What Is Backrooms? A24's Newest Horror Movie Is Based On A Terrifying Internet Sensation
The overnight horror fixation is about to go mainstream.
It’s been almost seven years since the internet was first introduced to the concept of the Backrooms, and in that time the crowd-sourced online horror sensation has taken the world by storm. An entire subcommunity has sprouted up around the concept, giving the world an array of short stories and creepypastas, video game adaptations, and YouTube short films (along with inspiring, bizarrely enough, the TV show Severance). Now, inevitably, the idea has transcended the web and been adopted by Hollywood; specifically, everyone’s favorite darling indie studiohouse A24 (continuing their tireless emphasis on niche horror like last year’s Bring Her Back) will be releasing a feature film based on the concept and directed by 20 year old Kane Parsons, aka Kane Pixels, the creator of the immensely popular Backrooms series of shorts on YouTube.
Today, A24 released the first trailer for the film, and it’s about as esoteric and cryptic as everyone was expecting. With excited and apprehensive voiceover in the background talking about finding a place that just “goes on and on and on,” the trailer consists of a single shot descending down a series of floors, each one more uncanny and surreal than the last, until finally landing in the titular labyrinth of rooms. Fans of the ever-growing fictional universe will undoubtedly be intrigued by the brief glimpse, but for everyone else, the trailer is sure to inspire one pressing question: what ARE the Backrooms?
The Backrooms, Explained
The Backrooms as a concept originated in May of 2019 on 4chan (like many of the internet’s most frightening phenomenon), in a thread on /x/, the site’s board dedicated to unexplained and potentially paranormal occurrences. The anonymous original poster included an image of a spacious, fluorescent-lit room fully carpeted and separated by dividing walls. Shortly afterwards, another anonymous user replied to the post with a bit of roleplay that serves as the first official usage of the name and the first description of the fictional location. He described “six-hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms,” defined by “the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow,” and “the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz.” It would take another five years before the original image would be identified as nothing more than an unfinished room in a furniture store undergoing renovations, but by then it didn’t matter — the image had taken on a whole new sinister context.
Almost immediately, the post took the internet by storm and, bit-by-bit, the lore of the Backrooms was established through community storytelling. To access the extra-dimensional space, you have to “no-clip” out of reality (a term that owes itself to a common glitch in video games which causes the player character to phase through walls, into spaces not meant to be accessed in-game), which can only be done in physical spaces where matter is so unstable that the laws of physics are loosened, allowing one to slip through gaps that temporarily open within certain physical boundaries.
In Parsons’ YouTube series, an unnamed entity stalks the neverending hallways of the Backrooms.
Once someone has successfully noclipped, they arrive in the Backrooms, but what exactly that means depends entirely on how you engage with the contributions of the larger fanbase. The biggest point of contention among the community is whether or not there are multiple separate “floors” in the Backrooms — many fans believe there are hundreds of different levels, each unique from the last with their own aesthetics and inhabitants, while many others prefer the sparse simplicity of the original neverending room, terrifying purely in its impossibility and endless mundanity.
From YouTube to A24 Feature
Kane Parsons created the closest thing to a Bible for the Backrooms with his YouTube series of the same name (itself heavily inspired by analog horror, another internet-based horror concept defined by low-fidelity videography reminiscent of local cable broadcasting). Parsons’ Backrooms YouTube series is a singular interpretation of the concept in and of itself, adding a secret federal organization and various central characters.
But the beauty of collective internet storytelling like the Backrooms lies in the vast narrative potential offered by so many different ideas. Regardless of whether or not Parson’s film features 100 levels or just the one, his familiarity with the concept and the sheer openness of where he could take it means that fans and newcomers alike are in for a unique, terrifying experience when Backrooms comes to theaters.
