Backrooms: first teaser for the A24 horror film taken from the internet phenomenon

Prodigy Kane Parsons and his strange empty rooms arrive at the cinema. We explain everything to you…

At 20, Kane Parsons became A24’s youngest director. The studio bet on this prodigy, noted for his short films on YouTube where he popularized the creepypasta (urban legend created on the Internet, like the Slender Men) of the Backrooms. A sort of parallel dimension made of disturbing empty spaces into which we can switch. To never come out again…

The Backrooms phenomenon started with a simple image. Kane Parsons made a series of videos which have more than 100 million views on his channel, Kane Pixels. Using the found footage process, this self-taught special effects artist was able to bring these distressing places to life, while embroidering around the mystery. He thus imagined a company, Async, which would have discovered Backrooms in the 1990s, leading to a wave of disappearances…

Announced in 2023 and shot last summer, the film Backrooms finally reveals its first images. And they are faithful to the style developed by the budding filmmaker. We do not see the two stars of the film, Chiwetel Ejiofior and Renate Reinsve, in this teaser. Just empty, yellowish rooms, giving way to fantasy and fear. And a dialogue laying the foundations of the plot:

“I found something. A place. Absolutely gigantic. Endless. All these pieces… This place built them. Well, I would rather say that he remembers them. And the more he remembers, the less he remembers.”

The transposition of internet buzz to cinema rarely gives good results. But A24 seems to have done things well with Backrooms. First by having hired the creator of the phenomenon when he was still only 17 years old, chaperoned by experienced filmmakers (Shawn Levy and James Wan are notably producers), then by respecting the codes which made this success. With this art of promotion specific to the independent studio which now no longer hides its commercial ambitions.

Backrooms will be released on May 29 in the United States, and June 17 in France (via Metropolitan).