Backrooms: This is the horror that gets under my skin

I first came across the concept of Backrooms back in 2022. Unless mistaken, I think that's where I first read about it anyways. It was a PC Gamer article "Noclipping is no joke: the strange world of The Backrooms explained" article which introduced me to "The Backrooms" — a concept that had started as a single creepy image posted anonymously on 4chan back in 2019. Just a photo of a yellowed, fluorescent-lit room that felt deeply, inexplicably wrong. No people. No context. Just endless, empty office space that seemed to go on forever. 

The description that came with it didn't help remove the confusion: "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."

WTF? 😦

The article went on to explain the origins of The Backrooms and mentioned Kane Parsons (known online as Kane Pixels), a 16 year old Youtuber that had taken that single creepy image and turned it into something extraordinary. Using Blender and After Effects — tools he'd taught himself —  uploaded The Backrooms (Found Footage) to YouTube on January 7, 2022. Minutes and minutes of found-footage horror set inside those endless yellow corridors. No budget. No film school. Just a teenager with a laptop and a gift for dread.

I went down the rabbit hole that evening. Watched the videos. Then went to Wikipedia to make sense of it all.

Then completely forgot all about it.

Fast forward to March 31, 2026. A24 drops the official trailer for Backrooms — a feature film directed by Kane Parsons himself, now 20 years old and the youngest filmmaker ever to collaborate with the studio. Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, produced by James Wan. It hits theaters on May 29th.

I watched the trailer. Then I watched it again. And again...

Here's what gets me about it: they show you almost nothing. No monster. No gore. No jump scares telegraphed from a mile away. Just that familiar yellowed light, those endless corridors, and a tension that builds in your chest without ever quite releasing. The trailer trusts the space to do the work — and it does.

I've watched a lot of horror in my time. The stuff that stays with you is never the thing you see. It's the thing you don't. Jaws. Alien. The Blair Witch Project. The Backrooms concept is uniquely suited to that approach, because the space itself is the threat. There's no monster to reveal. The dread is architectural.

It also has a Severance feel to it — I can't remember where, but I read that the creator of the AppleTV+ series were inspired by The Backrooms when they first saw it. It's the same instinct, but a different palette. Where Severance uses cold white sterility to make the office feel sinister because people are trapped in it, the Backrooms makes it sinister because no one is. Both are playing with the same primal unease: the corporate space stripped of all human purpose until only the wrongness remains.

After watching the trailer I did what any self-respecting horror fan does — I immediately sent it to folks I knew would be intrigued and captivated by it. That'd be my sister, a massive Stephen King fan. She watched it, and her response was immediately: OMG! I also sent it my daughter, who also enjoys a smart horror (Alien, Stranger Things, etc.), watched it and is also fully on board. We've a date in late May. And I for one, can't wait!

How it all came about

The whole arc of this thing is kind of remarkable. It found its audience because it tapped into something real: the fear of being lost, forgotten, and alone in a place that should be familiar but isn't.

If you haven't watched the trailer above, and have made it this far, please go ahead. 

Watch it. 

Then tell me you don't get goosebumps.