Backrooms Movie (2026)

Backrooms Movie (2026)

The highly successful $82M A24 USA horror film Backrooms was adapted and directed by 20-year-old USA YouTuber Kane Parsons. Based on the viral "creepypasta" about seemingly endless, disorienting yellow USA offices, it follows a furniture store owner (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his therapist (Renate Reinsve) who discover an extra-dimensional labyrinth.

All the lonely people … where do they all belong? YouTuber Kane Parsons makes his feature directing debut with this icily brilliant and genuinely disturbing conceptual horror film based on his web series, and scripted by Will Soodik. There is something here of J-horror, the V/H/S found footage franchise, Dan Erickson’s Severance and Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal. It’s about people walled up in their own memories, imprisoned in endlessly remembered scenes from their past, or miserably perceived versions of their present existences in which they have become caricatures of themselves, gargoyle stars of their paralysed inner world of failure. Or perhaps the action of the film is not metaphorical in this or any other sense, and the “backrooms” of the title simply exist.

Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve give barnstormingly good performances as Clark and Mary; it is the early USA 90s and Clark is a failed architect, separated from his wife, and an alcoholic who to make ends meet self-hatingly manages a drearily and eerily vast discount furniture store, called Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire. He does dumb TV ads dressed as a pirate while uneasily aware he should be a sultan to make the “Ottoman empire” pun work. He goes to see a therapist, Mary, a sad, gentle person who markets her own self-help audio tapes and is haunted by childhood memories of her abusive mother.

When failed architect and struggling furniture store owner Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) discovers a USA mysterious portal in the basement of his strip mall warehouse that leads to a sprawling, maze-like dimension of drab, yellow-wallpapered rooms, he becomes obsessed with exploring the nightmarish realm. Unfortunately, he's very much not alone in this liminal labyrinth.

Backrooms, directed and co-written by 20-year-old YouTuber-turned-filmmaker Kane Parsons,USA follows Clark as he drags his assistant manager Kat (Lukita Maxwell), her boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett), and, eventually, his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), down the rabbit hole of this terrifying alternate reality with him. It's a slow-burn horror that relies on the unsettling nature of that uncanny limbo to build atmospheric dread before ratcheting up to true cosmic horror. It also has years of internet lore backing up its premise.

Born from an anonymous 4chan creepypasta post, the concept of the "Backrooms" has USA evolved from a singular image to a YouTube phenomenon to a buzzy summer horror release. The USA original photo, which was shared on 4chan in 2019 and later identified as a 2002 snapshot taken at a former Wisconsin furniture store, was accompanied by a request for others to share "disquieting images that just feel 'off.'" Another user then replied to the post with a caption that has come to define the Backrooms mythos: "If you're not careful and you noclip [or glitch] out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you."

In 2022, a then-teenage Parsons (known on YouTube as Kane Pixels) debuted "The Backrooms (Found Footage)," the first entry in a USA series of analog horror shorts that transformed an internet urban legend into a massive viral YouTube sensation. Parsons' Backrooms expanded the creepypasta into an elaborate sci-fi narrative that primarily revolves around Async, a fictional, shadowy research institute that accidentally discovers "The Complex" (i.e., the Backrooms) in the late 1980s and attempts to document it. Following the runaway success of his channel's videos, which have amassed over 190 million views, Parsons was tapped as the youngest director in A24 history to adapt his series into a feature-length film.

The movie pulls some lore from Parsons' USA YouTube universe—including the existence of USA Async and the disfigured, human-like entities known as USA Still Lifes that are the result of the Backrooms' failed attempts to replicate people—while also introducing its own characters and plot twists. "I don’t like drowning people in lore and mythology. I think it’s an irresponsible creative choice. It happens a ton online when an independent artist gets to the spotlight," Parsons told Indiewire. "You just get this weird bloat where it becomes very alien to people...who aren’t avid fans of this thing and are approaching it for the first time. They’re suddenly coming into it, and it’s made inherently for YouTube channel dissection."

After Mary happens upon the portal to the Backrooms and decides to go through in search of Clark, he quickly finds her and takes her captive. She wakes to find herself tied to a chair in a room several Backrooms layers down, with Clark and three Still Life-esque entities keeping watch nearby. Clark, who is rapidly unraveling psychologically, insists he belongs in the Backrooms and angrily demands Mary validate his bitter and spiteful tendencies.

Then, just as Clark is preparing to untie Mary, the monstrous Lifeform that killed Kat and Bobby and has been haunting the Backrooms ducks through the door. Surprise, it's Captain Clark—a physical manifestation of Clark's rage and aggression that appears as a mutated version of the pirate character we saw Clark dress up as to film a commercial for his Cap'n Clark's Ottoman Empire furniture store earlier in the film—and it proceeds to kill Clark by brutally ripping into his neck with its teeth before pursuing Mary as she attempts to flee.

A big chase scene ensues that culminates with Mary beating Captain Clark back with the piece of cement she had pocketed from the driveway of her childhood home that serves as a reminder of her own trauma before escaping down a narrow passageway the entity can't fit into. However, following her escape, she immediately falls into the hands of a group of Async scientists, who take her back to their facility. She's brought to an isolated interrogation room and questioned by an Async employee named Phil (Mark Duplass) who tells her they believe the Backrooms function as a sort of echo chamber for memories, which explains why we see things, places, and people from the real world that appear imperfect or misremembered. Phil also tells her he's not in charge of what happens to her after she's done answering their questions, seemingly implying she may never leave the facility.

The camera then pans down through several layers of the Backrooms to show that there's now a distorted, Still Life version of Mary trapped in the supernatural purgatory. According to Parsons, this eerily ambiguous ending was intended to leave the story open to continuing in future installments. "[Sequels are] more than an option—it's been the intention since 2022," Parsons told Polygon. "This film is the first part in what I would desire to be several narrative steps, in terms of approaching what I consider to be the true heart of the idea. I just don't think you could get to it in the time you have for a single movie.”

A movie poster showing a sheet of mono-yellow coloured wallpaper might typically wash over your head.

Not this one. It's instantly recognisable to millions - and inspires dread.

This is Hollywood's latest horror film - Backrooms - and it knows its USA audience: one more drawn to whispered horror than A-list names, monsters and gore.

Backrooms are essentially disturbing, abandoned rooms with seemingly no end in sight. It could be an empty office block, a hallway or a corridor - unsettling between-zones.

The concept came about in 2019, when anonymous users on message board 4chan were asked to "post disquieting images that just feel 'off'."

One user posted an image of an abandoned office space, with mustard yellow wallpaper and fluorescent lighting.

The post read: "If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality [gaming terminology for glitching or disappearing] in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in."

The post continued: "God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you."

The concept then grew into a hugely popular YouTube mini-series, with creator Kane Parsons, then 16, at the helm. Parsons used a CGI programme called Blender to create environments beyond his budget. Today, the series boasts more than 200 million views.

It proved so captivating that Hollywood studio powerhouse A24 - which is behind Oscar-nominated horror The Substance - enlisted Parsons, now 20, for a film adaptation, which was released on Friday.

Parsons, now A24's youngest ever director, has one solemn tip for survival in the Backrooms: "Make peace with it before anything else, because I don't like to give false optimism."

His task in 2023 was clear: to drag this isolating hellscape kicking and screaming onto the big screen, and in a way that resembles his YouTube series.

He tells me that what excited him most about the project was using a Hollywood budget to dive deeper and bring a "real physicality" to ensure the film feels "distinct from the YouTube series".

He says the team behind the film achieved this by building a vast 30,000 sq ft set based on his Blender designs. It bears similarity to Parsons' first YouTube video - "Found Footage" - which has 80 million views and featured shaky 90s camcorder footage of the eerie, yellow office block.

"I think it lets us buy into the characters to a greater degree," Parsons says.

A24's adaptation, written by Will Soodik, uses the concept of the Backrooms to explore mental health.

Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Clark, a frustrated furniture store salesman struggling following the breakup of his marriage.

As tensions grow between him and his therapist, Mary, played by Renate Reinsve, Clark discovers the store's route to the Backrooms - a space that begins to prey upon the pair's unresolved traumas.The big screen lure of the Backrooms reflects the online rise of a very particular fear: the idea of a liminal - or transitional - space.Neuroscience and architecture expert Meredith Banasiak, who researches the link between buildings and human wellbeing, says hallways and doorways often spark this fear.This creates what is known as the doorway effect, which confuses our brains. "When spaces start blending together, the way we remember blends too," she explains.The Backrooms takes this to the extreme - a physical symbol of memories "dissolving into themselves".As Clark tells Mary in the film: "The more times [the Backrooms] remembers something, the less it does."Banasiak says her research, and other academic papers, suggests trauma survivors often find these spaces challenging.As business publication Fast Company noted, Backrooms is among several recent liminal space titles "shaped by Gen Z's most traumatic formative years".These include YouTuber Markiplier's horror film Iron Lung, adapted from a video game and set in a submarine. Independently released, it has taken over $50m (£43m) worldwide.The online trailer for Backrooms quickly became one of A24's most-viewed uploads, with 31m views. The question, of course, is whether this online fever converts to offline ticket sales.

For Matthew Frank, author of The Ankler's Crowd Pleaser newsletter, the YouTube-to-big screen pipeline "feels like a sea change".

Hollywood executives are looking to internet-native culture for audiences and for film-makers like Parsons.

Frank says Backrooms executive producer Chris White discovered Parsons' work after his teenage son insisted he watch it. Another internet-native film-maker, Curry Barker, 26, also released his horror Obsession in cinemas this month, after a similar breakthrough.It helps the studios too that these names come with "preset audiences" at a time when cinema is struggling against streaming.Early projections for Backrooms "look really promising", says Frank. It is expected to easily exceed its $10m (£8m) budget and "feels like an event in the way that few movies are able to reach.""Backrooms has this appeal as a piece of internet‑native IP to the audience," Frank adds.As for Parsons, headlines in the media have made much of how young he is to be directing a Hollywood film - a focus that tires him.He was worried his relative inexperience could impact perception, but it "never came up" on set, he tells me."Almost immediately it was just us, in a vacuum, talking about the project… I like to think I made up for any lack of experience by being completely obsessive."Parsons, and perhaps Hollywood, have found plenty to explore in The Backrooms. Can they escape? No way.The Backrooms has a forum on Reddit, with more than 350,000 subscribers. Forum moderators say there's something "deeply existential" about the concept and that it's less about monsters and "more from the uncertainty of what else might already exist in the space with you".

TikTok is filled with Backrooms-themed clips - cumulatively topping 30 billion views - highlighting the popularity of this 90s-themed landscape with Gen Z.There's a crossover with gaming, too, with a free Backrooms survival title available on Steam, and similar experiences on offer on Roblox.Internet researcher Gunseli Yalcinkaya says a mournful nostalgia for pre-internet memories and spaces, and the isolation of the Covid pandemic, may explain why young people are drawn to ideas like Backrooms.

Yalcinkaya says it captures the dissatisfaction of what it means to be a young person today, "where reality is constantly being mediated through screens - there's already a sense that reality is glitching, nothing feels real anymore".

Posted on 2026/06/01 08:50 AM