The Backrooms Movie - What To Know & What It Signifies
Remember the Backrooms? From 2022? As I’m sure you know, a movie about it is coming out Friday on the 29th, but… what’s the deal with this movie? Who created the Backrooms? How did the Backrooms get so famous? What does this film mean for the internet? Well, here is a small breakdown of the Backrooms’ history, and how we went from a single image to a full-on feature film.
.jpg)
In 2019, a 4chan user posted this image (later found out to be of a Wisconsin furniture store undergoing renovations in 2003) and asked users to share images that feel “off”. On May 13th of the same year, an anonymous user replied and commented the following:
If you're not careful and you noclip 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
The comment sparked interest in many who enjoy creepypastas and liminal spaces. Creepypastas are horror-adjacent media that are frequently copied and shared across the internet, such as Slender Man. Liminal spaces are an aesthetic of desolate places that invoke an uncanny yet surreal feeling in people. A small fandom emerged behind the Backrooms; they added their own spin to it, such as levels that are inhabited by entities. According to the Backrooms wiki, prominent entities include partygoers, hounds, smilers, and skin-stealers, while notable levels include level 0 (“The Lobby”; based on the original Backrooms image), level ! (“Run For Your Life”), level 188 (“The Windows”), level 94 (“Motion”), and level 37 (“Sublimity”/”Poolrooms”). It is important to note that there is a small divide within the Backrooms community as some prefer a more traditional iteration of the Backrooms more closer to the original 4chan comment and image.
As the Backrooms slowly spread across social media, it would be a 16-year old that made the creepypasta viral. On January 7th, 2022, a YouTuber under the username Kane Pixels uploaded a 9-minute video titled “The Backrooms (Found Footage)”, which was created with Blender and Adobe After Effects. It takes place in the 90s and follows a teenager with a camera who “noclips” through the ground and ends up in the Backrooms. He aimlessly wanders around until he is ultimately abducted by an entity with his camera “noclipping” back to the real world. Kane’s video instantly went viral, and currently sits at 2.2 million likes with 76 million views as of April 2026.
Kane went in his own direction and expanded upon his video to create an analog horror series on YouTube following A-Sync, a company that accidentally finds the Backrooms whilst looking for an alternative storage solution and tries to keep the Backrooms’ discovery and repercussions classified. The internet meanwhile took the Backrooms, ran with it, and made it the next big thing. The concept of an infinite labyrinth filled with eerie locations resonated with many. New and creative Backrooms video games, memes, theories, and videos dominated 2022, and gained massive traction. Although like all trends or fads, it faded away, the Backrooms are still something people recognize across all forms of media. The Backrooms was so famous at one point, film studio A24 greenlit a film adaptation in early 2023 with Kane directing. So…what’s the deal with this movie?
So far, one teaser and trailer have been released for the movie, Backrooms, each garnering millions of views. As stated, it has been directed by Kane Pixels (whose real name is Kane Parsons), and was written by Will Soodik who based the screenplay off Kane’s YouTube series. IMDbreports that the plot will follow a furniture store owner named Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as he discovers an interdimensional doorway to the Backrooms in the store’s basement. Clark becomes obsessed with exploring the maze, which concerns his therapist, Dr. Kline (Renate Reinvse), who gets roped into his fascination and its consequences. Backrooms is a horror-thriller and has been rated R with a runtime of one hour and 54 minutes. Due to the Backrooms’ internet fame, it could become A24’ highest grossing movie, and early predictions show the film could gross ~$20 million opening weekend.
Although the film is likely going to attract a more younger general audience, Backrooms could show major film studios that YouTubers and internet media can result in successful professional movies, and could form a hypothetical bridge between YouTube and Hollywood. Earlier this year, Markiplier’s indie film adaptation of the video game Iron Lung released, which was a box office success. On top of that, indie YouTube shows, such as The Amazing Digital Circus, have even been added to streaming services like Netflix. Backrooms could become a breakout success and trigger a demand for more YouTube or internet-driven movies among film studios, and might lead to a wave of new internet-inspired movies by the end of the decade. “It looks good and accurate,” one HF student said.
2nd image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backrooms_%28film%29#/media/File:Backrooms_(film)_poster.jpg
_poster.jpg){kind=link}