Reality is constantly glitching; nothing feels real anymore
From a single anonymous image posted on 4chan in 2019, the Backrooms has traveled an unlikely path — through millions of screens, into the imagination of a teenage filmmaker, and now onto the theatrical stage of Hollywood's most celebrated independent studio. A24's adaptation, directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, arrives as both a horror film and a cultural signal: that the architecture of collective dread, born in the margins of the internet, has become the new language of mainstream storytelling. The film asks, as liminal spaces always have, what lingers in the in-between — and whether the things haunting those corridors are monsters, or simply ourselves.
- A single eerie photograph posted anonymously in 2019 ignited a cultural phenomenon that now commands 30 billion TikTok views and a major theatrical release.
- Hollywood, battered by streaming and shrinking audiences, is placing urgent bets on internet-native creators who arrive with millions of viewers already devoted to their work.
- A24 made the unconventional decision to hand a $10 million production to a then-19-year-old who had never directed anything beyond a bedroom Blender setup — and built him a 30,000-square-foot set to prove the faith was real.
- The film reframes the Backrooms not as a monster story but as a psychological reckoning, using liminal space as a metaphor for trauma, dissociation, and the way memory dissolves when left unexamined.
- Early projections suggest the gamble is working — the film is tracking as a genuine cultural event, signaling that the pipeline from internet folklore to cinematic phenomenon is now fully open.
A mustard-yellow wall on a movie poster shouldn't stop anyone in their tracks — and yet millions of people recognize it immediately, and the recognition arrives with a specific, wordless unease. This is Backrooms, A24's new horror film, built from one of the internet's most quietly unsettling ideas.
The concept began in 2019 with an anonymous 4chan post: a photograph of a fluorescent-lit, abandoned office space, accompanied by a description of what it might feel like to glitch out of reality and land in an endless maze of identical rooms, damp carpet underfoot, lights humming at full intensity. The post ended with a warning about whatever else might be wandering those halls. It was brief, suffocating, and it spread everywhere.
By 2023, a teenager named Kane Parsons had turned the concept into a YouTube series using free 3D software, accumulating over 200 million views. His first video alone drew 80 million. A24 took notice and made an unusual bet — hiring Parsons, then 19, to direct a full theatrical adaptation, making him the studio's youngest director on record.
For the film, Parsons and screenwriter Will Soodik grounded the folklore in something more intimate: mental illness and unresolved trauma. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a furniture salesman whose marriage has collapsed; Renate Reinsve plays his therapist. Together they discover that the store conceals a passage into the Backrooms — a space that feeds on psychological wounds. To give the film what Parsons calls 'real physicality,' the production constructed a 30,000-square-foot set modeled on his digital designs.
Researchers who study architecture and cognition suggest the Backrooms resonates because liminal spaces — hallways, thresholds, transitional zones — genuinely disorient the human brain, blurring the boundaries between memory and perception. Internet researcher Gunseli Yalcinkaya argues that Gen Z's particular attachment to the concept reflects pandemic isolation and a generation already accustomed to feeling that reality is mediated, glitching, slightly unreal.
For Hollywood, the film represents something beyond horror: evidence that internet-native creators can anchor theatrical audiences at a moment when cinema is fighting for relevance. Parsons, now 20, has grown weary of stories focused on his age. He says the inexperience never became an issue on set — only obsession did. The Backrooms, it turns out, has made the same disorienting journey as the spaces it depicts: from the margins to somewhere uncomfortably central.
A sheet of mustard-yellow wallpaper on a movie poster might ordinarily disappear into the visual noise of a cinema lobby. This one doesn't. Millions recognize it instantly, and the recognition brings a particular kind of unease—the creeping dread of a space that feels wrong in ways you can't quite name. This is Backrooms, A24's new horror film, and it arrived in theaters Friday knowing exactly who it was made for: viewers who prefer whispered dread to jump scares, who find horror not in monsters but in the architecture of emptiness itself.
The Backrooms began as something smaller, stranger—a 4chan post from 2019. An anonymous user, responding to a prompt for "disquieting images that just feel 'off,'" uploaded a photograph of an abandoned office space lit by fluorescent tubes, its walls the color of old mustard. The accompanying text was brief and suffocating: a description of what happens if you glitch out of reality in the wrong place, landing in an endless maze of segmented rooms, the air thick with the smell of damp carpet and the constant electrical hum of lights running at full intensity. "God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby," the post concluded, "because it sure as hell has heard you."
The concept metastasized across the internet. By 2023, a teenager named Kane Parsons had transformed it into a YouTube series using Blender, a free 3D software, to construct environments his budget couldn't otherwise afford. The series accumulated more than 200 million views. Parsons' first video, "Found Footage," shot in the style of shaky 1990s camcorder footage, alone drew 80 million viewers. The work caught the attention of A24, the studio behind Oscar-nominated films like The Substance, and the studio made an unusual bet: they hired Parsons, then 19, to direct a theatrical adaptation. He is now A24's youngest director on record.
For the film, Parsons and screenwriter Will Soodik anchored the Backrooms concept to something more grounded than internet folklore—mental illness and unresolved trauma. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Clark, a furniture salesman whose marriage has collapsed. His therapist, Mary, is played by Renate Reinsve. As their sessions grow tense, Clark discovers that the furniture store conceals a passage into the Backrooms, a space that begins to exploit the psychological wounds both characters carry. To achieve what Parsons calls "real physicality," the production built a 30,000-square-foot set based on his digital designs, a scale impossible in his YouTube work. "I think it lets us buy into the characters to a greater degree," Parsons told me.
The appeal of the Backrooms taps into something neuroscience has begun to understand: the particular unease humans feel in liminal spaces—hallways, doorways, the in-between zones where one room transitions to another. Meredith Banasiak, who researches the relationship between architecture and human wellbeing, explains that doorways confuse our brains in measurable ways. "When spaces start blending together, the way we remember blends too," she says. The Backrooms literalizes this confusion, turning it into a physical symbol of memory dissolving into itself. On Reddit, a Backrooms forum with 350,000 subscribers describes the concept as "deeply existential"—less about monsters than about the uncertainty of what else might already exist in the space with you. TikTok videos tagged with Backrooms have accumulated 30 billion views, and the concept has spawned a free survival game on Steam and experiences on Roblox.
Internet researcher Gunseli Yalcinkaya suggests that Gen Z's attraction to the Backrooms reflects something specific about their moment: a mournful nostalgia for pre-internet spaces and memories, compounded by the isolation of the pandemic. The concept captures, she argues, the dissatisfaction of being young now, "where reality is constantly being mediated through screens—there's already a sense that reality is glitching, nothing feels real anymore." For Hollywood, the Backrooms represents something equally significant: proof that internet-native creators and IP can draw audiences at a time when cinema is struggling against streaming. Chris White, an executive producer on the film, discovered Parsons' work only because his teenage son insisted he watch it. Another internet-born filmmaker, Curry Barker, 26, released his own horror film, Obsession, in theaters this month after a similar trajectory. These creators arrive with what studio executives call "preset audiences"—millions of viewers already primed to care.
Early projections for Backrooms suggest the gamble will pay off. The film is expected to substantially exceed its $10 million budget and, according to those tracking it, "feels like an event in the way that few movies are able to reach." Parsons, for his part, has grown tired of headlines emphasizing his age. He worried his inexperience might undermine his authority on set, but he says it never surfaced as an issue. "Almost immediately it was just us, in a vacuum, talking about the project," he told me. "I like to think I made up for any lack of experience by being completely obsessive." The Backrooms, it seems, has found its way from the margins of the internet to the center of Hollywood's attention—a journey that mirrors, in its own way, the disorienting passage through the spaces the film depicts.
Citas Notables
Make peace with it before anything else, because I don't like to give false optimism.— Kane Parsons, director
When spaces start blending together, the way we remember blends too.— Meredith Banasiak, neuroscience and architecture researcher
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why do you think a meme about empty hallways became something people actually fear?
Because it's not really about the hallways. It's about the feeling that something fundamental has come loose. The Backrooms gives shape to a dread that was already there—the sense that reality itself might glitch, that you could slip sideways into something that looks almost normal but isn't.
But it started on 4chan as a joke, right? How does that become genuine horror?
The best internet horror works that way. Someone posts something half-serious, half-playful, and then thousands of people add to it, and suddenly it's real in a way that matters. The Backrooms became real because people kept building it together.
What's the connection between liminal spaces and mental health? Why did the filmmakers go that direction?
Liminal spaces are already about being lost between states—between rooms, between who you were and who you're becoming. That's exactly what trauma feels like. The film uses the Backrooms as a metaphor for how trauma traps you in a space where nothing quite connects, where memory itself starts to dissolve.
Kane Parsons was 16 when he started the YouTube series. How does someone that young understand something so psychologically complex?
Maybe because he was young enough to feel it without needing to fully understand it first. He built the spaces, and the spaces themselves contained the meaning. The psychology came later, when A24 asked him to expand it into something that could hold a full narrative.
Do you think this film will actually scare people, or is it more about atmosphere?
The scariest thing about the Backrooms isn't what's in it—it's the possibility that there's nothing in it at all. Just you, alone, in a space that never ends. That's not a jump scare. That's existential.
Why now? Why is Gen Z so drawn to this particular kind of horror?
Because they're the first generation to grow up with the constant sense that reality is already mediated, already glitching. The Backrooms doesn't feel like a fantasy to them. It feels like a description of something that's already happening.