It’s only been 7 years since the original picture hit the internet, but it feels like the Backrooms as a concept have been with us forever. A defining addition to the library of new-age internet horror (filed under L for Liminal), the concept built off a foundation of uncanny geographical horror present in works like The Shining or The Blair Witch Project. In just the short time it has existed, the Backrooms have already inspired multiple video games and several web-series, along with a collective meta-narrative online. It’s a testament to the way that the internet has created a new medium of storytelling, wherein a premise isn’t honed by one singular creative voice but is instead built by the masses, who choose which narrative strands to engage with and which ones to ignore.
Undoubtedly the most popular and recognizable Backrooms works come from the YouTube channel Kane Pixels, the alias of 21-year-old experimental filmmaker Kane Parsons. Back in 2022 Parsons used the computer graphics software Blender to create a short film about the concept, which spiraled into a multipart YouTube horror series that eventually and awe-inspiringly became Backrooms, a feature-length horror film released by A24 earlier this year that has already become the studio’s highest-grossing movie ever. Now that Parsons’ first film has become an overnight success and Backrooms has become a mainstream horror phenomenon, it makes perfect sense that A24 is about to send moviegoers back to the maddeningly mundane labyrinth for the second time.
