for meaning either can attract or repel other people I know we're going to talk about other things but I think one thing that I took from this that then started to color my ideas about the rest of Gen Z R is on the one hand I was like this is too allegorical you know these people almost reminded me of early man and the second act of the movie they start you know they're drawing on the wall it's like a start to create culture art inside the car they they adorn the car with certain things it's like oh this is very this is a very almost one-to-one allegorical film and I was like what if allegory is one of like the chief aesthetic features of these movies you know it's like what are these people grow up on the Hunger Games why is stuff that like when it's dystopian it really is trying to say things about society here here here and so this like descriptive function of this allegory was something that was like huh I wonder if you know we're back we're back at Pilgrim's progress or something like that I got I just loved it there are parts I didn't think the end I thought was uncertain but man yeah yeah a very a very talented young filmmaker doesn't it kind of feel like we're all in the car together I know it's four of us at the round table no exit oh my god no exit I think we'd thrive yes we'd absolutely thrive love this crew yeah who would you want to get trapped in a car with forever you guys oh my god okay the endless ride of critics at large will be right back hi I'm Nicole Phelps global fashion news and features director at Vogue and co-host of the run-through podcast each week on the show our listeners get an all-access pass into the world of Vogue on Tuesdays join me as I interview influential designers like Calvin Klein Rachel Scott and Simone Balotti on Thursdays join Chloe Mal had of editorial content at Vogue U.S. and Choma Nadi British Vogue's had of editorial content as they explore fashion through the lens of culture with guests like Doja Cat and Margot Robbie listen and watch the run-through with Vogue wherever you get your podcasts and Vogue's YouTube channel one day last year police entered a mansion in LA county and discovered the couple that live there had almost two dozen children nearly every one of them born through surrogates but those surrogates had been deceived I started crying I was like what the heck did I just get myself into I may have a cough men the journey is a new series from in the dark and the New Yorker find it now in the in the dark podcast feed are you ready to push your baking skills this month at bone apathy bake club we are making glazed apple pie fritters I'm shall post co-covitch and I'm Jesse subject and we're senior test kitchen editors at bone apathy and the hosts of BA's bake club podcast bake club is one updates community of confident curious bakers every month we publish a recipe on boneacty.com that introduces a baking concept we think you should know then you'll go bake and send us any questions you have and we'll get together here on the podcast to talk about the recipe and if you want to master deep frying this is your chance head to ba.com or our substack and come and bake along with us join us the first Tuesday of every month as we debrief about our latest bake find BA bake club wherever you get your podcasts happy baking [Music] let's put it ends in conversation now with the other two huge entries in this new jennsey horror canon let's start with obsession so as we mentioned already it was written and directed by 26 You're old Curry Barker. Love that name for whatever reason. It stars Michael Johnson is bare and Indy never ready as Nikki. Now Alex, as we mentioned, you were about Barker. You were the first to profile. You got the scoop to profile Curry Barker for the New Yorker and you spend time with him in LA on the coast. How do you think he's approaching horror differently? - I mean, it's interesting. I do think he, as I learned when he and I met, he is a horror superfan. He is a scholar of the genre. He grew up watching all of these movies. He studied them. And he became eventually sort of frustrated by certain tropes that he saw recurring. The, I mean, this is a classic thing in horror where you're sort of yelling at this screen being like, why on earth would you go into the darkened basement of this haunted house? Like, what are you doing? - Yalling at the screen. - Right. And so he emerged with something that he described to me as the eye roll check where he was basically like, if I would be rolling my eyes at what's happening on screen. Like, he wants his characters to actor the certain amount of savvy or self-awareness in the way that a human being would respond to a situation. So that's one thing. And then I think that's also compounded by the way he came up. You know, he always wanted to be a filmmaker. It's not that he was a vlogger or something, but he was on YouTube, he was on TikTok. He was making these shorts as a way to kind of get his start and get noticed. And he's spoken about how he would hope that people would detect things in the comments and he found that in fact they would. And so he was like, I can trust people. I can leave them the clues and let them figure it out. And I don't have to sort of dumb down what I'm doing. - When you say detect, like detect what? Like detect clues or, I mean. - Yeah, like understand the lore of something without over explaining it or grasping tiny details and things that he's set up. There was this trust in the audience and an anxiety that a sort of generational anxiety to metabolize as in the case of Alex Olam. If that was much more sort of existential, where do we go when we graduate? The protagonists of obsession are also kind of in this failure to launch period of life. They've all graduated from high school. Some, I don't think any of them have gone on to college. One of them is like flirting with the idea of becoming a tattoo artist, but they're all working at this music shop together. They don't really know what they're doing with their lives. And they're not really capable of advancing to the next stage. And I think that that colors everything that happens in the film. - Vincent, do you maybe wanna give us a little synopsis of obsession? - Absolutely. So there's this kid named Bear, right? This is his play by Michael Johnston. And he is speaking of sort of allegorical treatment of certain tropes in society. Can we call him an insult? Can we call him a little bit of a loser? I don't know if he's ever had the sex, but what I know about him is that he is in love with Nicky. His friend played by Indy Navarretti. And he, first of all, misreads the situation terribly. As these types usually do, he's talking to her. They got a little rhythm. He makes her laugh. She makes him laugh. If he knew anything about life, he'd know how to make a move, but he doesn't. And so, surrounded in the, you know, again, this kind of hangout vibe. There's a couple of friends, they're a group of friends. But he decides instead of drawing on the resources of his friends, you know, getting a clue, talking to an older cousin about how to talk to a woman. You know, anything. Instead. - And yeah, and that's completely right. You're not drawing on any personal experience. - Yeah, I love the older cousin. - Very specific. - All the things that a young man is supposed to do in this situation, you know, another thing that he is is like the classic quote-unquote nice guy. But what a nice guy do this next thing? I don't think so. - It's giving cat person kind of, yeah. - He goes to some store with, you know, some kind of, you know, wick in location. And he gets, and he gets this thing. It's like a wish stick. - A one wish willow. - A one wish willow, you know, drawing on one of the classic tropes. It's kind of a monkey's paw, but it's also, you know, if you read this lore, there's a lot of breaking sticks. The breaking of the stick also happens in the recent horror film Weapons. It's a thing. It's out there. He says, I want Nikki to love me more than anything. Well, boy does she. Nikki goes on an all-time tear. She wants more than anybody. She should want to be wanted. She's on him. And that obsession, that titular obsession. - The opponent's obsession. - He is the site of horror. Nikki undergoes a transformation for the ages. And he never ready, really just carries this film with the sort of depth of her growing which induced psychosis. - And bear, all you have to do is ask for help. - From your older cousin. - Well, the thing is bear was getting help. - From his best friend. - Yeah, brilliant, brilliant Vincent. That was simply brilliant. We all learned a lot about that a lot more than we bargained on learning, incredible. Yeah, this is such a great movie. I'm obviously not alone in thinking that. I had such a great time when I saw this movie. I went in knowing I would have a good time, which of course helps because legions of others had reported that the time indeed was great. And it opens with such a fun scene where bear is, you think, finally professing his feelings to a girl he has an obviously enormous amount of affection for. - I think about you all the time, Nikki. Am I trying not to? You're in every song I listen to. - And actually he's just rehearsing it. - No, stop, okay, that was cringy. - Oh my God, I knew it. - Wait, I am so sorry. - I thought it was right, okay. - This time, I went, I'm not doing it again. Doing it, that was so embarrassing. - Yeah, yeah, that would freak me out. Again, Nikki would vomit. - I told me to pour my heart out. Do you know what a vulnerable I just got? - I underestimated you. - What if you got her something nice? - No, not either. - And he's being coached by his friend Ian, played by Cooper Tomlinson, who also works at this music shop with him. So he knows what to do. He just can't do it. And a huge problem in this movie is just vulnerability. Being direct, exposing yourself, risking something. Not even like not knowing how to do it, but being able to do it and to potentially embarrass yourself and have an undesirable outcome. That is the thing that bear absolutely cannot risk. He's very good looking. And Indian Everettie asks him, her character, Nikki, asks him quite pointedly at the start of the movie. Do you have a thing for me? Because now is the time to say it. And rather than risk anything of himself, he would rather snap this little twig. And as you say, Vincent, don't go around snapping twigs and making wishes. - You don't do that. - Bad plan. But I think one thing that's so particularly great about this movie and makes it truly horrifying is that Nikki, real Nikki is trapped inside fake Nikki and is trying to claw her way through. And that bear would rather have this prison-like arrangement where he's imprisoned someone to get a simulacrum of the person. What does it mean to be loved by this Nikki? Really is meaningless. Not only is it, I have nothing to do with her own will, but her whole personality and everything he likes about her has completely disappeared. She's just like a robotic form of herself to a point of psychosis. - She's like a bad AI. She's like, "This is what you want, is this what you want?" Like, I can dress like this. - She's giving me again. - Yes, yes. - Exactly. And I think maybe this speaks to the jenziness of it that this simulacrum of experience, even though he knows it's not the real thing is preferable, like that's the horror. That it would be seen or chosen as preferable to the actual pain and elation and self-exposure that real experience requires. - Yes, yeah, exactly. He's afraid to risk anything of himself. And I do think the fact, you know, the fact Ian is advising him at the beginning and is saying, you know, he's rehearsing his confession and Ian is like, "Whoa, that's way too much." - Yes. - You're like putting way too much out there. Don't do it like this. Just like nag her a bit, you know, flirt with her. Open the door, we don't have to do all of this. You know, play the game. And at first, it's like, oh, this guy is kind of allowed. Like, he's not coming off great here. But it ultimately emerges that bear's obsession with being the nice guy or seeming to be the nice guy is so much worse and so much more monstrous. - You know, what you were saying about the kind of the toxicity of the nice guy or kind of like, you know, I can't say that. I can't do that. I'm gonna be nice, you know. But then ending up being like the worst version of like what a man can be essentially. I think that concern about toxic masculinity is something obsession shares with backrooms, which is the other movie that we wanted to discuss directed, as we said, by the 21-year-old Cain Parsons who was-- - Another great name. - Another great name who was 20 when the film was released and written by Will Sudeck. I'm gonna just give a brief synopsis. This is a weirdly, I mean, for me, it's not period for me. It's basically I'm the 90s beat in my heart as if they were just yesterday. But the movie is set in 1990. So we have a man named Clark, played by Chooatel Egyo-4. He is a failed architect or a former architect who is now running a furniture store at kind of like a very seemingly unsuccessful like cavernous furniture store. And he has recently been tossed out of his own home by his wife who was sick of his drinking and, you know, his rage and so on. And we mean him in kind of a therapy session with his therapist, Dr. Mary Klein, played by Renata Reinsvah. And she is trying to kind of like have him break out of his kind of toxic pattern. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, you know, get angry or lose my temper or whatever. I know. That's the purpose of the whole exercise. This is a good start to feel what you feel and then learn to identify a new path. Your reaction was actually quite normal. Oh, that's me. He, meanwhile, is because he has lost his home. He is sleeping also at this, you know, big furniture store he runs. And one night he wakes up and kind of starts exploring, goes down to the basement. And he walks through the wall. I have learned since that in online parolins, this is called clipping, no clipping, no clipping. I'm sorry. Walking through walls is called no clipping. This comes from video games. It's sort of a glitch where you pass through the bounds of what you were supposed to be able to pass through. Okay, this is very embarrassing. I didn't even get the term right. So he, he no clips. We're all learning, we're all learning. This is why we're here. There is no shame. There's no shame. Okay, so it's called no clipping. So, so he enters into these back rooms, right? Of this store, which is a weird architectural space, yellowed and disturbing. It looks like a kind of abandoned waiting room, but there's no architecturally, there's no rhyme or reason, you know, there might be like, there's a door with three handles. There are like piles of furniture and old clothes, and kind of like, heaped around the space. - The liminal space, horror. - It's a bit of a liminal space, and there's a bit of horror. Okay? - Sounds like more than a bit. - And so, a lot of terrible things start happening in the space. There are all these like inexplicable characters, half man, half, you know, mannequin. It's unclear if they're living or dead. They start kind of like. - Vincent, you look so obsessed. - Following, this isn't for Vincent. It's not for Vincent. Following Clark. - It's scarier than the other two? - It's scarier, it's also not as good, which Alex, I'm one in discussion. - I apologize, I apologize. - I agree. - No, no, no, not at all, not at all. - I don't like the word mannequin, but go ahead. - Yeah, there's a, yeah, you're not gonna like this, Vincent. It's creepy, it's creepy, okay? It's creepy, this space, this like, backroom space is seemingly endless, and there are untold horrors there, okay? - At some point, Clark's therapist, Mary, comes looking for him. She also goes no clip mode. (laughing) - Vincent's just melting down now. - He's just getting out, he's just getting out of the feelings. - Yeah, that's great. I kind of want to see him, I'll go ahead. - There are interesting things about it, and she also entered the space, and really bad things start happening to her. Basically, it becomes a house of horrors. There's a lot that's going on. Let's, I will say, first of all, the neatness of both it ends and obsession, what you call the allegorical element. There is allegory, I believe, to and backrooms, but it's much messier. Like there's no kind of like the elegance of the other two movies we discussed, and the kind of cleverness and neatness of, it's a kind of symbolic quality is not present in this movie. I thought that it was very visually striking. I was, you know, stunned at a 20-year-old made this, but I struggled to understand what it was saying. But again, he was basically a fetus, King Parton's, this is like, I mean, this movie was also, I mean, it was still relatively made on the cheap, but it was 10 million, which, and it's a very impressive movie, and of course made like hundreds of millions. So, you know, the return on the investment is like stunning. I don't know that I totally loved it. Alex B, I want to hear from you about this. And I also want to hear a little bit about the backstory of King Parton's, because I know he began as a teen developing, I mean, back rooms, as I understand it, is kind of like a term that he did not make up this term. Yeah, and I think that's actually really important context for this. You may have heard the term creepypasta, which basically describes a kind of online urban legend. These monsters or settings that don't belong to any one individual, but that are built out by people across all of these different platforms in various ways. And so, the back rooms exist outside of King Parton's. They predate King Parton's. The earliest known instance is this 4chan image that was posted of a sort of yellowing office space. And then, from that point, it ballooned into this thing where people were writing short stories on Reddit. They're making videos on YouTube and TikTok. There were like indie video games based on the concept of the back room. So, in a way, he's adapting IP almost. It's like, this is something-- Would you say that it's a bit like a bard named Homer deciding to write down a story of a great war that has been told by many other-- - No, no, no. - There are so far centuries. The back room-- - It may indeed be quite similar. - King Parton says, "Let me tell you the story of a complicated back room." - Yes, absolutely. - A complicated office space. And it really is-- he is kind of the face of this phenomenon. He was making videos on YouTube, set in the back rooms. He is definitely the best known kind of figurehead for this crowd-sourced internet mythology. And his videos were sort of the most polished and the most popular. And so, when the time came that producers were approaching someone to make this into a movie, of course, it was going to be him. I've watched all of the YouTube videos, and I think they're very interesting on their own terms. I think the visual signature is very striking. I like what he was doing there. Actually, more than I like what he did in this feature film. So, I actually do feel we are kind of completely aligned, know me, in terms of the merits of the thing. Like, I think aesthetically, it's really original. He's not really a movie guy. From interviews, he's talked a lot about playing video games like Portal, which I have also played in Loved, and I can see the influence in this movie. Like, someone like Cory Barker, this was always the goal. Someone like Alex Olam, this was always the goal. For Kay and it's like, this is a different medium that I can be working in, but I love YouTube, why would I leave YouTube? And I almost felt that they were taking this very strange and singular, unquantifiable mythology and like, ramming it into the shape of a conventional horror movie. And I almost wish it had not tried to hit those beats at all and had just been allowed to breathe as its own thing. Well, just this morning, I was poking around and I saw that Kane Parsons has released a new Backroom's YouTube video. So, he's back. He's back. He's back in the backroom. He's back in his original backrooms. After the break, what is Gen Z afraid of? That's in a minute on Critics At Large From The New Yorker. - Hi, my name is Zach Barron on the Senior Special Projects Editor at GQ. And I'm pleased to introduce one more question, GQ's new weekly interview show. Over the years in the magazine, I've written dozens of cover stories and traveled the world to talk to and write about some of the most interesting people in the GQ universe. From Martin Scorsese to George Clooney and Brad Pitt to Alcaste Andre 3000. But now I'll be doing it weekly. I'm going to sit down with some of the most interesting people in the world and figure out what makes them. Well, them. 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On Tuesdays, join me as I interview influential designers like Calvin Klein, Rachel Scott, and Simone Balotti. On Thursdays, join Chloe Mal, head of editorial content at Vogue U.S. and Choma Naughty. British Vogue's head of editorial content, as they explore fashion through the lens of culture with guests like Doja Cat and Margot Robbie. Listen and watch The Run Through with Vogue wherever you get your podcasts and Vogue's YouTube channel. I wanted to just pull back for a bit and talk about the movies more broadly. I was really interested in one thing that Alex Olm said in a recent interview with Variety. I found it very beautiful. He said, "I believe the theatrical experience is the last religious experience of my generation." There, of course, has been great anxiety about the end of movies and the end of theatrical experience. Boom, here come these two young directors who've returned all these butts into seats. One thing that's interesting to me about the filmmaker aspiration of it, like Alex Olmhoi, I'm increasingly interested in, because I think he speaks very well about his ambitions, has talked about wanting there to be a new Hollywood moment, where the old system doesn't work anymore. Obviously, we've seen some of these huge temple movies fail like Mandalorian and Grogroo. Is that? Is that my correct? Grogoo, but yes. How many Rs are in this thing? Is it like Grocoo? Like Mandalorian and Grogoo was a big old goose egg, and at the same time, these young fleet films come and get audiences into theaters, and so there is a sense that you can do things differently. I find that very cool and ambitious and exciting, that this can be done differently. It can be done cheaper. Sure, if you want to give me money, that's great, because maybe I can do things with it that I couldn't otherwise, but we need that kind of new artistic energy and hunger and people coming to say, "I don't really just want to succeed at your game at this. I want to use this medium and make new, exciting things," and I really am hoping that the success of these three filmmakers is going to usher more people into this space and get them excited about what they could do, too. And I think that happens. It's exciting. I think it's really exciting. And I want us to maybe kind of hone in a little bit on the gen zenith of it, which of course we've mentioned over the course of the episode. I'm wondering if it's like, what is it that makes all these movies obsession, back rooms, and it ends particularly Gen Z creations apart from the fact that they've been made by Gen Z filmmakers? Alex, what do you think? I think a lot of it is in what they are grappling with on screen and what they have sort of come up dealing with in their own lives. We talked about the risks of intimacy as a kind of recurring thematic preoccupation. I think that's big an obsession. I think it's also big in it ends. The Tyler, one of the characters who's the first to drop off in the endless road. At the beginning of the movie, he's talking about how he was seeing this girl and he ended it because she wanted to pick pumpkins with him. And everyone else in the car is like, what are you talking about? But it's this anxiety of committing to a relationship and being serious. And I think there's a way in which we all kind of know too much about each other or there are too many rules and scripts in your head in a sense of like, you need to be engaging in exactly this way or you will be humiliated or this will be the wrong outcome or you will come off badly and that is showing up in a lot of these movies. I think growing up in an age of kind of unreality in the ascendancy of AI and being very online and there's a sort of depersonalization that comes with that that is showing up in all of these movies. I think the pandemic is kind of a ghost over all of this too, you know, like Alex Odom graduated into it, Kari Barku was in film school when it happened and dropped out, Kane Parsons was in high school when it happened, like again spending a lot of time online and not a lot of time in the world because you can't at this crucial formative moment. I feel like that being the crucible of all of these filmmakers' lives shows up in their work in interesting ways. And then yeah, aesthetically I think like the high concept thing is huge. There's kind of a streak of moralism in a lot of these movies that I find really interesting. Interesting. When I was talking to Kari Barku, we were talking about the mechanics of the One Wish Willow and, you know, the convention of the monkey's paw is like whatever wish you make it will make it bad in some way, like it's a classic becare for what you wish for a situation. But he was like, no, the One Wish Willow, if you wish for something like morally fine or neutral, you'll just get your wish. The problem is the wish he made, which is this incredibly fucked up, you know, revoking of someone else's autonomy. And so that curdles because of the intention behind it. I think there's something in, you know, the allegorical quality that Vincent was talking about, the desire to make sense of the world and externalize those anxieties and those rules and those beliefs about the right way to be in a kind of chaotic, free throw of society. I'm so interested in this. It's like an ambiguous moralism sometimes, because I think another one of the mediums or the sort of materials that these, this group seems to know how to use really well is discourse itself. It's like so many of the arguments that I read particularly about obsession were, and it seems to be like intentionally stoked by obsession. Is this a parable of sort of sexual assault and rape or other kinds of coercion? Is it, you know, so knowing how to strike a moral note in a way that will not end a conversation but begin one. Yes. I think is also a part of this as well. Yes. Exactly. It's not a didactic impulse. Yeah. It's a kind of, let's figure this out together. Like I'm figuring this out in real time, and I would like you to be part of that conversation is the feeling that I get from, you know, someone like Kari Baku, and I think seeing young people depicting people their own age, trying to figure that out, has a different valence than like the generation above being like, "Oh, the kids today." Absolutely. It is really interesting. And I was also interested something I read with Ken Parsons who directed back rooms about his hatred of AI, which I thought was really interesting because this is a kid who's obviously so online, is into making things cheaply and quickly, it would seem AI would be very good for, quote unquote. And yet I was interested in this kind of like, "No, you got to do it real." Yeah. No, I sort of, I appreciate his resistance to it. And I think, you know, in back rooms itself, you can even see, you could interpret it as being kind of anti-AI, a lot of the monstrous creatures within the back rooms have the quality of like something generated by AI that's a little bit off. Yes. It's like they have too many fingers or, you know, there's some distortion. Yeah. You know, he, like, built a practical set for this entire insane, liminal space. I think a lot of people in Gen Z, specifically, are anti-AI, and I think some of it is, it's like a rebellion against this world that has been so intangible, and it's like, no, I want the real thing. I want to touch grass. Yeah, that's, I think, and I think that's, if we're talking about generational fears, I think that's one that you won't interact with the real world, and that you're going to be given this kind of moving walkway of experience where things are increasingly easy in some sense, but also totally meaningless in another sense. And rebelling against this makes total sense what a horrifying experience that would be true horror. Yeah. What do you think might be next, Alex? It's like all of these things. It's like when there's something that is kind of like a subculture that immediately, like corporate America, like sniffs out and is like, oh, now we're going to be making some money. Obviously, we were talking about our hope for this, like burgeoning new movement of these young filmmakers who seem very interesting and want to do things in a new way. But are you thinking about the kind of like potential co-opting of these fresh young voices? Like, is that something that you suspect will happen? Yes, I mean, that's the, yeah, if we look at the history of Hollywood. Yes. Yes. Yeah, this is the true horror movie is the development meetings where someone is trying to explain the next creepypasta that they think is going to make them $530 million. But I do hope the right lessons are taken from this. I've already seen these reports of like Steven Spielberg is epying a creepypasta movie. Like, the guy who directed weapons is, Zach Craig is writing a creepypasta movie. Like clearly the money is flowing in that direction. And I mean, both of them, I would trust relatively speaking. But I hope that the right people get the right opportunities off the back of this. And I do worry that it will just be like, let's find a random YouTuber who has a lot of subscribers because it's not, I mean, like actually earlier this year before any of the Gen Z horror broke, there was a movie called Iron Lung, which was directed by a YouTuber known as Markiplier. And he funded it himself, it was basically, he is like the only person on screen for 90% of this movie. It's not a good movie, I'll say, but it was this box office phenomenon. It wasn't going to get a theatrical release, because no studio wanted it. And then his fans started calling theaters and being like, "Will you carry iron lung?" And in a baking like $50 million, the box office, which is considerable for what was put into it. And the fact it had no distribution system to speak of. But that is a case of like the YouTuber with the 39 million subscribers, they're the ones showing up to the theaters. I think for a lot of these other filmmakers, that's not what's happening. It's people responding to a concept, it's people responding to another member of their generation, speaking directly to them in this way. And I hope that that is what is sought and funded and rewarded in this new era that is coming. Not just we're looking at the social numbers, and that's going to determine what we greenlight. Definitely. Right. You guys, which of these three films obsession back rooms in it ends? Would you least like to find yourself in? It depends on who I am. Yeah. You know what I mean? As previously discussed, if I'm in that car, it ends as fine. But you know what I don't want to do? Live in the woods forever, if you want to stay in the car. You're OK with the car. I want to stay. You drive for the rest of your life. I would drive. I kept up thinking about the song Life Fizzah. I was like, I'm going to ride it all night long. As long as I'm in that car, the movie's fine. So you wouldn't want to be in the woods. Alex bearish thoughts. I feel like I'd be fine in obsession with back rooms. In back rooms, I'm just not going into the liminal space. I'm sorry, I'm like, OK, I will be walking out. This is the thing that's crazy about that movie. He keeps going back in. But he leaves and comes back. But Alex, he's fucked up. That's the thing. He's fucked up. And he does have a terrible therapist. But as a therapist individual, I think I'd be fine. OK, Alex Schwartz. Oh, being in the car. I don't want to be in the car. I haven't seen back rooms. I probably want to be there even less than I want to be in the car. If I could choose one, I'd be in obsession. Because even though I'd be killed, I'd have some fun along the way. And that would be OK. Third-house parties, you know? Before my head explodes. Yeah, I'd get to go to a house party. I feel like I would be like corraled into going into the back rooms. Like, I'd be like the assistant. I'd be like his furniture store assistant. Much as you were in Morty Supreme. Yes, there I would be like lost forever in that third space. Wow. I think you need to give yourself more credit. Yeah, OK. You would stand up now. Yes. OK, maybe I'd stand up. OK. Alex Bearish, thank you so much for joining us and helping us figure out what Gen Z kids are afraid of. Always a joy. Yeah, Alex. Thank you Alex. Thank you Alex. Thank you Alex. This has been Critics at Large. Alex Bearish is our consulting editor. And Rianne Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Our show is mixed by Mike Kuchman. And we had engineering help today from Fran Bandy with music by Alexis Quadrado. You can listen to all of our episodes any time at New Yorker.com/critics. Are you ready to push your baking skills? This month at Bonapetit Bake Club, we are making glazed apple pie fritters. I'm Shilpoz Kokovic. And I'm Jesse Subjek. And we're senior test kitchen editors at Bonapetit and the hosts of BA's Bake Club podcast. Bake Club is Bonapetit's community of confident curious bakers. Every month, we publish a recipe on Bonapetit.com that introduces a baking concept we think you should know. Then you'll go bake and send us any questions you have. And we'll get together here on the podcast to talk about the recipe. And if you want to master deep frying, this is your chance. Head to BA.com or our substack and come and bake along with us. Join us the first Tuesday of every month as we debrief about our latest bake. Find BA Bake Club or wherever you get your podcasts. Happy baking! Hi, I'm Nicole Feltz, global fashion news and features director at Vogue and co-host of the Run Through podcast. On Thursdays, join Chloe Mao, head of editorial content at Vogue US and Choma Navi. British Vogue's head of editorial content as they explore fashion through the lens of culture with guests like Doja Cat and Margot Robbie. One day last year, police entered a mansion in LA County and discovered the couple that lived there had almost two dozen children. Nearly every one of them born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived. I started crying. I was like, "What the heck did I just get myself into?" I made a coffin. The journey is a new series from In The Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In The Dark podcast feed.