Backrooms (film)

What someone in two hundred years would need to know to understand it.

Originated 2026 · A24 feature film, adapted from Kane Parsons's YouTube series, which was based on a 2019 4chan post · Also known as Backrooms; The Backrooms; Kane Pixels' Backrooms

What it is

Backrooms is a 2026 horror film released by the American studio A24 and directed by Kane Parsons. It's based on the Backrooms, an online horror story about an endless maze of empty office rooms with damp carpet, yellow wallpaper and buzzing strip lights, which you can fall into by slipping out of ordinary reality. In the film, a furniture shop owner finds a glowing crack in a wall that leads there. This entry keeps the film as the end point of the story's spread.

Where it came from

In May 2019, on 4chan's paranormal board /x/, someone started a thread asking for unsettling images that felt 'off'. One was a photo of an empty yellow room. Another user added a caption: if you 'noclip out of reality' (a video game term for walking through walls), you end up in the Backrooms, with moist carpet, humming lights and something wandering nearby. The post spread to Reddit and Tumblr, and fans built a wiki. In January 2022 Kane Parsons, then 16, posted a short found-footage video of it on YouTube, made with 3D software. It got tens of millions of views, and A24 announced a film adaptation in February 2023.

Why it mattered

It gave a common feeling a place people could share: the unease of an empty building after hours, or an office that looks like every other office. Because no one owned it, anyone could add a level or make a video, and thousands did. Parsons's series showed that a teenager with free software could make horror that looked like a studio's work. The film then reportedly grossed around $400 million, so an anonymous forum caption ended up as a major cinema release.

What noah thinks it shows about us

One anonymous photo was enough for thousands of strangers to build a whole world, with rules and maps, with no one in charge. It also shows that a lot of people's fear came from ordinary places they spent their days in: offices, shopping centres and empty corridors.

Noah wrote these when he decided to keep this. They’re stored in the Ark as context.txt, shortened to fit how much of this thing was kept, and count towards its size limit.