The mysterious teaser for 20-year-old Kane Parsons’ film ‘Backrooms’ is here after years of speculation.
The viral horror phenomenon is finally getting Hollywood treatment three years after its first announcement.
Film New Blitz’s Oscar Trinick is here to dissect the maze of this liminal space.
The origins of the ‘Backrooms’ and what they are
The origins of this Gen-Z internet phenomenon can be traced back to 2019, when an anonymous user posted this photo of an American retail store under renovation on the site 4chan.
‘Backrooms’ is an internet phenomenon
The creepy picture soon became a core part of this craze for the liminal space aesthetic – a physical or psychological “in between” place and state of transition, such as empty hallways or waiting rooms.
And thus, the iconography of the Backrooms was born; an endless maze of rooms that all look alike, just like in the above picture.
Kane Parsons’ part in this internet hit
In January 2022, Kane Parsons, known online as Kane Pixels, uploaded the horror short film titled “The Backrooms (Found Footage)” to YouTube.
The film, made nearly entirely in Blender, follows a filmmaker who accidentally falls into the Backrooms whilst being pursued by a monster.
The film, just like the original image, is a retrospective on the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the empty aesthetic now associated with it.
Over four years later, the video has garnered 71 million views, not to mention the endless stream of fan-made games, films and drops of lore that followed suit.
But in February 2023, the film studio A24 announced that then 17-year-old Kane would be directing a feature film based on this Backrooms mania for them, and this week, after three years, we finally got our first teaser.
What are the details on the film, and what did the teaser show us?
The only confirmed plot details so far come from A24’s website, as all it says is: “A strange doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom”.
The film stars Chiwetel Ejiofor (The Martian, Children of Men, 12 Years A Slave) and Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World, Sentimental Value, A Different Man).
The enigmatic, minute-long teaser features several rooms as we drop down through the floor of each one, while they get increasingly less detailed and bare as we go on.
The final room reveals itself as a practical set of the iconic Backrooms look, with the other ones being rendered in Blender.
This sequence of rooms is voiced over by Chiwetel and Renate’s characters having a conversation about him discovering a “massive” place that builds rooms.
He details how it “remembers them, and the more times it remembers something, the less it does.”
When does ‘Backrooms’ come out?
Backrooms is set to hit US cinemas on 29 May, with a UK release date yet to be confirmed.
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