In a massive win for those who are chronically online, Backrooms has absolutely exploded, smashing box office records with a USD$81.5 million (approx over AUD$113 million) North American debut.
Although it’s the type of flick to make your skin crawl, the lore behind the conception of the movie and its creator, Kane Parsons, is quite wholesome. So, here’s the backstory of the Backrooms and its manifestation in mainstream media.
What is the lore of Backrooms?
Throwing it back to many yonks ago, an anonymous 4chan user shared an image of, as Parsons has described, “an off-yellow sort of dingy” liminal space that held an immense amount of eerie aura.
Alongside the photo was a small caption, which read:
“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 to be trapped in.
“God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you”
From there, Parsons (now 20) was inspired to create a web series based on the image titled The Backrooms.
In 2022, Parsons dropped the first episode of the series, titled “The Backrooms (Found Footage)”, and has since dropped a total of 22 episodes, with its final episode, “Backrooms — Static Dead End”, dropping in February 2025.
Each episode has garnered millions of views.
What is Backrooms 2026 all about?
Backrooms 2026 follows Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), his assistant manager, Kat (Lukita Maxwell), her boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennet) and his therapist, Dr Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve) on a chaotic, unearthly experience as he unravels the alternative reality of the backrooms.
Although these characters are not mentioned in the web series, some fans have theorised that Parsons’ final YouTube video on the phenomenon featured nods to the feature film, including the description, which hints at the films release date.
Others have also noted that some episodes have “very specific timestamps” that could add more perspective to the 2026 flick. However, other fans have claimed the timestamps are the dates in which these fictional videos were ‘filmed’.
As someone who grew up on internet culture — and a lot of Creepypastas — seeing a horror film like Backrooms make waves at the box office is truly exciting and is reminiscent of when Australia’s Danny and Michael Philippou of RackaRacka shot into the limelight with Talk to Me and Bring Her Back.
And when something from the internet makes it into the mainstream, you know the memes are going to hit, and with Backrooms, the memes have begun.
Backrooms is out now in Aussie cinemas.
