SPEAKER_00 0:00

There were times when I would play that where the game would like glitch and you'd find yourself sort of outside the map that you were playing in in this weird zone. That's what backrooms is. That's what I think about as backrooms. You're listening to the O Brother Podcast. Real Brothers, Real Talk. Welcome to the O Brother Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Smith. Alongside me as always, my brother from the same mother, Mike Smith. Dan, should they be playing taps? Because final discussed. We extended Halloween Fest a little bit by an episode, which was exciting. But I've just I am at that point now. I'm ready to cleanse the palate and get into something non-horror. And so you know, as we talked about in the last episode, it's a nice bookend, as we thought, because we started the Halloween fest this year reviewing Obsession by Curry Barker, and now we're doing Backrooms by Kane Parsons. Another young content creator, young. I wouldn't call him a YouTuber. I think he's got some other street cred. Well, he's only 19. Well, he's 21 now. Okay. But he's 19 when he filmed this. Well, he was 16 when the germ of this really came to be, which makes this even more phenomenal. Now, as I said on the episode when we did Obsession, I'm equally fascinated by his background, how this got to be made, the story behind it. Right off the bat, as you said, young, young filmmaker, youngest filmmaker, director, I guess, might to have a number one film at the box office, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:50

John Singleton was number two when he was 25. Now, was that uh Boys in the Hood? Probably.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Yeah, it might have been maybe the Boys in the Hood.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

I don't know. I don't know Singleton's work, but I know of him. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Yeah, yeah. Now, this is based on his web series called Back Rooms. I don't know if you checked that out a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

I didn't have time to get into it. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

But I will. Yeah, and I don't want to make a direct comparison to this because there are differences, and I think uh I think Kane himself would point it out, but you can't help but have Blair Witch vibes as you're watching this.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

That rang in my head a hundred times was Blair Witch.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Yeah, I think I hated Blair Witch. Yeah, I like Blair Witch. It I was of that age when that came out in the 90s.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

And so And it was done locally where, you know, in UCF students.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Well, there was local people involved in my neck of the woods, exactly. And also some of it was filmed in Maryland where I spent some time as well. But this one, yeah, it's it's got that because of the found footage aspect of this.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

And it you know, the way it throws you off guard so many times. Like you really don't know what's happening. You're like, okay, what's going on? And then the camera gets janky and yeah, and it's a huge space.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Okay, the the back rooms that Mike going for it, I love it.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

That that are discovered. And and I'm talking for real. That was 30,000 square feet of space they used.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

It was like what four sound stages, I think.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Yeah. That they filmed across. Like at times the crew got lost.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Now, does this is this up for Oscar consideration? Like, does this make it in terms of the timeline? I'm not sure offhand. Yeah, it definitely makes it in the time. I don't think it'll be nominated. Well, but if it doesn't win for set design, that would be criminal. The the what must have gone into that to to create this, and again, there's you know, they're certainly going to take advantage of some visual effects and so forth, but it's incredible when you see it visually.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Like, I'm jumping way ahead, but there's a pirate, the guy who owns this way too ahead.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

You couldn't just do sit do this.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

I can't set up there's no setup happening over here. Like uh Mike, do you know what do you know what creepy pastas is? No. See, there's a whole this is a whole world that we don't know about that's quite fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

It's part of the problem for me is things were happening that I know there's backstory to, but they didn't deliver it right from the beginning. It opens on somebody that sounds like they they're in a hazmat suit. I don't know if they were or not, because we never saw them. No, they were his name is what? Uh because he talks into a microphone.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

And that's a totally irrelevant character to the film because they're never brought up again. It's totally irrelevant.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

But it right, that's what I'm saying. It starts out with this character and then doesn't where do you go?

SPEAKER_00 5:23

No, no, no, no, no. That's there, that's not a big deal. That's just all that is is just setting, it's getting you to go to lean in and go, whoa, wait a second, what is going on here? What is this? Is that a hazmat suit? That's all it is. It's setting up that to get you off balance immediately, right? Which it does. It does. Oh, it definitely does. The tension is incredible. I mean, I was I was on the edge of my home seat throughout the film, for sure. Now, I'm just gonna read the IMDB synopsis because, and even that isn't gonna really explain this well. No. Clark, it says Clark, an angry architect, chases the source of impossible power failures when a glowing gap opens in the basement of this furniture store that he manages. But the yellow maze beyond it threatens his sanity, his friends, and his therapist, who is a character named Mary, who we'll talk about, played by Renata Reinesville, who was in with uh Stellan Skarsgard. We did it as one of the nominated Oscar films last year. And I meant to take note of it.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

It said in what I was reading in my research, it said this movie has two Oscar-nominated actors. And I'll let you say the male's name.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

The the star of this, you mean? Toedel Egiphore, which I don't think I said it as well in the last, but once I'm like You got the last name perfect. It's not as yeah, it's not as difficult as I think we make it out to be, but but she was in the sentimental value film. That's the one that we had reviewed.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

So And I'm that's just clicking.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Yeah, so really all you need to think about for now those that are like deep into this lore and know all of this, they they know more than we do, admittedly, and that's fine. Now, folks that that aren't, like like we certainly are and were and whatever, is it's it gives you poltergeist vibes. There's something paranormal going on here, perhaps.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

And and the very first scene before that Narran character is a date. It's like 1990.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

June 1990, yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

And I think that picture of that yellow room, that's when that was discovered, which would be before the director was even born. That's how far back this goes.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Yeah, way before there's these urban legends. Digital folklore is the only way that I can think about it that has been popular online for some time now. I had no idea about any of this. It's quite fascinating. But digital folklore was a phrase that came to mind, or like what we would think of as an urban legend, and they're sort of in the horror psychological horror realm, and they refer to them as creepy pastas, which I think pastas is a it refers to cut and paste or copy and paste. Again, hopefully there's many people studied individuals that know about this that can weigh in in the comments and educate us even more deeply.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

But there's a lot of like, you know, that's why I didn't stay in YouTube and and look that much because there's a lot of negativity. People love to hate about what? About the director, Parsons, saying he didn't really direct it. It was really being handled by somebody at H which just not. He absolutely directed it. Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Right. And that's just jealousy. I think that's people that are envious of maybe they've been content creators on YouTube and they would kill to have a film that if we're comparing to Obsession again, which I don't intend to do, that's not my intent here. But that, as we talked about on that episode, was a budget of under a million bucks. Now, here you've got a film, still independent technically, but it's a $10 million budget, and you can see the difference, right? Yes. In the production value, the stars you have at the at the forefrontier of the film, but not take nothing away from what he's able to do from a direct directing standpoint. You wouldn't would you ever think that the person behind the camera was 19 years old? No. Never.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

In fact, I I didn't even know it till after because I I went into the movie Cold.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

I don't think we even did a first look on this.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

We did not. We did not.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

No, it was totally cold.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Yeah, we heard about it at the same time we heard about obsession, and we knew oh, there's these two independent films that are doing really well with the box.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

There's definitely similarities with these two. Yeah, one's a little older, Curry Barker, who's right back to releasing content on YouTube. Well, and what did you tell me that you read he's connected to now? He's gonna he's gonna do an upcoming rendition of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which is our last film.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Yeah, yeah. I said $10 million budget. Now, this has brought in over $400 million, which is just amazing.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

So A24, isn't it their most successful?

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Yes, it's A24's highest grossing film to date. I don't think that's been topped yet. As we said, he's the youngest filmmaker with the number one in the U.S. and abroad, quite frankly, second highest grossing horror film of 2026, fifth highest grossing independent film of all time, which is I think what you were saying earlier.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

And and for A24, Marty Supreme is number two.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Which we looked at that. Yeah, yeah. And you I mean, A24 is just bringing it. They are it's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Give them credit because they went after Ken Parsons. He kind of didn't want to do it, yeah. And he was like, well, he he kind of liked the way I think his life was and didn't really want to deal with the studio. And but A24, I think, is a kind of a sweet spot for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

What did he know from that to be able to say, well, I don't know if I want to get involved in that. I know that sounds a bit silly. Now, his dad is a VFX artist, so he it runs in the family. He's got what's in his DNA, his mother was a therapist, which maybe that plays something into the character here that Renata Reinesva plays in this film. Mark DuPlace, who I recognized from the morning show, which I love on Apple TV, also was plays a character in this. Finn Bennett and Lukita Maxwell, they play this couple that's I think they work for uh the Clark The Furniture Manager, yeah, played by Chewettel. And then Lukita I knew from Shrinking. Shrinking, yeah. Also on Apple TV. Yeah. So it's it's kind of interesting. And that's kind of your main cast, honestly. It's pretty disturbing at times, and you know, it made me think, too. Now, you know, I don't know if you've ever experienced this, Mike, because you're more you're a gamer, but you you game primarily on the handhelds, like with the Switch. Yeah. And I was just talking to somebody today about you and saying how like I was big into Call of Duty for years and years and years. I played Call of Duty.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

The latest one that looks awesome.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Yeah, from PlayStation to Xbox. And then I just, you know, eventually I you grow out of it, and it's just frustrating to play online for a while. I will eventually. Yeah, eventually. And I said your Splatoon was my Call of Duty, but there were times when I would play that where the game would like glitch and you'd find yourself sort of like outside the map that you were playing in in this weird zone. That's what backrooms is. That's what I think about as backrooms.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

And again, my problem with the movie is the fact that it brings up so many questions. And I know this is what they were going for. You know, they want people talking about it on the way out of the theater, and hey, what did you think of this? What did this mean? What did that mean? But I think they needed to provide some more answers than they did. Maybe in the lore, it's there, but it's not in this two-hour movie.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

What are some of those questions? Because I think, isn't that what some what most good art does? Is it's thought provoking. You fill in. We've often said on the podcast, I don't want to be spoon-fed that. I give me some room to fill it in. But but what you're saying is they I needed a little bit more than what I think a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

Some story. You know, okay, I know this guy that owns the furniture store is going through a rough time in his marriage, and you know, he's mad because he's paying for the house and she's living in it, he's paying for her law school. Like, okay, that's story, but that doesn't pay off. We don't meet his wife, we don't know why. Why would he see the shrink, I think because of his marriage, yet it delves into this other universe, literally.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

So he's working at the furniture store. You said he's his marriage is obviously on the outs, right? And he's certainly got anger towards his spouse because he feels that he's putting in all this effort while she's just sitting home, quote unquote, on her fat ass, right, yeah, not doing anything or whatever. He says that a couple of times in the film while she's trying to go through law school. So he's resentful, obviously. But I'm sure that there was some agreement that they made at some point, sure, that that was the way it is. But resentment grows and that that happens in real life and so forth. So I wouldn't know anything about that. No, it's hypothetical, of course. Yeah, but you can imagine how frustrating that would be for a spouse to have to support somebody while they're going to law school. I mean, that would be a tremendous burden on that person.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

And most people don't know that you're not allowed to work more than five hours in the first year, although some people do. Which is crazy because it's so demanding.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

It's you're you're gonna kill yourself. You're gonna kill yourself. But so because of this strife in the marriage, he's spending a lot of his nights at the furniture store, which is funny, right? There's this, you know, he's in bed and he's watching TV and he's drinking some bourbon or whatever in bed, and you know, Kane behind the camera, he pulls out and you zoom out, and he's at a bed and a setup at the furniture store. Right? So he spent a lot of his nights there, and then there's this issue with the lights at the furniture store. Right. So he calls in an electrician, goes down in the basement, they're looking at the breaker box, and they see this odd configuration of breaker switches. It's diagonal. It's diagonal, these red buttons that are they completely stand out from the rest. Anybody that has a breaker box in your house, you know, they're these standard black switches. And so they flick them on and off and they're trying to troubleshoot, and they don't really see that it's doing anything. So they the electrician's like, I don't know, some boob probably put him in there as a goof or they didn't know what they were doing or whatever, and they don't pay much attention to it.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

And and again, it doesn't pay off because we really don't know what that switch was, which I don't think that's the detail you need.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

What we do find out is that apparently seems to open some portal into this other universe. Because what you see is the lights flicker in the background and one of the shots, and you go, okay, something spooky's going on down in the basement. They flip those switches, there's something going on with those switches, right? Right. But that's what gets you to stay invested in two hours. Because otherwise, if they if it was more obvious, you'd be like, What's the fun in that, right? And the original of the problem.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

You know, the floor gives way and you go down. Yeah. And this, he kind of leans up, he's kind of touching the wall. Well, he walks.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

He's walking, yeah, he's walking through the furniture store, and he walks and he looks to his left and he sees this weird. He's like, wait a second, it backs up and there's like this gap in the wall. Right. Like he can see like a light, like this light coming through. So he goes to an inspect it and ends up that's when he realizes he can literally pass through the wall. Yeah. Like a damned copper field. It's like the twilight zone. You're in a new dimension. And that's when he's in the back rooms. He goes into the back rooms, this yellow maze looking, it's it's it's incredible looking. And it's it's the effects of that too. When he goes in and out and back, because he's like, obviously, he's freaked out and he's like, Where am I? What just happened? And he goes back and forth. It's like Homer. Shoe goes on, shoe goes off. Shoe goes on, shoe goes off. He goes back and forth. So then he goes to Mary, his therapist, to tell her, I found something at the furniture store. And he says, Have you ever done a 5150 on somebody before? Because I might be losing my mind, you know, type of thing. And uh, so that becomes a very obviously prominent part of the storyline, too, when she eventually finds herself in the back rooms. I don't know if you can get us there. Can you get us from that point to there?

SPEAKER_01 19:25

Yeah, well, and he almost gets angry with her. And he's like, he's getting his stuff together. He's like, I'll be back with proof. With proof, right. You'll see.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

What does he do? He enlists the help of his employee workers. This is one of the first real scares of the film I felt. Is so they're in he's explaining to them what they're about to witness. And the one kid has the video camera going. I love this early 90s of EHS look that we get, which is grainy, it's grainy and all that. And so he's explaining what's about to happen. And then the kid with the camera ends up putting his hand through, ends up in the back room, he starts freaking out, like, oh my god, what the hell is this? The girlfriend and fellow employee is soon to follow. She ends up in there as well. So then they they get to this one spot in the back rooms where there's this long declining chute into what you can see as a some sort of uh wood door into another area.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Think about uh a haunted house from a from a Halloween attraction where you walk and the room seems to shrink. Yeah, that's you know, that's kind of what it is.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

It is, and so they tie a rope around this kid's waist and send him down. Clark was already for this.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Yeah, he knew about it, yeah, and he's sending the kid down on the page.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

But but Clark never made it down.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

He no, he's he's helping the kid by letting out rope, kid's filming it.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

He goes down there, and then you see like these piles of clothes all over the place, and what looks like blood splatter on the walls and the carpet, and it's a very creepy.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

And then there's he comes, and this is before when Clark first enters. There's a bird that appears to be dead in the middle of the floor, like a seagull or something. Yeah, and he's looking at it, and all of a sudden it gets up and it just flies away. And like that, I'm like, oh, okay, that was a cool little thing.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

I get that's just in the bigger picture. I don't think it matters. I think it's just to accentuate the bizarre, the paranormal, the whatever. So so yeah, I wish you didn't get as hung up on that. But I get your I get your point.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Like, I'll give you another example where at the very beginning, the therapist is having a memory. She's watching them destroy this house. Yeah. They bulldoze. Her childhood home or something. That's what I think. And they're putting up a high-rise. And she sees a spot where she put her, you know how you like the Chinese theater, you put your handprints and then sign your name. Well, they did that as kids, apparently. But it seems like she's having almost an out-of-body experience where she's watching herself as a little girl making the handprints and then up above just caves in on them. And again, there's no explanation about that.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Yeah, that see, that didn't bother me at all. I really didn't find my.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

I think if you go back, which uh this is one I want to see again.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

And I think if you go back, you're gonna see some things and say, okay, yeah, that didn't really pay off.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

And now I think you have to be going into it seeking those answers. I just wasn't I was just taking it for what it was, I guess. And so I guess I was fortunate because it didn't really sort of diminish the enjoyment of the film. So they're in this back room's maze and it just goes on forever and ever. And then this is such bizarre. I mentioned the glitching kind of that analogy with like the video games and such great visual representation of that in the film here. There's things you'll see, there's one room where there's it almost looks like shoes that are stuck in the sand on the desert or on the beach, but they're in the carpet. Right. You know, people's shoes and whatever.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

It's a really weird and at one point it's it seems like there's people half out of the floor.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Yes, correct. These mannequins throughout the furniture store and so forth. What uh what's most fascinating to me, I think, is the the the the advancements in technology, where we've gotten to to be able to create something like this for one thing, but also this this continuing blurring of the lines between reality and non-reality, it's uh it's getting very hard to distinguish between the two. Now, there was a point in the film where I thought whether this was intended or not, and again, the beauty of art and film, the interpretation that's left to the viewer or whatever, is this I thought we were in Clark's mind at one point, right? I thought the back rooms because there's a narration at the beginning from Mary the Therapist, and it's repeated at a certain point. She says something like we all experience these different kinds of loops and patterns that repeat themselves. Now, I this resonated with me from the little that I've done over the last several years with like mindfulness and meditation and so forth. Because, you know, we oftentimes, if we have experienced trauma in our lives or whatever, we create these stories in our minds and they repeat over and over again because they keep us safe or they or they justify some irrational thinking that we have, right? Yeah, and so jealousy, things like this.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Your memory changes over time. Like a thought that you had this positive experience. And then as you think about it, you know, you realize, you know, that wasn't as positive as I thought.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

That's a good thing to bring up, too, the memories, right? Because Clark, towards the latter part of the film, is talking with Mary in this one scene, which is pretty intense and scary. He said, This is this uh place that we're in right now, because she's in the back rooms with him at this point. He says, This is everything that's ever existed. It's every memory of a thing that someone has had. And so there's this characters that are in that scene, for example, and they've got 16 eyes, and their face is sort of it's hard to explain, but right.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

And again, it's I think it's representing the change you might have pictured somebody thinking he had big eyebrows when in reality he didn't. And so his face is the form.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

Right, right, exactly, exactly. It's uh like you said, fun house, you know, haunted house type uh imagery or what have you. But yeah, so this is based on creepy pasta, uh a creepy pasta of the same name, which you know, back rooms. And that is just for those that don't know, because I had to educate myself on this as best I could before we came on air. A creepy pasta is a horror-related legend which has been shared around the internet. The term creepypasta has since become a catch-all term for any horror content posted onto the internet. I didn't know that. I never heard of it before. So we've done this for six years. Yeah, but this isn't really something we've delved into before. And I but but it's fascinating. It makes me want to learn more about it. And but there were elements of it that I could relate to, right? Like the thing I explained with having played Call of Duty and the game glitches, and you find yourself at another dimension almost, it seems like, in the game. So it is interesting to to to have the thought to try to bring that to life in a feature film like this. And so, you know, despite the criticism that I guess you said he's been facing online, yeah, frankly, part of his motivation was he felt like this the lore or the approach to this online was not being done in a proper way or an effective enough way. And geez, he had to he certainly nailed it.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

I just find it interesting that A24 had to convince him. I didn't know this. Yeah, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

I didn't know there was some resistance there on his part. I would have thought he'd would dive head first and do it.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

I mean, over 400 million to get right back on the horse, and he's like, well, not so fast.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

See, now I'd love to see a filmmaker like this do something completely different now. Just go in a totally different. In fact, let's see him do just a straightforward whatever the genre is, other than horror or something outside of this realm.

SPEAKER_01 28:42

Yeah, because right now he's talking about continuing this story with other characters from the series.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

Yeah, and there's if you go onto his YouTube channel, Kane Pixels, okay, you can see all the web series of backrooms, and you can even see, in fact, you didn't get it, I guess, but I watched this on HBO Max. Yeah, it was like a 15-minute is it HBO Max again? I don't even know. Yeah. There's like a 15-minute uh Right. I didn't get that. Right. It's like an extra, but it's it's you can find it on his YouTube channel, I believe, and it's it's I think it would be considered actual prequel footage to this story that you see of the film. Is there anything else about the story itself or the end? Like part of the story that you want to talk about? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Like as it was getting towards the end, I kept saying to myself, don't end yet. Keep going, give me a little more, give me more. And then it ended almost like three times. Like a screen came up and there was kind of an x-ray of a body. And I thought, okay, that's the end. And then we go back in that that guy that's like wearing a lab coat talking to the doctor therapist.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

That's Mark DuPlace, that's his counter.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Is trying to get information from her, and she's trying to get information from him.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

And she's like, What's gonna happen next?

SPEAKER_00 30:19

He claims they they he's works for a company that that uh makes MRIs or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Right. And every time she asks a question, he kind of looks over like they're being watched through a two-way mirror. Clearly they are. Right. And he's like, Well, I'm not at liberty to to answer that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

Yeah. So the IMDB Meta score, Mike, 76. Rotten Tomatoes critics gave it an 85%, and the audience 74%. I'm more with the critics on this one and with the 85%, because I think you can see the quality of the production here that that came in delivers. Uh the level of the actors, the level of the actors. The acting is really good. To what a leg of four is uh awesome in this, as is Renata Rhinesfus. She she's great in terrifying scenes.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

She was a last-minute fill-in. Yes. And Clark was originally offered to famous segment on the Your Brother Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

Uh Clark was originally gonna be played by I want to say think of Last Halloween Fest. No idea. You gotta narrow it down. Michael B. Jordan. Oh, Michael B. Jordan, yeah. I could definitely have seen that. Yeah. But you know, now I can't see anybody else doing it. And right that you mentioned this pirate character, so this is a weird it's it's like a manifestation of a of a distorted memory that Clark has or something.

SPEAKER_01 31:51

Because he did a commercial for his furniture store.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

As a pirate hair on down, Madeys. Yeah, arg. We got all the sales, Mighty. Right. And but this thing is 20 feet tall in its well, the reality is it's a seven foot-7 former basketball player from like Serbia or something. That's right. I want to give him the proper credit here, and I believe that that is yep, it's right here. Robert Bober Checki? Boberchecki. I'm I'm sure I'm butchering his name. But yeah, it was uh he was like I thought it was just the guy on Stills. Oh, he was an Alien Romulus as well. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

That's right. Yes, okay.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

Yeah, he's Romanian. Right, right, right. Okay, yeah. That was incredible. That was the creepiest sequence of the whole film. I was watching this in the dark, late at night, like I'm gonna have dreams about this, nightmares.

SPEAKER_01 32:51

Well, it's funny because at the end, when she's being led by, is his name Phil? I think it's Phil, right? She's being led by Phil to this room. She goes by and she looks back and you can see the pirate like on a gurney, the seven foot seven. Was that who that was? It was the pirate.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

Okay. Yeah, yeah. It's I would recommend it. And and okay, if if you're totally averse to this kind of film, then steer clear. But if you like anything within the horror genre, psychological horror, like poltergeist and so forth, some of the ones we mentioned, you gotta see the film if you haven't already. Certainly, it's done amazingly well.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

It's worth a watch, but I think some people will be ticked off. I don't. Some of the questions that aren't answered, like the problem I have. I don't think so. I but I still, you know, I still like the art of it. I just didn't like the fact that the story was a little bit uh loose and had some holes.

SPEAKER_00 33:58

Okay, that's fair. I I would like to hear from from viewers as to whether or not that was a sticking point for them.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

I'm not bashing the film. No, you didn't bash it at all. Don't take me down. Well, you don't have to even say what's with the disclaimer.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

You didn't save the session, I made a comment. Okay, let's not revisit the comment. It's dead and buried. Yeah, this one's a good one. Again, directed by Kane Parsons, written by Will Sudik, and again, based on the web series that uh Kane already had out there for several years, like 2019 or so.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

And there's other, you know, like there's other there's that picture that originally, you know, from 1990 that sparked this whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

So it's it's kind of a weird combination of him and A24.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Well, it lends to this kind of lore that's out on the internet, apparently. So these creepy pastas, it's really wild. The only pasta that I know is the pasta I eat as an Italian, and also David Posternock for the Boston Brewers, quite frankly.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

Which we're gonna watch shortly. But you said something to me in a text, you said something about there's text after the end or something. And I watched all the credits.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

No, I meant there's this extra, I said extras. Okay. Maybe it was an autocorrect, who knows? Yeah. Yeah, there's some extras on the HBO Max.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

And I bought it thinking I would get the extras, but I didn't really yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:33

You bought it to watch what you mean.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

Yeah, I bought it through Prime.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

You own it. Yeah. But you see, you should have bought it on Apple or Well, I was gonna buy it on Apple, but I got kicked off. Oh, we'll have to do something about that. That's also frustrating, much like supporting your spouse go to law school. Well, listen, Kane, uh, hats off. I mean, uh, this is a really, really nice job here with Back Rooms. I see what it would be. It'll be a few person to talk to. Oh, I would love to uh if he would be open to coming on the podcast for sure. Yeah. That the journey for a young guy just to kind of learn about that, his resistance to to jumping on board. I find that interesting. I did not know that. But as I said, I didn't get a chance to consume as much as I would have liked in terms of research.

SPEAKER_01 36:23

And graduating high school and instantly being on a multimillion dollar movie set.

SPEAKER_00 36:30

But he did go to an arts high school, so I guess there's something to be said there. But yeah, and he again, he had it in the DNA with his dad. It was uh creative.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

But there's clearly now we did two films, Obsession and this film, and there's clearly this internet thing that's going on where people are putting content out.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

Well, I talked about it. So if you if you haven't seen or watched it, watched or listened to it yet, check out the the episode we did on back obsession, rather, because I talk a lot about that and why I think that contributed to the success of Obsession, quite frankly. So go check that out. But uh I should say too, Mike, uh appreciate the again, as we say, all the support we're getting on the YouTube channel, folks that are subscribing and liking the videos, sharing the videos with your friends and family and so forth. A lot of downloads too, a lot of folks listening. You can find the uh the Yo Brother podcast on all major podcast platforms. If you prefer to consume your podcasts in that format, I will say, Mike, I have to say this is a just a plug, and not, you know, certainly not being uh that they're not a sponsor or whatever, but uh I was turned on by my girlfriend on this podcast that is being narrated by Tom Hanks. And it's it's been out since like May, which is when Back Rooms came out, actually. It is a I think it's a companion podcast to a series that's on the History Channel. If you get the History Channel, I strongly recommend you check this out. They make a joke about that in Toy Story 5.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

What's that? There's a joke about Tom Hanks narrating on I I forget. It's in character, it's not Tom Hanks, but Woody. Somebody like Buzz makes a comment like, yeah, well, Woody's too busy narrating something.

SPEAKER_00 38:23

Oh, okay. Well, this is World War II with Tom Hanks. Yeah. And it's amazing. Now, I've I knew this kind of surface level facts about that period and that war and so forth, but this this breaks it up into like 15, I think, episodes, and it is just riveting. Now, he's got the voice for it. There's other folks on there that that you know lend to to it as well, to the narration, but I'd recommend that one. It's it's pretty incredible. But but yeah, we appreciate the support, and uh that's good, you know. Unfortunately, Mike, it wraps up the Halloween fest for 2026.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

I know I gotta put this in uh cotton balls now.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

You do, and there's so many things. I gotta I'll probably put the mug here into cotton balls. There's so many things that have come up along the way that that would have been a good one to do. The Michael J. Fox. The Frighteners.

SPEAKER_01 39:16

Frighteners. I had mentioned that one time.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

That's definitely next year. I own it now. It's it's got some extras on there. Uh you said there's an arrow special edition. Arrow that just came out with a special edition that's three discs. I might have to pick that up for next year. But that was fun to go back and watch. I hadn't seen that since it came out back in the 90s. And I forgot that Peter Jackson had directed that is phenomenal. It's phenomenal.

SPEAKER_01 39:40

Peter Jackson film.

SPEAKER_00 39:42

But yeah, it's been a good Halloween fest from Obsession to Back Rooms and everything in between. We did a little bit of Dracula. We had Texas Chainsaw, which is quite disturbing. I'm still haunted by that, uh, Leatherface.

SPEAKER_01 39:54

And uh Dan acting as my agent, maybe in the future. Perhaps. I'm seeing a possible circuit run for me.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

I think digging up my long-lost fame. Yeah, when we previous episodes we were talking about this gig that you had back in the 90s where you worked at the terror on Church Street here in Orlando, Florida, which was a very popular attraction, which really was what propelled Halloween horror nights to what it is now. Absolutely. Universal had fright nights back at that time. They, in fact, they started the same year that terror started, and then it would evolve into what is now an unbelievable franchise. We were the only 360. We did it every night of the year. Found this article, it was shared by mutual friend Catherine, and it had just come out in the Orlando Weekly, long article about terror on Church Street, the origins, and a little bit of some of where are they now? And one of the wild things was, and maybe you have it there, you can hold it up, was I don't one of the images I I have it, I I think I can I can show it, was this image of the a cast from Terror went overseas to Japan to perform. You were part of that cast, of course, and the image was a signed poster by everybody that was in that particular cast. Well, and whose John Hancock was front and center. Yeah, Mike Smith folks, right there, the legendary. Now you can't see it's blurry, but it says in quotes, Mike, it says zombie. But all the folks that you had talked about and some of the stories you told, with the exception of the one about Gloria Estefan, which if you didn't hear it, go back and watch that episode. That wasn't in there. But they did tell the Shaquille O'Neal story, which is quite funny. So that was a good read. But yeah, that was a nice little to see your name up in lights there. It's fun. So we'll see. We get you on the spooky empire horror convention circuit. The circuit. Yeah, you'll be out there with Robin. Ten bucks. Sign anything. Be you and Alex Vincent signing autographs. So all right, Mike, that's gonna do it for another Halloween fest. I can't believe it. That's gonna do it for another episode of the Yo Brother Podcast. Bring your host, Dan Smith, alongside me as always, my brother from the same mother, Mike Smith, and we will see you next time. Bye, everyone.