"The Backrooms" (from internet urban legend to A24 horror film)

"Thanks to films like the Pearl trilogy, The Witch, Midsommar, Ex Machina, Green Room, Heretic, Bring Her Back, and so many others, A24 has become a leading name in indie horror right alongside Neon Films. This year, A24 will be getting a little bit more experimental with its horror film content: in March, we’ll get the audio-horror movie Undertone, which is getting a buzz on the indie festival circuit, and then soon after, in May, we’ll get Backrooms, the somewhat controversial urban legend horror flick whose origins go back to internet chat rooms.

In 2019, a 4Chan thread started up about a fictional abstract liminal space called “The Backrooms.” The realm is an impossibly large space of empty rooms, in which wanderers get trapped by “no-clipping” (phasing) through the walls of physical space. The concept began when a photo of a Wisconsin HobbyTown toy store under renovation was posted in a thread and shared over to a board dedicated to the paranormal. Users were invited to post their own “disquieting” images of freaky-looking empty locations. One user posted a description of the original photo, never knowing they were giving birth to a viral nickname and urban legend: “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.”

The user ended their post with this bit, which really sparked horror fans’ imaginations: “God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.”

That idea of The Backrooms as a supernatural space where dark things could lurk took off. Different themed levels (or “floors”) were introduced, the concept jumped to other digital platforms (YouTube, TikTok), and the fandom quickly split into factions that explored the concept either seriously (sci-fi), superstitiously (horror), or satirically (comedy). In 2022, filmmaker Kane Parsons launched his own Backrooms web series on YouTube, where a corporation discovers and experiments with the Backrooms, causing the walls between that reality and ours to thin. Different stories are told about expeditions into the Backrooms, or unsuspecting innocents who get phased into the space and are forced to escape while monsters or other creatures hunt them. After making more than 20 short films (and getting hundreds of millions of views), Parsons landed a feature-film deal with A24.

The Backrooms stars Chiwetel Ejiofor (Doctor Strange), Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value), Mark Duplass (Creep), Finn Bennett (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms), Lukita Maxwell (Shrinking), and Avan Jogia (Caprica). As the synopsis reads, “After a therapist’s patient goes missing into a dimension beyond reality, she has to enter the unknown to save him.”

(Feb 28, 2026 07:24 AM)Magical Realist Wrote: "Thanks to films like the Pearl trilogy, The Witch, Midsommar, Ex Machina, Green Room, Heretic, Bring Her Back, and so many others, A24 has become a leading name in indie horror right alongside Neon Films. [...]

Hmm... Somehow I've never seen "Green Room" or "Bring Her Back". Added to a growing list.

Quote:This year, A24 will be getting a little bit more experimental with its horror film content: in March, we’ll get the audio-horror movie Undertone, which is getting a buzz on the indie festival circuit, and then soon after, in May, we’ll get Backrooms, the somewhat controversial urban legend horror flick whose origins go back to internet chat rooms.

In 2019, a 4Chan thread started up about a fictional abstract liminal space called “The Backrooms.” The realm is an impossibly large space of empty rooms, in which wanderers get trapped by “no-clipping” (phasing) through the walls of physical space. [...] Users were invited to post their own “disquieting” images of freaky-looking empty locations. One user posted a description of the original photo [...] “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.”

[...] That idea of The Backrooms as a supernatural space where dark things could lurk took off. [...] Different stories are told about expeditions into the Backrooms, or unsuspecting innocents who get phased into the space and are forced to escape while monsters or other creatures hunt them. [...]

Years ago I had a recurring dream of running through an endless sequence of rooms. But they weren't empty. Most were filled with these wild parties and other festivities going on. I would squirm through the crowds, all those different faces and apparel (though sometimes wearing masks), and eventually I'd reach the other side where the next door was. I'd fling it open quickly, because my goal was to finally encounter a room that was bare due to my brain not having enough time to generate complex contents for it. But such never seemed to happen...