The Backrooms began as a creepypasta and eventually developed into an internet lore that many believe is real! What are these unsettling, endless, yellow rooms that inspired the upcoming A24 movie?
After a long wait, A24 has officially dropped the first trailer of Backrooms, the upcoming horror film by Kane Parsons, and it gives all the unsettling vibes fans were looking for. Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, the film brings to life one of the internet's most unsettling urban legends in the past decade. But what exactly are the so-called "backrooms," and why has one random yellow-wallpapered, space haunted the internet for years?
In case you missed one of the most discussed creepypastas, now is the time. The concept of the "Backrooms" originated from an image that randomly popped up on the internet in 2019 from a now-famous anonymous Reddit post on 4chan. It featured an eerie image of empty, yellow-lit office-like rooms. The post mentioned an eerie idea: what if you accidentally glitched out of reality and found yourself trapped in an endless maze of rooms with seemingly no exit?
The idea, famously known as "noclipping" (borrowed from video game glitches), became the foundation of what would eventually be a popular internet lore surrounding glitches in the matrix. The legend states that once you glitch and enter the Backrooms, you will find yourself stuck in a sprawling, seemingly infinite labyrinth of identical spaces, going miles and miles with nothing except damp carpets, buzzing fluorescent lights that grow increasingly deafening, and a constant unsettling feeling that someone, or some "entity," is watching you.
The idea of the Backrooms taps into the concept of “liminal spaces", or transitional areas that feel eerie when empty. Think of a school hallway at night, an abandoned storeroom, or a deserted shopping center. The Backrooms take that feeling and stretch it into infinity. Over the years, Reddit and other popular online discussion platforms have made their own versions of the creepy lore, adding survival guide memes, exploring the various "levels" of the Backrooms, starting with "Level 0". What was more eerie about the random 4chan post from 2019 was that the image, nor its user, could ever be traced. The original post read:
"If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in... God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you."
What began as an online urban legend later evolved into a viral video series by Kane Parsons in 2022, where ordinary-looking spaces slowly turned unsettling and endless. The upcoming A24 film, Backrooms, expands on this concept, following a mysterious doorway in a furniture showroom's basement that leads to a maze-like world. Parsons, who was just 19 when he teamed up with A24, brings his original vision into a full-length film. The screenplay is written by Will Soodik, who has taken the internet concept and shaped it into a structured storyline with slowly building tension.
The film brings together Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, who lead the story, along with Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell, and Avan Jogia. From what the film's trailer shows, it will be a slow-building scare, building on the feeling that something is wrong, even when nothing is happening right away. Unlike traditional horror films, this one seems to focus less on monsters and more on psychological dread. A haunting line from the trailer sums it up:
"If you hear something, don’t follow it."
Backrooms releases in theatres on May 29, 2026. Are you also excited for this eerie urban legend's film adaptation?
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