Mark Duplass is defending Backrooms director Kane Parsons after social media speculation about the role of the filmmaker, who’s only 20, and YouTuber’s role on the forthcoming horror movie.

Hitting theaters Friday from A24, Backrooms stars Duplass alongside Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Finn Bennett and Lukita Maxwell in the film about a therapist tracking down a missing patient in a bizarre dimension of liminal space. Parsons becomes the studio’s youngest feature director with the project that adapts the YouTube series that he began uploading as a teen in early 2022 and centered on an infinite maze of rooms.

Backrooms counts such established filmmakers as James Wan, Shawn Levy and Osgood Perkins among its producing team.  But social media users have suggested theories questioning whether Parsons was the primary director on the feature. Such posts have also suggested similar claims about Curry Barker, filmmaker, 26, who helmed Focus Features’ recent breakout horror hit Obsession.

After aX user posted that “we all know Kane Parsons absolutely didn’t direct this movie,” Duplass dismissed the accusation about his Backrooms director.

Earlier this year, YouTube content creator Markiplier self-distributed his horror movie Iron Lung after numerous studios and distributors had rejected the project. The video game adaptation ended up surpassing $43 million at the global box office, marking an unlikely feat for a self-distributed title.

“There still is a stigma against YouTube,” Markiplier said at the time of his film’s theatrical release. “It’s not like I’m going to topple the mountain by myself. It has to be toppled and then toppled again, until it becomes normalized. Once it becomes normalized, then it can become boring, and it’s like, ‘Of course a YouTuber can do this,’ and there’s nothing to question about it.”