• by Steven Rosenbaum , Featured Contributor, June 15, 2026

I've been in the film industry a long time, and I'm one of the founding trustees of Producers Guild East. I make a real effort to see at least some of the films that matter each year in theaters. So last week I ventured out not once, but twice -- first to the super-buzzy and extraordinary Gen Z–made film "Backrooms," and three days later to the big-screen premiere of "Disclosure Day."

Both amazing films in their own right, but in a strange way, bookends: what filmmaking was, and what it will be for the next generation.

Let's start with "Disclosure Day." I grew up with Steven Spielberg. His films, from "Jaws" to "Close Encounters" to “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” have absolutely framed how I see movies. I was anxious about "Disclosure Day" before I went, in part because the reviews and the social media commentary were so discordant. I worried mainstream reviewers were having their critical view clouded by respect for his filmography, and that younger social media posters, with their shorter attention spans and lack of historic context, were frustrated by what they described as the film's nostalgic point of view.

I kind of agree with the critics. Hearing Spielberg talk about writing the story in the Notes app on his iPad created some pre-screening anxiety that turned out to be not far from the truth. I found the story muddled, missing the rigorous efforts of an author's voice. I won't give away the plot, except to say some of the threads didn't tie together. Still a great romp, and some of the film's majesty was in its bigness, a $115-million budget, a massive John Williams score, powerful special effects. But the "big" Spielberg overshadowed the intimate Spielberg, and that can't be ignored.

"Backrooms" was in many ways more of a film. With a tiny $10-million budget, driven filmmaker Kane Parsons developed a storyline that was in turns puzzling and engrossing. A young audience raised on YouTube came out to experience something both big and small in a way only the handheld filmmaking revolution can produce.

Sitting in the theater, I felt the difference from the Spielberg film. The crowd skewed young, mostly 20-somethings, phones down. The date-night couple next to me were deeply engaged, whispering back and forth as they tried to “figure it out.”

What plays as a creepy two-minute clip on YouTube becomes something else entirely at scale: the endless yellow corridors, the hum of fluorescent light, the dread of a space that should be ordinary and isn't. I'd watched the web series. I was not prepared for what it did on a big screen, in the dark, with an audience holding its breath.

Worth noting: Parsons has been explicit on his press tour that he used no generative AI making the film -- and that he'd erase the technology if he could. "If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would," he told The Australian. "Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using those tools. It defeats the purpose entirely for me."

There's something worth sitting with there. An 80-year-old legend writes his story by hand, well, by thumb, on an iPad -- and a 20-year-old debut director refuses generative AI outright. Two filmmakers, two generations, both reaching for authenticity via opposite roads. In an industry rushing to automate, that shared instinct may matter more than the gap in their years.

Both films, interestingly, are explorations of the unknown. Spielberg is betting the revelation will drive the two-and-a-half-hour movie to a payoff. It's a film about enlightenment. On his press tour, Spielberg comes out and says "Yes, I believe there are other forms of alien life," and of course his filmography backs that up.

Parsons bets the opposite. His film assumes the unknown stops being frightening the moment you explain it, so it refuses to explain. No tidy revelation, no agency handing you the truth. The terror lives precisely in what stays unresolved.

Parsons is a young man, just 20, younger than Spielberg was when “Jaws” made him a legend at 28. To be clear, it's far too early to name Parsons the next Spielberg. Spielberg himself had to earn it: his TV movie “Duel” at 24, then “The Sugarland Express” at 27, before “Jaws” a year later.

But we can say this. Parsons leaves his audience with unresolved answers; Spielberg, at last, answers the question that has run through his whole career: Are we alone? One withholds, one reveals. And in that gap sits a generational divide: Gen Z's comfort with ambiguity against the boomer hunger for certainty. Two filmmakers, two films, two very different views of the future.