How an Independent Horror Film with 140 Million Dollars Less Budget Surpasses Tom Cruise's Blockbuster

The film *The Backrooms* is on the verge of reaching a major and historic box-office milestone in North America. As the second horror film of this year to cross that sales threshold, it is just shy of surpassing the domestic earnings of one installment in the popular *Mission: Impossible* franchise — an astonishing feat, especially given this film’s very modest budget compared with that R-rated blockbuster.