I watched Backrooms on a flight to L.A., and halfway through I got a text from Jacob Chase: “Please don’t go into a pillow fort.” My stomach tightened — not from the film, but from being inside a director’s panic.
You should care because this is how creative theft anxiety looks in real time: not lawsuits or leaked scenes, but the tiny dread that someone else might have beaten you to a single image.
At a midnight screening, you can feel the room hold its breath
I’ve sat through enough premieres to recognize that quiet. Directors read films the way you read weather—searching for the storm clouds. Chase, the director and co-writer of Insidious: Out of the Further, told Variety he watched Kane Parsons’ viral hit and whispered a private plea: “Please don’t go into a pillow fort.”
That plea is a micro-conflict: two creators circling similar territory. You get it if you’ve ever finished a draft only to find a similar concept trending on YouTube or Reddit. Kane Parsons’ Backrooms is part creepypasta, part viral short; it traffics in a persistent, uncanny liminality that can feel like a maze of yellow wallpaper.
Why was Jacob Chase nervous about Backrooms?
Because overlap kills surprise. Chase worried a hit that was already circulating online might include a sequence too close to something he planned for Out of the Further.
He was relieved. Parsons didn’t use a pillow fort. That tiny non-occurrence let Chase breathe; a single absent scene preserved the unique shape of his film’s scare.
On set, props and spaces often become the plot’s secret weapon
Watch any practical-effects set and you’ll see how objects take on intention. For Chase, who leans on personal phobias, a pillow fort was more than a child’s hideout—it’s a specific space to weaponize claustrophobia.
The Insidious sequence places Amelia Eve’s Gemma inside an endless pillow construction meant to disorient. Chase admits he drew from his own list of terrors and from films like The Descent to get at that “can’t turn around” feeling. The pillow fort transforms into a rabbit hole that never ends, and that’s exactly the panic he wanted the audience to feel early in the film.
Does Insidious: Out of the Further actually have a pillow-fort scene?
Yes. It’s placed deliberately: fairly early, to set tonal expectations. Chase says the scene establishes the kind of scares viewers will face and reveals something essential about Gemma’s character—what would frighten her most in that moment.
You can tell a director by what scares them
I ask directors about their phobias because those fears often map to creative choices. Chase spoke candidly: repetitive, confusing spaces terrify him, so he built sequences around that sensation of being lost.
That confession is a form of authority. He’s not posturing; he’s pointing out the emotional logic behind the movie’s architecture. When a director uses their own anxieties as a blueprint, what you get is a film that feels personal and precise—something you can’t easily borrow without betraying the original intention.
If you follow horror culture on platforms like YouTube, Reddit, or read coverage in Variety and io9, you see this pattern: creators borrowing, remixing, and sometimes clashing. Chase’s nervousness was real, but so was his relief—and that tiny victory shaped how audiences will experience Out of the Further.
So tell me: if you were chasing a scene and found someone else had already filmed it, would you scrap your idea or fight to make it unmistakably yours?