There is a specific kind of dread that comes from a long, empty hallway bathed in sickly yellow fluorescent light — the kind that feels half-remembered, like a place you have been but cannot quite name. That feeling is the entire foundation of Backrooms, and A24 just released a full trailer that makes it very clear this film intends to haunt you long after the credits roll.
Directed by Kane Parsons — who, at just 20 years old, becomes the youngest filmmaker ever to helm a feature for A24 — Backrooms is one of the most compelling origin stories in recent Hollywood memory. What began as a Blender animation experiment on YouTube in 2022 has grown into a cultural phenomenon with more than 190 million views, a fiercely dedicated fanbase, and now, a full theatrical release arriving May 29.
From creepypasta to cinema
The Backrooms concept began as an internet urban legend — a single unsettling image of an empty office space posted to 4chan with a caption suggesting that if you clipped through the walls of reality, you might end up there, alone, in an infinite maze of yellow-wallpapered rooms. Parsons, then a teenager, stumbled onto the image and did what any visionary would do — he rebuilt it in 3D software and uploaded it to YouTube.
The response was immediate and massive. His found footage-style series expanded into a sprawling fictional universe centered on Async, a covert research institute documenting the Backrooms from the late 1980s onward. The internet treated every new installment like a cultural event. A24 came calling, and the rest is history in the making.
What the Backrooms trailer reveals
The full trailer centers on a furniture store owner, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who stumbles upon a mysterious door in his building’s basement. What lies beyond it is vast, disorienting, and deeply wrong — an endless series of rooms that seem to expand and remember themselves in ways that defy logic. His therapist, played by Renate Reinsve, is eventually pulled into the search for him, entering the dimension herself.
Key details from the trailer worth mentioning
- Ejiofor’s character describes the Backrooms as a place that does not just expand — it remembers, and the more it remembers, the less it does
- Hazmat-suited figures echo imagery from Parsons’ original web series, suggesting continuity with the existing lore
- The trailer leans heavily into found footage aesthetics, handheld chaos, and the creeping sense that something unseen is always just out of frame
- No jump-scare theatrics — just dread, silence, and the unbearable wrongness of a space that should not exist
A cast built for this kind of terror
The decision to anchor Backrooms with Ejiofor and Reinsve is a masterstroke. Ejiofor brings a coiled intensity to every role he inhabits, and Reinsve — fresh off an Oscar nomination for Sentimental Value — is one of the most magnetic screen presences working today. This is her second collaboration with A24, following A Different Man in 2024.
The supporting cast deepens the film’s genre credibility considerably
- Mark Duplass, whose work in Creep made him a cult favorite in horror
- Finn Bennett, known for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
- Lukita Maxwell from Afraid
- Avan Jogia of Resident Evil— Welcome to Raccoon City
The Backrooms phenomenon and what it means for film
The cultural conversation around Backrooms extends beyond the film itself. It arrives on the heels of Iron Lung, the indie horror film from YouTuber Markiplier that surpassed $43 million at the global box office — a result that signaled something significant shifting in how the industry values creators who built their audiences outside traditional Hollywood pipelines.
Parsons is not just a YouTube creator getting a Hollywood moment. He wrote the original series, directed it, built the visual effects himself, and composed music for the film alongside Edo Van Breemen. The infrastructure behind the movie — produced by James Wan’s Atomic Monster, Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps Entertainment, and co-financed by Chernin Entertainment — reflects how seriously the industry took the project from the very beginning.
Backrooms hits theaters May 29
With a 90-minute runtime, a $10 million production budget, and A24’s full marketing muscle behind it, Backrooms arrives in theaters on May 29, 2026. The trailer is already trending at No. 22 on YouTube’s movies chart with over 1.6 million views in its first hours, and the internet that built this universe is already counting down the days.
If A24 has its way — and it usually does — the most terrifying place in cinema this summer will not be outer space, a haunted house, or a serial killer’s basement. It will be a fluorescent-lit hallway with no doors and no exit, somewhere just behind the walls of the world you think you know.
