What Are the Backrooms? The Creepypasta Behind the Film
From one anonymous 4chan photo to A24's biggest box-office hit.
Aditya Challa3 min read
Summary
The Backrooms is a work of internet horror fiction about an endless maze of empty, yellow-walled office rooms that you can "noclip" into by slipping out of reality. It began as an anonymous post on 4chan's paranormal board in May 2019, grew into a collaborative mythology, and in 2026 became A24's highest-grossing film.
This post covers a fictional legend. Nothing in the Backrooms story is real.
Where did the Backrooms come from?
In May 2019 a 4chan /x/ thread asked users to post "disquieting images that just feel off." Someone shared a photo of an empty room with mono-yellow wallpaper and fluorescent lights, and another anonymous user added a short story: if you're not careful and noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you 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."
Why does the Backrooms feel so creepy?
The image taps into what people online call liminal spaces: transitional places such as empty corridors, closed malls and vacant offices that feel wrong without people in them. There is no monster in the original post. The fear comes from emptiness, repetition and being lost.
Who made the Backrooms videos?
Kane Parsons, known online as Kane Pixels, posted the short "The Backrooms (Found Footage)" to YouTube in January 2022 and built it into a found-footage series set around a fictional 1990s research organisation, Async. The series turned the loose legend into a story with its own lore.
How big is the Backrooms movie?
A24's Backrooms, directed by Parsons and written by Will Soodik, opened in US cinemas on 29 May 2026. The cast includes Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve. According to Box Office Mojo it opened to $81.4 million domestically and passed $400 million worldwide. Variety reports a production budget of $10 million and calls it A24's highest-grossing release. Parsons was 20 at release, which made him the youngest director of a No. 1 box-office film.
FAQ
Are the Backrooms real? No. It is collaborative fiction that started with a photo and a short story.
What are Backrooms "levels"? Fan wikis add numbered levels, entities and rules. These are community inventions rather than part of the original post.
Is the Backrooms movie based on the YouTube series? Yes. It is based on Parsons' web series, which in turn grew out of the 2019 legend.
Related
- How to start a faceless YouTube channel
- How to make an animated explainer video
- What is a creepypasta?
Sources
Lab evidence
What I found running this
Facts in this draft were checked on 13 Oct 2026 against the sources listed in the body (official records, publishers, encyclopaedias and named news outlets). No original testing or reporting was done; figures are quoted as published by those sources, fiction and folklore are labelled as such, and any estimate or prediction is labelled as such.
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