The first trailer for A24’s new movie dropped on March 31, 2026, giving audiences a glimpse into a scary story that first became popular online. The film is directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, who many know as Kane Pixels, and it’s based on his popular YouTube series of the same name.
The photo that inspired A24’s new horror film started as a simple post on 4Chan in 2019. It turned out to be a picture of a HobbyTown store being remodeled, but it quickly went viral, inspiring countless short, spooky stories online. These stories grew into one of the internet’s most famous Creepypastas. Now, with a trailer hinting at a close adaptation of the original legend, here’s everything fans should know about how this liminal-space horror began.
The Origins of the Liminal Horror Myth Behind A24’s Backrooms
Creepypastas are essentially internet horror stories, similar to how copypastas are shared blocks of text. They’re modern-day legends and myths that spread online, and Jeff the Killer is one of the most well-known examples. Starting in the early 2000s, these short, scary tales have become increasingly popular, with online communities growing and building upon them over time.
Back in 2019, someone posted a strange image on the paranormal section of 4Chan: a bare office with yellow wallpaper. This led others to share pictures of places that felt strangely familiar yet unsettlingly uncomfortable.
Soon after its creation, people started sharing stories about the Backrooms on sites like Reddit. This quickly led to a passionate fanbase, and creators began building on the original idea by adding new areas, called levels, and the creatures that supposedly live within them.
The game’s early levels were memorable and distinct. Level 0, nicknamed “The Lobby,” was inspired by the famous 4chan hallway image. Level 1, the “Habitable Zone,” felt like a damp parking garage. Level 2, called “Pipe Dreams,” featured long, dirty maintenance corridors filled with leaky pipes. And Level 3, the “Electrical Station,” was an aging facility with broken machines and rooms caged by metal bars.
The fandom grew beyond its original home, with fans sharing content on platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok, which helped to develop the story’s universe even further. The Creepypasta also inspired popular works, including the show created by Dan Erickson, who has mentioned it as one of his key influences.
What is it about certain photos that feels so strangely creepy? It’s often linked to a style called ‘liminal horror,’ which focuses on the unsettling feeling of being in transition spaces – think empty hallways, deserted malls, or vacant hotel corridors. This type of horror gained popularity with works like Mark Z. Danielewski’s 2000 novel House of Leaves, which uses feelings of nostalgia and the ‘uncanny valley’ effect to highlight the loneliness within these surreal, dreamlike places.
I’ve always been fascinated by that unsettling feeling you get in places that feel ‘in-between’ – that’s liminal horror, and it’s been around for ages. But I think the Backrooms Creepypasta really blew it up. It took these really basic photos and added creepy stories, turning normal places into these strange, unsettling worlds. Then, Parsons’ 2022 web series took it even further, actually showing us those spaces and making them truly terrifying.
Kane Parsons’ Cinematic Vision and the Prestige Expansion of the Backrooms
The Backrooms became widely popular, leading to adaptations in things like video games and an episode of American Horror Stories (“Backrooms”, Season 3, Episode 5). But the biggest development came in early 2022 when the creator of the original Backrooms website, Parsons, released the first short film in his now-popular web series.
The horror film The Backrooms (Found Footage), set in 1995, starts with a group of friends filming a cheap monster movie. During filming, the cameraman unexpectedly falls through a portal and finds himself in a strange, carpeted office building. The movie is filmed from the cameraman’s point of view and has a distorted, unsettling style, showing him navigating unfinished hallways and stairwells while being pursued by a shadowy figure.
The film’s intentionally grainy, old-fashioned visual style heightened the unsettling and eerie atmosphere, successfully recreating the disturbing feeling of the original Creepypasta images that inspired it. After becoming a viral hit – racking up over seven million views in just two days – the filmmaker created a series of similar short films.
Today, Parsons’ online series has grown to 22 episodes, evolving from a single popular image into a detailed and imaginative universe. A major development was the creation of the Async Research Institution, the group that opened the Threshold – a special magnetic distortion system – leading to the world of the Backrooms.
Much of the series follows Async’s investigations as they map out the Backrooms and analyze what it’s made of. They find that all parts of the Backrooms are connected, whether by normal passages like doors and hallways, or strange connections like holes in the floors and walls. Async also believes the Backrooms contain “Null Zones” – areas that act as portals to the real world. These zones are found throughout and are where people and objects sometimes fall through, with the Threshold being one such point.
As a film buff, I’ve been watching the Backrooms series, and it’s incredible how popular it’s become! The videos have racked up over 197 million views, and honestly, they’re the reason most people even know about the Backrooms now, especially on YouTube. What started as a little online story – a ‘Creepypasta’ – has blown up into a full-blown internet phenomenon. The filmmakers really nailed the atmosphere with their unique style and old-school visuals, and that’s what I think helped it spread like wildfire.
The Backrooms Trailer Suggests a Promising Expansion of Parsons World
The concept of Backrooms risks becoming just another fleeting meme. Many films based on popular online images or short stories haven’t lived up to expectations – Slender Man is a prime example, receiving poor reviews because it didn’t build upon the original internet legend in a meaningful way.
What sets the Backrooms series apart is director Kane Parsons’ vision. He didn’t just adapt the original internet story; he expanded on it, creating a rich and detailed world. Parsons established clear rules for how the Backrooms work – its layout, the creatures within, and even dangerous areas called Null Zones – making it a consistently unsettling and believable place.
The new trailer indicates A24’s film will closely follow and build upon the original concept. The movie appears to maintain the grainy, analog visual style and realistic horror that made the initial web series so popular. While not the entire film, certain scenes will likely use a first-person perspective, similar to the immersive feel of the original videos.
The upcoming Backrooms movie will largely build upon the world created in Kane Parsons’ original short films. It will use the same distinctive style and backstory, including the signature yellow lighting, the Async Research Institute, and Threshold technology. The film follows Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as he assembles a team to study and chart the mysterious ‘Complex’ – the interconnected hallways and floors – staying true to the original source material.
I’m really excited about this movie because it feels like a total reimagining of something special. It’s a great example of how those online stories and legends we all share can actually become really high-quality films, especially when there’s already a built-in fanbase. The creator, Parsons, has already done so much work establishing the world, its rules, and how everything works, so this adaptation feels really true to the original. It’s avoiding the mistakes other attempts at expanding on this kind of online horror have made, and I think it’s going to bring the story to a much wider audience in a way that respects what fans already love.
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2026-04-02 01:09