The Backrooms started as internet folklore posted on 4Chan. Now it’s been greenlit by A24.
Last week, it was announced that 19-year-old YouTuber Kane Parsons will direct the sci-fi/horror concept The Backrooms for A24, with Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve set to star. This makes Parsons the youngest director the company has ever worked with.
Variety described the upcoming film as “based on the world of Parsons’ viral YouTube horror universe.” The rest of the plot remains under wraps, with production expected to start this summer.
Parsons posted the nine-minute short film &t=7s">The Backrooms (Found Footage) to his YouTube channel, Kane Pixels, in January 2022. The film was inspired by an internet story—or creepypasta (a term used to refer to short horror fiction posted anonymously on internet message boards)—that first appeared on 4Chan.
Credited as the origin of the internet’s obsession with “liminal spaces,” the original post read: “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.” The image accompanying the post was later traced back to a former furniture store in Wisconsin, unoccupied during a renovation.
The creepypasta continues: “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.”
Drawing on this eerie concept, Parsons’ original short is set in 1996, when a filmmaker is suddenly transported to the carpeted room with no way out, pursued by something that only appears in his peripheral vision.
Following the short’s viral success, the filmmaker and VFX artist has posted further installments to his YouTube channel, which now boasts 2.69 million subscribers.
Fans have long called for Parsons’ Hollywood debut. “This man is actually insane, he manages to create horror that is scarier than 90% of Hollywood horror films,” one fan wrote under his original YouTube video. “I feel like there should be a complete film or series of The Backrooms,” another commented. “The fandom is gigantic and there’s everything you need for a movie.”
A24 agrees.
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