Why Backrooms scares Gen Z
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Backrooms is a Gen Z sensation, grossing $104 million domestically in its opening weekend.
PHOTO: SHAW ORGANISATION
Joseph Bernstein
Every generation gets the horror films it deserves.
In the 1950s, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956) pulsed with postwar fears about communist infiltration. Vietnam-era distrust of American institutions haunts 1970s classics like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and The Exorcist (1973). The slasher films of the 1980s – made popular by suburban, latchkey Generation X-ers – typically feature absent parents, or monstrous ones. And mid-aughts “torture porn” like the Saw (2004 to 2023) series can be read in the context of Guantanamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib scandal.
