Warning: Spoilers ahead for Backrooms.Backrooms is redefining the horror genre.

The new A24 movie originates from the viral 4chan imageboard post in 2019 that evolved into “found footage” YouTube shorts created by Kane Pixels/Parsons in 2022, which generated millions of views. When he was just a teenager, A24 saw potential in the Backrooms YouTube videos and enlisted the young creator to write and direct the feature-length film adaptation that is currently dominating the box office.

In an interview with Polygon, Parsons spoke about Backrooms and the ongoing discussions surrounding the unusual ending and what happened to Clark in the A24 horror. Clark (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is a failed architect and furniture store owner, discovers a mysterious portal into a liminal space with seemingly endless corridors and rooms.

A monster who is also there with him turns out to be a distorted version of himself, but dressed in a pirate costume, so Parsons refers to him as “Pirate Clark.” However, as Clark begins to accept this monster and embraces him, Pirate Clark sinks his teeth into him and kills him. Parsons describes the new world as an “echo chamber,” for Clark, and “This place is very much becoming a feedback loop of his interior world, vomited out onto the walls, and expressed as something that feels like it’s doing something for him.” Meaning Pirate Clark is a reflection of Clark himself.

However, when asked to elaborate on the shocking death, Parsons states that, “I am a little averse to explaining the events in the work I do. I swear I don’t want that to seem like a cop-out. It’s just, my audience loves to defer to my word over their own interpretations. I want to be careful — anything I say will be taken so seriously.”

When explaining why Pirate Clark decided to bite and ultimately kill Clark, Parsons reflects on the character’s mental state being the ultimate key to his demise:

“It very well could be that Clark was just feeling especially hungry that day, and there’s no particular reason to [Pirate Clark’s attack]. I think narratively, it does not read that way. But there’s just no way to know, because we don’t get a monologue from Pirate Clark.”

When asked to elaborate on Pirate Clark and how he’s actively changing to reflect Clark, meaning he could reflect others, Parsons refused to comment on how that could impact the entire nature of the Backrooms: “I can’t comment on that, unfortunately,” Parsons says. “That’s something I got to protect for the future.” Hopefully, meaning that Parsons will in fact return to this lineal space either on YouTube or potential sequels to the extremely successful horror.

Backrooms is available to watch in theaters.