If Ari Aster’s Hereditary didn’t traumatize you enough and Robert Eggers’ The Witch made you distrust goats forever, buckle up because A24, the studio behind some of the scariest films of the last decade, is now diving into found footage horror, too. And this time, it’s mining the terrifying corners of YouTube for more nightmare fuel. According to Variety, the studio has officially greenlit a movie based on the popular YouTube series The Backrooms, sci-fi horror shorts created by Kane Parsons, better known online as Kane Pixels.
Parsons, by the way, was just 16 years old when he dropped the first 9-minute short back in 2022. Now, at 19, he’s officially the youngest director to ever work with A24. What started as a creepy, glitchy found-footage video about a filmmaker who accidentally slips into an infinite maze of beige corridors has snowballed into a full-blown YouTube horror franchise and now a feature film.
The short film series has gained more than 190 million views over the years, and honestly, once you watch it, it’s not hard to see why. There’s something very eerie about watching the bland, yellow-lit office hallways that go on forever. Add in creepy humming noises and a general sense that you’ve glitched out of reality into a zone where no human should ever be, and you’ve got one of the scariest experiences online.
Based on a 2019 creepypasta, the idea is that people can “noclip” (basically, glitch like a video game character) out of reality into these eerie spaces. There’s no logic, no way out, and worst of all, you’re not alone.
“This was the first time in literal months that I was actually scared of something on the internet,” one YouTube commenter wrote. Another nailed it: “The scariest thing about this is rounding the corners. Not being able to know what’s lurking on the other side… that to me is truly the worst anxiety to ever experience.”
The horror works so well because of its simplicity. It’s not gore. It’s not multiple jumpscares. It’s the creepy tone and atmosphere. Liminal spaces, those in-between places like stairwells, hotel hallways, or deserted malls, are designed to transition you somewhere else. But what if you got stuck there? Forever!
A24’s The Backrooms doesn’t have a full synopsis yet, but if it sticks close to Kane’s original vision, expect cosmic horror meets lo-fi dread. We know Roberto Patino (DMZ) is co-writing the script with Parsons, and James Wan (The Conjuring director) is producing via Atomic Monster. The cast already includes Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave) and Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World), which means A24 isn’t just throwing Gen Z horror at the wall. They’re building something serious here.
If you’re still not sold, it might be worth noting that even Severance creator Dan Erickson has cited The Backrooms as an influence. And if Severance didn’t give you existential chills, you might already be trapped in the backrooms and just don’t know it yet.
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