A24 has released the final Backrooms trailer, and if you have been sleeping on this one, now is the time to pay attention. The film arrives in theaters on May 29, and its origin story is unlike anything else heading to screens this year. It started as a single anonymous photograph posted on a paranormal message board in 2019 and grew into one of the internet’s scariest urban legends.
From a 4chan post to an A24 feature film
In 2019, someone on 4chan’s paranormal board posted a photograph of a large, empty, yellow-lit carpeted room. It looked like somewhere you might vaguely recognize but couldn’t quite place, and that unease is the entire point. These spaces are called liminal spaces, and the Backrooms became the internet’s definitive version of the concept.
The mythology is simple but effective. If you accidentally “no-clip” out of reality, a term borrowed from video game glitches where characters pass through solid objects, you end up in an endless maze of yellow rooms, damp carpet, and buzzing fluorescent lights with no exits and no logic.
From that one image, an entire subculture exploded across YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, and Roblox. Severance creator Dan Erickson has cited the Backrooms as one of the inspirations behind the hit Apple TV series.
Here’s what the new Backrooms trailer reveals
The latest Backrooms trailer expands the world significantly. You get the yellow rooms and the fluorescent lights, which are non-negotiable, but you also get the Poolrooms, a beloved fan-created extension of the Backrooms featuring flooded, tile-lined spaces with eerie, dreamlike lighting.
The trailer confirms that multiple regular people enter the Backrooms together for the first time, which changes the dynamic entirely compared to Parsons’ YouTube series. You also get a brief, baffling shot of a seagull that somehow glitched its way in, which is exactly the kind of absurd, uncanny detail that makes the Backrooms mythology so compelling.
The film follows a strange doorway that opens in the basement of a furniture showroom. When a therapist’s patient disappears into a dimension beyond reality, she has to go in after him.
Chiwetel Ejiofor (The Life of Chuck, Doctor Strange) plays Clark, the furniture store owner who first discovers the gateway. Dr. Mary Kline, the therapist who goes in after him, is played by Renate Reinsve. The supporting cast includes Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell (Shrinking), and Avan Jogia.
Why horror fans should give this internet adaptation a real chance
The Backrooms is not the first internet urban legend to make it to theaters. Slender Man got a film in 2018, and the results were widely considered disappointing. But the Backrooms feels different, partly because the person adapting it is the same person who has already proved he could do it justice on a small budget with no studio backing.
The film is directed by Kane Parsons, better known online as Kane Pixels, who turned a creepy internet concept into one of YouTube’s most-watched horror series.
Critics who caught the premiere early have been enthusiastic. The film has already been called “wholly unique and original” and “the best creepypasta adaptation yet.” For a film that hasn’t even opened yet, that is a remarkable head start.