What is Gen Z Afraid Of?

16:35Vinson Cunningham:Not just like the horror or the gore or 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.

17:06Vinson Cunningham:I loved this character because 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.

17:31Alexandra Schwartz:He's like a mix of a scientist and a 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. Well, he's a scientist. 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 horror is on the one hand, I was like, this is too allegorical.

18:05Alexandra Schwartz:You know, these people almost reminded me of early man. In the second act of the movie, they start, you know, they're drawing on the wall. They start to create culture, art. Inside the car.

18:16Vinson Cunningham:They adorn the car with certain things.

18:19Alexandra Schwartz:It's like, oh. And I was like, this is a very almost one-to-one allegorical film. And I was like, what if allegory is one of the chief aesthetic features of these movies? You know, it's like, what do these people grow up on? The Hunger Games. Why is stuff that 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 to say, I just loved it. There were parts I didn't think. I thought it was great.

18:53Naomi Fry:The end I thought was uncertain, but man. Yeah. Yeah. A very talented young filmmaker.

19:01Vinson Cunningham:Doesn't it kind of feel like we're all in the car together?

19:04Alexandra Schwartz:I know.

19:05Vinson Cunningham:How bad could it be? 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?

19:17Naomi Fry:You guys. Oh my God. Okay, the endless ride of Critics at Large. We'll be right back.

19:35This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom. Big or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still add. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at Nordstrom.com. The perfect lunch combo. That first bite of your favorite sub, followed by ice cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends, and now that's next level.

20:15Suddenly, the laughs get louder, the stories keep flowing, and the food tastes better. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro plans.

21:07Naomi Fry:Let's put It Ends in conversation now with the other two huge entries in this new Gen Z horror canon. Let's start with Obsession. So, as we mentioned already, it was written and directed by 26-year-old Curry Barker. Love that name for whatever reason. It stars Michael Johnston as Bear and Indy Navarrete as Nicky. Now, Alex, as we mentioned, you wrote about Barker. You were the first to profile. You got the scoop to profile Curry Barker for The New Yorker. And you spent time with him in L.A. 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.

22:01He 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. I mean, this is a classic thing in horror where you're sort of yelling at the screen, being like, why on earth would you go into the darkened basement of this haunted house? Like, what are you doing? Yelling 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 act with a certain amount of savvy or self-awareness in the way that a human being would respond to a situation.

22:36So 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.

23:06Naomi Fry: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. Right. 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. You know, if that was much more sort of existential, where do we go when we graduate? You know, the protagonists of Obsession are also kind of in this failure to launch period of life. They've all graduated from high school. I don't think any of them have gone on to college.

23:43One 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.

23:57Naomi Fry:Vincent, do you maybe want to give us a little synopsis of obsession?

24:04Alexandra Schwartz:Absolutely. So there's this kid named Bear, right? This is who's played by Michael Johnston. And he is, speaking of sort of allegorical treatment of certain tropes in society, can we call him an incel? 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— Did you say the sex? But what I know about him is that he is in love with Nikki, his friend, played by Indy Navarrete. 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 uh surrounded in the you know again this kind of hangout vibe there's a couple of friends there are 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

25:11Naomi Fry:And that's completely right. You're not drawing on any personal experience. I love the older cousin. Very specific.

25:20Alexandra Schwartz:All the things that a young man is supposed to do in this situation. You know, and another thing that he is is like the classic quote unquote nice guy. But would a nice guy do this next thing? I don't think so. It's giving cat person kind of. He goes to some store with, you know, some kind of, you know, Wiccan location. 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.

26:04Alexandra Schwartz:It's a thing. It's out there. He says, I want Nicky to love me more than anything. Well, boy, does she. Nikki goes on an all-time tear. She wants him more than anybody should want to be wanted. She's on him. And that obsession, that titular obsession. The eponymous obsession. Is the site of horror. Nikki undergoes a transformation for the ages. Indy Navarrete really just carries this film with the sort of depth of her growing willow-induced psychosis. And Bear, all you had to do was ask for help.

26:44Naomi Fry:From your older cousin.

26:45Alexandra Schwartz:From your older cousin. Well, the thing is, Bear was getting help. From his best friend.

26:49Vinson Cunningham: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.

27:30And I try not to. You're in every song I listen to.

27:36Vinson Cunningham:And actually, he's just rehearsing it. That's everything. No, no, stop. Okay, that was cringy. Oh my God, I knew it. Wait for me. I'm so sorry. I thought that was funny. I thought it was gross. Okay, this time I want you to— No, I'm not doing it again, dude. That was so embarrassing. Yeah, yeah, that would freak it. That freaked me out. Nikki would vomit. You told me to pour my heart out. Do you know how vulnerable I just got? I underestimated you. What if you got her something nice? No, try that. And he's being coached by his friend Ian, played by Cooper Tomlinson, who also works at this music shop with him.

28:06Vinson Cunningham: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 Bayer absolutely cannot risk. He's very good looking. And Indy Navarrete 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.

28:47Vinson Cunningham: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 sense 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? It really is meaningless. Not only does it have nothing to do with her own will, but her whole personality and everything he likes about her has completely disappeared.

29:24Vinson Cunningham:She's just like a, you know, a robotic form of herself to a point of psychosis. She's like a bad AI. She's like, is this what you want? Is this what you want? Like, I can dress like this. She's giving Megan. Yeah. Yes, exactly. And I think maybe this speaks to the Gen Z-ness 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 of, you know, the fact Ian is advising him at the beginning and is saying, you know, he's rehearsing his confession.

30:10And Ian is like, whoa, that's way too much. 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 a lout. 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.

30:37Naomi Fry: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 going to 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 Kane Parsons, who was 20 when the film was released and written by Will Sudick. I'm going to just give a brief synopsis. So this is a weirdly – I mean for me it's not period.

31:28Naomi Fry:For me it's basically 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 Chiwetel Ejiofor. He is a failed architect or a former architect who is now running a furniture store. 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 meet him in kind of a therapy session with his therapist, Dr. Mary Klein, played by Renata Reinsva. and she is trying to kind of like have him break out of his kind of toxic pattern.

32:27I'm sorry.

32:27Vinson Cunningham: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.

32:51Alexandra Schwartz:Oh, that's me.

32:54Naomi Fry: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 parallelism, this is called clipping. No clipping. No clipping. I'm sorry.

33:24Alexandra Schwartz:Walking through walls is called no clipping?

33:26Naomi Fry:Yes. 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 no-clips. We're all learning. This is the point. We're all learning. This is why we're here. There is no shame. There is no shame. Okay, so it's called no-clipping. 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 architecturally there's no rhyme or reason. You know, there might be like, there's a door with three handles.

34:06Naomi Fry:There are like piles of furniture and old clothes kind of like heaped around the space. 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 of these like inexplicable characters, half man, half, you know, mannequin. It's unclear if they're living or dead. They start kind of like following. This isn't for Vincent. It's not for Vincent. Following Clark.

34:39Alexandra Schwartz:Is it scarier than the other two?

34:42Naomi Fry:It's scarier. It's also not as good, which Alex, I want to discuss with you. I agree.

34:48Alexandra Schwartz:Please continue. No, no, no, no.

34:49Naomi Fry:Not at all. Not at all.

34:50Alexandra Schwartz:I don't like the word mannequin, but go ahead. Yeah. Yeah.

34:54Naomi Fry:You're not going to 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.

35:20Vinson Cunningham:Vincent is just melting down now. He's just getting out the feelings.

35:26Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah, that's great. I kind of want to see it now. Go ahead.

35:29Naomi Fry:There are interesting things about it. And she also entered the space and really bad things start happening to her. Surprise! It becomes a house of horrors. There's a lot that's going on. 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, too, in back rooms, 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 its kind of like symbolic quality is not present in this movie. I thought that it was very visually striking.

36:14Naomi Fry:I was, you know, stunned that a 20-year-old made this. But I struggled to understand what it was saying. But again, he was basically a fetus, Cain Parsons. This is like, I mean, this movie was also, I mean, it was still relatively made on the cheap. It's like$10 million or something. 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 Kane Parsons, because I know he began as a teen developing.

37:00Naomi Fry:I mean, backrooms, 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 backrooms exist outside of Kane Parsons. They predate Kane Parsons. The earliest known instance is this 4chan image that was posted of a sort of yellowing office space.

37:35And 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. They were like indie video games based on the concept of the backroom. So in a way, he's adapting IP almost. It's like this is something.

37:52Vinson Cunningham: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 others over centuries? It may indeed be quite similar.

38:04Naomi Fry:Kane Carson says, let me tell you the story of a complicated backroom. Yes, a complicated office space. and it really is you know he is kind of the face of this phenomenon he was making videos on YouTube set in the back rooms he is definitely like the best known kind of figurehead for this crowdsourced 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 a lot of the YouTube videos and I think they're very interesting on their own terms.

38:41I 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, Nomi, 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 and loved and I can see the influence in this movie. Like someone like Kari Baku, this was always the goal. Someone like Alex Olam, this was always the goal. For Kane, it's like, this is a different medium that I can be working in, but I love YouTube.

39:15Why would I leave YouTube? And I almost felt that they were taking this very strange and singular, unquantifiable mythology and 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.

39:36Vinson Cunningham:Well, just this morning, I was poking around, and I saw that Kane Parsons has released a new Backrooms YouTube video. So he's back. He's back. He's back in the Backrooms. He's back in his original Backrooms.

39:49Naomi Fry:After the break, what is Gen Z afraid of? That's in a minute on Critics at Large from The New Yorker.

40:07This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom. Big or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still add. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at Nordstrom.com. The perfect lunch combo. That first bite of your favorite sub, followed by ice cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends, and now that's next level.

40:47Suddenly, the laughs get louder, the stories keep flowing, and the food tastes better. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro plans.

41:38Vinson Cunningham:I want to just pull back for a bit and talk about the movies more broadly. I was really interested in one thing that Alex Ulm said in a recent interview with Variety, and 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 the theatrical experience. And like, boom, here come these two young directors who've returned all these butts into seats. But one thing that's interesting to me about the filmmaker aspiration of it, like Alex Ollum, who 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.

42:21Vinson Cunningham:Obviously, you know, we've seen some of these huge temple movies fail, like Mandalorian and Grogu. Is that, am I correct? Grogu, but yes. How many R's are in this thing? Is it like Roku? Like Mandalorian and Grogu 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.

42:57Vinson Cunningham: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.

43:21Naomi Fry:And I want us to maybe kind of hone in a little bit on the Gen Z-ness 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, backrooms, 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're 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 in Obsession.

44:04I think it's also big in It Ends. 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 like, 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 and 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.

44:44And that is showing up in a lot of these movies. I think growing up in an age of kind of unreality and 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 Ollum graduated into it. Curry Barker was in film school when it happened and dropped out. Cain Parsons was in high school when it happened. 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.

45:26And then, yeah, aesthetically, I think 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. Like, when I was talking to Kari Barker, 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 be careful what you wish for 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. Yeah. The problem is the wish he made, which is this incredibly fucked up, you know, revoking of someone else's autonomy.

46:07And 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.

46:30Alexandra Schwartz:free for all of society. I'm so interested in this. It's like an ambiguous moralism, though, sometimes. Because I think another one of the mediums or the sort of materials that 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 or 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.

47:13Yes, exactly. It's not a didactic impulse. 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 the generation above being like, oh, the kids today.

47:36Naomi Fry:Absolutely. It is really interesting. And I was also interested, something I read with Kane Parsons, who directed Backrooms, 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 it, quote unquote. And yet I was interested in this kind of like, no, you got to like 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.

48:24It's like they have too many fingers or, you know, there's some distortion. Yeah. 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.

48:46Vinson Cunningham:I want to touch grass. Yeah, 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.

49:13Naomi Fry: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... Yes. If we look at the history of Hollywood.

49:55Yes, 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$500 million. But I do hope the right lessons are taken from this. I've already seen these reports of like Steven Spielberg is EPing a creepypasta movie. Like the guy who directed Weapons is – Zach Krager 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.

50:33And 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?

51:12And ended up making like$50 million at 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 and not just we're looking at the social numbers and that's going to determine what we green light.

51:51Naomi Fry:Definitely. Right. Guys, which of these three films, Obsession, Backrooms, and It Ends, would you least like to find yourself in?

52:02Alexandra Schwartz:It depends on who I am. Yeah. You know what I mean? As previously discussed, if I'm in that car, It Ends is fine. But you know what I don't want to do? Live in the woods forever. to be one of the outside people. Because you want to stay in the car.

52:17Vinson Cunningham:You're okay with the car.

52:18Alexandra Schwartz:I want to stay.

52:19Vinson Cunningham:You drive for the rest of your life.

52:21Alexandra Schwartz:I would drive. I kept on thinking about the song, Life is a highway.

52:27Naomi Fry: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 Barish, thoughts? I feel like I'd be fine in Obsession or Backrooms. In Backrooms, I'm just not going into the liminal space. I'm sorry. I'm like, I will be walking out. But this is the thing that's crazy about that movie. He keeps going back in. He leaves and comes back. He's like, let me map. But Alex, he's fucked up. That's the thing. He's fucked up. And he does have a terrible therapist. But as a therapized individual, I think I'd be fine.

53:00Vinson Cunningham:Okay, Alex Schwartz. Oh, being in the car. I don't want to be in the car. I haven't seen Backrooms. I probably want to be there even less than I want to be in the car. If I could choose one, I'd be an obsession because even though I'd be killed, I'd have some fun along the way. And that would be okay. There are house parties, you know. Before my head explodes, it would, yeah, I'd get to go to a house party.

53:19Naomi Fry:I feel like I would be, like, corralled 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 Marty Supreme? Yes. There I would be, like, lost forever in that third space. Wow. I think you need to give yourself more credit. Yeah. Okay. You would stand up. Yes. Okay, maybe I'd stand up. Okay. Alex Barish, thank you so much for joining us and helping us figure out what Gen Z kids are afraid of. Always a joy. Yay, Alex. Thank you, Alex. Think about it all the time. Thank you, Alex.

54:04Naomi Fry:This has been Critics at Large. Alex Barish is our consulting editor and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Our show is mixed by Mike Kutchman and we had engineering help today from Pran Bandy with music by Alexis Quadrado. You can listen to all of our episodes anytime at newyorker.com slash critics.

54:36This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro plans.

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