If you think the abandoned storage room of a 1985 Payless ShoeSource is more terrifying than any ghost or monster, have I got the movie for you.
While it began as a single rogue 4chan post in 2019 (“If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality…”), the Backrooms quickly became one of the defining online horror myths of the 2020s. In 2022, Kane Parsons (aka Kane Pixels) ventured deeper with indie found-footage films on YouTube, peeling back nearly 200 million views from the yellow walls of an extradimensional labyrinth.
Now, A24 is turning it all into a movie. Parsons himself has stepped up to both write and direct, and up top you can view the first teaser trailer.
What are the Backrooms? A24 isn’t giving too much away, but the voiceover hints that the film might delve into its strange nature:
“It’s massive in there. It just goes on and on and on. All these rooms. This place built them. Actually more like it remembers them. And the more times it remembers something, the less it does.”
I guess the big question is: will there be a monster? Personally, I prefer my Backrooms mostly empty, maybe with a few couches or pools, and then, once the existential dread of finding myself in a near-infinite maze of fluorescent lights and gaudy carpeting wears off, things curl back around to being mostly relaxing.
Backrooms hits theaters May 29, 2026 and stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, and Lukita Maxwell. Want to get lost early? Take a step back to 2022 with Pixels’ first short film, The Backrooms (Found Footage).
