Kane Parsons was just 16 years old when he first uploaded the original The Backrooms, a nine-minute short, to YouTube in 2022. By 17, just a year later, A24 hired him to turn his work into a feature film adaptation – making him officially the youngest filmmaker to ever helm a project for the studio. Now 20, the first trailer for Backrooms is here, and the good news is that it has all the creepy elements that made the YouTube series such a hit.
A24’s first teaser for Backrooms doesn’t reveal much – it’s just a bunch of shots of yellowish empty office corridors, hallways and a VO between an unseen man and woman. “I found something,” the male voice says as the camera descends down and down into different rooms. “What did you find?” the woman responds.
“Found a place. It’s massive in there. And just goes on and on and on. All these rooms. This place builds them. Actually, more like it remembers them. And the more times it remembers something, the less it does,” the man answers before the trailer ends. It’s simple, but really unnerving.
Parsons’ The Backrooms series has pulled in more than 190 million views on YouTube over the years. It was built on a simple idea inspired by a 2019 creepypasta: what if you could “noclip” out of reality like a glitching video game character and end up trapped in endless yellow-lit hallways?
One YouTube commenter summed it up perfectly: “This was the first time in literal months that I was actually scared of something on the internet.” Another wrote, “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.”
That’s the hook. That’s the horror.
There’s no blood and gore. No monster around every corner. No jump scares. Just really creepy atmosphere. Those liminal spaces, the in-between places like stairwells and deserted malls, suddenly feel hostile when you can’t leave.
Parsons directs from a screenplay by Roberto Patino, known for DMZ. The cast includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell, and Avan Jogia. Behind the scenes, heavyweights like James Wan and Shawn Levy are producing.
Backrooms arrives in movie theaters on May 29, 2026.
