Inside A24's 'Backrooms': The YouTube Nightmare Hits Theaters May 29
The viral creepypasta that turned millions of viewers into amateur urban explorers is finally getting its big-screen treatment. A24's Backrooms lands in theaters on May 29, 2026 — and early word out of advance screenings says it might be one of the most claustrophobic horror experiences of the decade.
The film comes from Kane Parsons (also known as Kane Pixels), the 20-year-old filmmaker who is now the youngest director in A24's history. He started uploading his eerie liminal-space found footage shorts to YouTube as a 16-year-old in Petaluma, California, and racked up roughly 77 million views before any studio took notice. Three years later, those grainy fluorescent-lit hallways have a full theatrical release, a $10 million budget, and Oscar-nominated leads.
The Story: A Therapist Goes Looking For Her Patient
The plot is deceptively simple. Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve, The Worst Person in the World) is a therapist whose patient Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has gone missing. Clark, described as a furniture store owner and failed architect, has slipped through reality into an otherworldly dimension of endless yellow-wallpapered rooms, humming fluorescent lights, and empty pools that go on forever. Mary follows. She doesn't come back the same.
Around them, a small ensemble — Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett as Bobby, Lukita Maxwell as Kat, and Avan Jogia — populate the increasingly strange corridors. The screenplay is by Will Soodik, working from Parsons' original world-building.
A Practical-Effects Labyrinth
One detail from the production says everything about the film's ambition. The filmmakers reportedly constructed over 30,000 square feet of physical Backrooms sets in Vancouver — a sprawling labyrinth of corridors, offices, and the now-iconic "poolrooms" that Parsons popularized in his later videos. Crew members allegedly got lost on set. That's not marketing copy. That's a real production hazard turned into the film's secret weapon.
Filming wrapped in August 2025 after a six-week shoot. By relying on built environments rather than greenscreen, Parsons preserved the unsettling aesthetic that made his shorts go viral in the first place: real fluorescent buzz, real off-color carpet, real depth that the eye can never quite resolve. The runtime clocks in at 110 minutes.
What the Final Trailer Tells Us
A24 dropped what it has called the "final promo trailer" earlier this month, and it leans hard into atmosphere over scares. We see Clark stumbling into a wood-paneled corridor that shouldn't exist. We see Mary, blood streaked across her face, sprinting through a tight hallway lit like a dental office. We get our first proper look at the poolrooms — those cavernous, water-logged liminal spaces that have been some of the most-shared images in horror fandom for the past three years.
What we don't get is a clear monster. That's by design. The Backrooms mythology has always thrived on the dread of almost seeing something. Parsons has signaled in interviews that the film respects that restraint.
Early Reactions: "Freaky AF"
The advance reactions have been louder than usual for an A24 horror release. Critic Courtney Howard called Parsons' vision "brilliant" and the film "claustrophobic, pulse-pounding, and freaky AF." The Playlist's Mike DeAngelo flagged Parsons as "a new horror director to watch." Others have praised Ejiofor and Reinsve for what's being described as "vulnerable and intense" performances that ground the high-concept premise in real emotional weight.
The line getting repeated most? That Backrooms is "easily the best creepypasta adaptation yet." That's a low bar in some ways — internet-horror to feature-film translations have been notoriously rough — but it's also a signal that A24 might have a new genre franchise on its hands.
Why This Matters For Horror
The Backrooms phenomenon is one of the most successful pieces of grassroots horror world-building of the last decade. It started as a single 4chan image of a yellow office hallway and exploded into a sprawling shared universe across YouTube, Reddit, and indie video games. The fact that the first major adaptation comes from the original architect of the visual canon — rather than a studio writer who only encountered it on TikTok — is the reason this one already feels different.
A24 has built its horror reputation on directors with a singular voice (Hereditary, X, Pearl, Heretic). Handing the keys to a 20-year-old who taught himself filmmaking in his bedroom is a bigger bet than usual — but it's also exactly the kind of bet that has made the studio the most reliable horror brand in the business.
The Wider Picture
Backrooms caps off a stacked May for original horror, sharing the month with Obsession (May 15) and André Øvredal's Passenger (May 22). It's a rare run of theatrical horror that isn't a sequel, remake, or franchise extension — and audiences seem to be responding. If Backrooms opens strong on May 29, expect studios to start paying a lot more attention to YouTube and TikTok horror creators with their own visual universes.
For now, we wait. Nine days. One yellow hallway. No way out.
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