It started as a cryptic internet legend—a "creepypasta" whispered across forums and image boards, spawning a universe of fan art, games, and unsettling YouTube videos. Now, with the release of its first full trailer on March 31, 2026, Backrooms is poised to step from digital folklore into the cinematic limelight. The highly anticipated sci-fi horror film, produced by A24 and co-financed with Chernin Entertainment, stars Oscar nominees Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, and is set to hit theaters on May 29, 2026.
According to Deadline, the film’s premise is as chilling as it is simple: a strange doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom, leading to an endless, yellow-hued labyrinth of empty office spaces. It’s a setting that feels both mundane and menacing—an endless maze that shouldn’t exist, but somehow does. The tagline, "Everything Must Go," hints at both retail clearance and existential dread. As the trailer teases, "All these rooms... this place builds them." Another line from the trailer, as reported by Deadline, captures the anxiety: "Sometimes I'm scared I'll get lost."
The film draws inspiration from the viral web series by 20-year-old filmmaker Kane Parsons, who is making his feature directorial debut with Backrooms. Parsons, known online as "Kane Pixels," first gained attention in 2022 with a found-footage horror series on YouTube that quickly became a sensation. The original shorts followed characters—most notably a young filmmaker and, later, a therapist searching for her vanished patient—as they fell into a dimension beyond reality, a place where the architecture itself seems to conspire against escape.
As Variety and IndieWire detail, Parsons was only 19 when he signed with A24, making him the youngest filmmaker to ever collaborate with the indie studio. The screenplay, written by Will Soodik (who previously worked on Westworld), is based on the online urban legend that first appeared on 4chan in the late 2010s. This "Backrooms" mythos describes an ever-expanding warren of rooms and hallways, their yellowed walls and buzzing fluorescent lights forming a "liminal hellscape"—a wordless, dreamlike horror that feels both familiar and alien.
In the film, Ejiofor plays a man who stumbles upon the mysterious doorway beneath "Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire," a fictional furniture store. Despite an overwhelming sense of danger, his curiosity compels him to explore the endless maze. Reinsve, fresh off her Best Actress Oscar nomination for Sentimental Value and a previous A24 project (A Different Man), co-stars as his therapist, who must venture into the Backrooms herself in search of her patient. As Empire notes, "Ejiofor plays a man who discovers and explores the Backrooms, while Reinsve plays his therapist who ventures in after him—with spooky-looking results."
The supporting cast is equally impressive, featuring Mark Duplass (Creep), Finn Bennett (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms), Lukita Maxwell (Generation), and Avan Jogia (56 Days). The production boasts a powerhouse lineup of producers: James Wan and Michael Clear (Atomic Monster), Roberto Patino, Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, Dan Levine (21 Laps Entertainment), Osgood Perkins, Chris Ferguson, Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, and Kori Adelson. Judson Scott and Chris White serve as executive producers, with Chernin Entertainment (part of the North Road Company) co-financing and A24 co-producing. According to Variety, filming took place in Canada in July 2025.
But what is it about the Backrooms that has captured the imagination of so many? As Gizmodo observes, "It’s more like a feeling—the sickening dread and undeniable fascination that come with discovering an endless stretch of seemingly abandoned rooms and hallways where rooms and hallways have no business being." The mythos borrows from video game vernacular—specifically the idea of "noclipping," or passing through solid objects—a concept that Parsons translated into his realistic, found-footage style shorts. These videos, in turn, inspired a wave of PC games and even more fan fiction, expanding the Backrooms lore well beyond its original internet roots.
The film’s marketing campaign has leaned into this sense of unease, with teaser images featuring the infamous acid-yellow wallpaper and cryptic taglines. The trailer, released by A24 and widely covered by outlets like IndieWire and Deadline, finally gives audiences a glimpse of the film’s stars navigating the maze. The visuals evoke comparisons to Mark Z. Danielewski’s experimental novel House of Leaves, another story about an impossible, ever-growing space that defies the laws of physics and reason. As IndieWire notes, "This first footage from 'Backrooms' certainly brings to mind Mark Z. Danielewski’s unfilmable experimental novel 'House of Leaves,' itself a novel about a fictional found footage movie about a house filled with endless and multiplying passages."
Parsons joins a growing list of YouTube creators making the leap to feature filmmaking, following in the footsteps of the Philippou brothers (Talk To Me), Chris Stuckmann (Shelby Oaks), and Markiplier (Iron Lung). Yet, as Empire points out, Parsons stands out for the sheer scale and ambition of his project—and the fact that he’s working with such a high-profile cast and production team at just 20 years old. "What have you been doing with your life?" IndieWire jokes, marveling at Parsons’ meteoric rise.
With its May 29 release date fast approaching, Backrooms is already generating buzz not just for its internet pedigree, but for its promise of a new kind of horror—one that trades jump scares for the creeping, existential terror of being lost in a place that shouldn’t exist. As the trailer and early coverage suggest, the film may never fully explain the origins or purpose of the Backrooms, preferring instead to let audiences stew in the mystery. As Gizmodo puts it, "Who built the rooms, and for what purpose? We don’t care if Backrooms ever explains that. In fact, we hope it doesn’t—it looks like the mystery itself contains plenty of frights."
Whether Backrooms will become a new horror classic or simply a fascinating experiment in internet-to-cinema storytelling remains to be seen. But one thing’s for sure: after watching the trailer, you might think twice before asking a store clerk to check "in the back."