Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers and key details from the movie “Backrooms.” Reader discretion is advised if you haven’t watched it yet.With its concept of endless deserted corridors and disturbing liminal spaces, “Backrooms” is the latest horror film to captivate audiences.
The film is part of a web culture that began as a meme on the online forum 4Chan, which quickly turned into a successful YouTube series with over 200 million views.
Beloved online content creator Kane Parsons makes his directorial debut with this feature adaptation, bringing the disturbing concept of monochromatic yellow wallpaper and fluorescent lighting to the big screen. The film explores how Internet concepts have become the next frontier for Hollywood studios seeking to connect with younger audiences.According to the BBC, the concept of “backrooms” emerged in 2019, when anonymous users on 4chan were asked to “post disturbing images that appeared to be ‘off’.” One user posts a photo of an abandoned office space and writes: “If you are not careful and get out of reality [gaming terminology for glitching or disappearing] In the wrong areas, you’ll end up in back rooms, where there’s nothing but the smell of old damp carpet, the madness of monochromatic yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum buzz, and nearly six hundred million square miles of randomly divided empty rooms in which you’ll be trapped.
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Ken Parsons becomes Hollywood’s youngest director with Backrooms adaptation
Ken Parsons, now 20 years old, became the youngest director when he was enlisted for the film adaptation. His mission in 2023 is clear: to pull this isolated hellscape kicking and screaming to the big screen, in the style of his YouTube series.Parsons reveals that what interested him most about the project was using the Hollywood budget to dig deeper and bring “real realism” to ensure the film “feels distinct from the YouTube series.”
The team behind the film achieves this by building an expansive 30,000-square-foot set based on his Blender designs, which resemble his first YouTube video — “Found Footage” — which has 80 million views and features shaky 90s video camera footage of the eerie yellow office building.“I think it allows us to buy into the characters more,” Parsons explains of his production style.
“Back Rooms” explores mental health through the concept of liminal space
The film, written by Will Sudek, uses the concept of “back rooms” to explore themes of mental health.
Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Clark, a frustrated furniture store salesman who struggles after the breakup of his marriage. As tensions grow between him and his therapist Marie, played by Renate Rensef, Clark discovers the store’s way into the back rooms — a space that begins to tap into the couple’s unresolved traumas.
Generation Z connects with “back rooms” through limited concerns of space
The lure of “back rooms” on the big screen reflects the emergence of a very particular fear online: the idea of liminal — or transitional — space.
Backrooms has a Reddit forum with over 350,000 subscribers. The forum moderators say that there is something “deeply existential” about the concept and that it is less about monsters and more about “more uncertainty about what else might actually be out there in space with you.”TikTok is filled with “backroom”-themed clips — which have cumulatively surpassed 30 billion views — highlighting the popularity of this ’90s-themed scene with Gen Z.
A wistful nostalgia for pre-internet memories and spaces, and the isolation imposed by the Covid pandemic, may explain why young people are drawn to ideas like “back rooms,” says internet researcher Günselj Yalcinkaya.Yalcinkaya notes that the film captures dissatisfaction with what it means to be young today, “where reality is constantly mediated through screens – there is really a feeling that reality is flawed, that nothing is real anymore.”
“Backrooms” was an early success for the Internet-to-movies pipeline
The online trailer for “Backrooms” quickly became one of the most viewed movie uploads, with 31 million views. Early projections for “Backrooms” look “really promising,” with expectations that it will easily exceed its $10 million budget.The pipeline from YouTube to the big screen “seems like a sea change,” says Matthew Frank, author of The Ankler’s Crowd Pleaser newsletter. Hollywood executives look to authentic Internet culture for audiences and filmmakers like Parsons.
It’s helpful for studios to have these names come with “pre-established audiences” at a time when cinema is struggling against streaming.
Ken Parsons reflects on being the youngest director in Hollywood
As for Parsons, the headlines in the media point out how young he is to direct a movie in Hollywood — a focus that tires him. He worries that his relative inexperience could influence perception, but it “never showed” on set. “Almost immediately, it was just us, in a vacuum, talking about the project… I like to think I made up for any lack of experience by being completely obsessed.”“Backrooms” finds a lot to explore in this concept, proving that original online intellectual property has huge appeal for audiences looking for something different from traditional Hollywood fare.