As YouTuber Kane Parsons‘ creepypasta-inspired A24 horror giant Backrooms officially takes over the country, after a $100 million-plus haul at the box office, people new to the sprawling lore of the Backrooms and longtime fans of Parsons alike are parsing the film for Easter eggs and clues. But while the eerie original Backrooms found-footage videos remain on Parsons’ YouTube Page (Kane Pixels), there’s a more recent series of equally terrifying shorts Parsons began in 2023 called The Oldest View.
While not quite the cultural juggernaut that Backrooms has become, The Oldest View series has itself racked up tens of millions of views, and plays in the same frightening liminal spaces as the other series and theatrical film — down to Parsons creating its underground mall with the same special effects software. And eagle-eyed viewers of Backrooms will spy a pair of visual nods that may indicate it takes place in the same haunted world as The Oldest View.
What Is ‘The Oldest View’ YouTube Series About?
So far, The Oldest View consists of six videos, four of which tell a narrative, all revolving around the real-life former Valley View Mall in Dallas, Texas, and 19th-century French botanist Julien Reverchon, who is considered a notable historical figure in Dallas. The longtime shopping center thrived during the 1980s, but was closed and set for demolition in the mid-2010s. The demolition was complete in 2023, according to local news reports, and Parsons captured footage of the razed former mall site himself. The main character of The Oldest View is Wyatt, a YouTuber who discovers a hole in a forest with a seemingly never-ending staircase leading deep underground, and finally … an eerie replica of the Valley View Mall in its heyday.
There, Wyatt has a deeply unsettling encounter with a rolling “parade giant” of Reverchon — also a very real piece of Dallas-area history. Created by artist Kevin Obregon to celebrate Reverchon by rolling in a parade, the giant would later “live” in the mall until its demolition. In Parsons’ series, the frighteningly proportioned giant seems to function as a guardian of the underground mall and pursues a terrified Wyatt. That is, until something happens.
‘Backrooms’ Is the Near-Perfect Weekend Binge You Need To Watch Before the Movie Premieres
Everything must go… where, exactly?
The series is notable for its eerie, borderline abstract opening and closing videos, one of which features an actor portraying Reverchon in the forest in the 1800s, followed by footage of the actual giant being built. The centerpiece, however, is the terrifying two-parter of The Oldest View – Beneath the Earth and The Oldest View – The Rolling Giant. Together, they make for roughly an hour of the most effective found-footage horror around. Parsons brings his effects wizardry and keen sense of the diaphanous layer between the familiar and the uncanny to bear on a story as elliptical as it is frightening.
‘Backrooms’ and ‘The Oldest View’ Share an Eerie Link
After the found-footage-style opening of Backrooms depicting an ill-fated expedition, audiences see a memory of psychologist Mary’s (Renate Reinsve) childhood home full of nightmares being demolished to make way for future development. Clearly visible on a sign, however, is the company responsible for whatever will be built over the remains: “Reverchon Ventures.” It could simply be an Easter egg for fans of Parsons’ work, but it is also returned to in the final moments of Backrooms. And frankly, the thematic concerns of Backrooms dovetail with The Oldest View in ways that go beyond a simple Easter egg.
The underground mall Wyatt stumbles upon in The Oldest View is obviously a kind of replica, given that Parsons clearly situates it in the real-world, where the Valley View Mall was demolished in 2023. Similarly, in Backrooms, much of the sprawling nightmare halls and floors explicitly resemble hollowed-out and imperfectly remembered retail spaces. These were places where people bought and sold and exchanged culture, and where places once warm and familiar had gone bad.
What the Hell Are the ‘Backrooms’ Monsters Anyway?
Investigating the inexplicable.
While the Reverchon giant in The Oldest View functions well as a terrifying antagonist, Parsons also lends more than a little pathos with the supplementary short The Oldest View – The Life of a Giant. That short depicts real-life footage of the giant in much warmer contexts through the years before closing on images of the demolished mall, Reverchon himself, and what appear to be some kind of ancient ruins. Time, memory, architecture, and grotesque reincarnation all warp together in the endless Backrooms and the underground of The Oldest View.
Fortunately for fans of Parsons’ work, his YouTube channel is still up and thriving. While it’s unclear whether The Oldest View is complete, all six existing episodes can be watched there for free. With the monumental success of Backrooms, it’s clear that Parsons’ diabolical imagination will have a much larger canvas on which to play from here on out, and it will be fascinating to see how his past and present projects come together.
- Release Date
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March 19, 2023
- Directors
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Kane Parsons
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Dustin Vaught
Julien Reverchon (human)
