Backrooms (Kane Parsons, 2026)

[colinr0380]

The Backrooms movie is still happening, and is set to star Chiwetel Ejiofor

Now also Renate Reinsve!

It's coming. The first Backrooms teaser.

(Mark Duplass is in the cast too. I wonder if there is an intentional "Puffy Chair" reference in that teaser!)

[domino harvey]

Disturbingly clear visuals!

[colinr0380]

In addition to the plunge deeper down the levels as the normality of the setting disintegrates into the iconic location, the other thing the teaser brought to mind were the Film4 channel's idents!

I also like that people have noticed that the voice in the teaser ages as it goes along. "... and the more times it remembers something; the less it does", indeed.

Love the poster too:


I am also getting particularly curious as to whether all the various tracks he has been putting up recently are going to be part of the score for the film, or just side projects.

[colinr0380]

And for context, this is the original 4chan liminal image and description out of which the whole mythology grew:

[Mr Sausage]

As our local Backrooms expert, colin, I was wondering if you’d played the excellent F.E.A.R.-inspired indie shooter, Trepang2 (a squared symbol; it’s not a sequel)? It has a very creepy level set partially in the Backrooms which’d be very up your alley.

[cantinflas]

Nice teaser, still gives that sense of anxiety from his vids and will be pretty trippy to see in the cinema.

Love that you caught a Puffy Chair reference Colin lol maybe some Get Out sunken place vibes too?

[colinr0380]

We may need to set up a dedicated Backrooms thread for this film, if possible.

As our local Backrooms expert, colin, I was wondering if you’d played the excellent F.E.A.R.-inspired indie shooter, Trepang2 (a squared symbol; it’s not a sequel)? It has a very creepy level set partially in the Backrooms which’d be very up your alley.

I have not, but did buy it a couple of years ago in a Steam sale as I loved the F.E.A.R. games, with their slo-mo Matrix style shootouts, and heard that this was the closest to a new one of them that we would be likely to have. That perhaps shows that my videogame backlog is about as large as my DVD/Blu-ray one! So I was not aware of it having a Backrooms-style level!

[colinr0380]

Thanks for setting up the thread! I thought it may be worth copying over my post from the Horror Film List thread here too, because that contains information on the previous Backrooms videos that Kane Parsons has done and links to playlists of his work:

The recent Wendigoon video is a good run-through of the major Backrooms-related series created by Kane Parsons (which seems to have been a specific off shoot of a more general internet-based liminal space-meets-SCP mythos (EDIT: here's a recent Super Eyepatch Wolf video on that general trend), seemingly similar to the way that Marble Hornets developed as its own standalone project out of the wider open source Slender Man mythology), since it features an interview with that creator (I think the environments are apparently all done with Blender animation tools, which is what makes the "Report" video using live action locations and actors feel a bit uncharacteristic and jarring). If you run through the videos, make sure to check out the description boxes for the occasional links to unlisted tie-in videos!

It has been fascinating to follow the Kane Pixels series in particular, with trying to make sense of where each of its videos are fitting into its convoluted timeline, and the idea that this was either an attempt to create extra-dimensional space to solve Earth's pressing real estate problem that had unforeseen consequences (did the experiment create all of the unreal and uncanny seeming environments? Or did they pre-exist and we just happened upon them? Or is the uncanniness created by human attempts to co-opt and make the strangely constructed environments somewhat 'livable' and habitable?), or ended up creating a bridge to a different universe with beings that are now aware of us. Or are the monsters people who have been fallen into the area and been trapped and mutated over time? And since the 'universes' merged (or this add-on universe was created) seemingly more and more people have been disappearing, 'no-clipping' out of our world through gaps in reality into this new dimension. And there seem to be pockets of time slippage as well. Is it a Gantz-style purgatory, or is there a more prosaic explanation? Can we have a mix of both?

Who knows if this series will stick the landing, or even if there is a landing to be stuck to. For now, I'm just enjoying the chance to speculate! (And it also got me to return to House of Leaves a few times over the last couple of months, just to try and capture a similar feeling!)

These “Backrooms” videos and their imitators have been consistently popping up in my algorithm since watching the above linked and morbid curiosity/boredom leads me to watching some, which leads to more appearing and so on. That said, I actually really enjoyed this one, which contains no stupid monsters or artificial spookiness and arrives at something weirdly unsettling nonetheless, like navigating a space created for humans by someone who doesn’t quite understand their subject or how we use spaces/places like this

Those Matt Studios videos are great too! I'm with you there in the sense that its the strangeness of the environments themselves that are the draw rather than any monsters (is architectural planning the only real acceptable face of A.I. algorithm-generated art?), even if in many cases as with many a found footage film I can understand that they inevitably have to be there so as to provide 'closure' for the 'narrative'. (The otherwise unrelated to all of this more recent Backrooms material House of Leaves novel, for example, also has to have a nebulously defined threatening monster prowling at the heart of its labyrinth, though in that case it is updating the Theseus and the Minotaur legend into urban home spelunking!)

Basically the "Backrooms" concept existed before this as that liminal image with its block of text which was evocative enough that a lot of different people had a go at creating their own lore for it, both in internet posts and as Mr Sausage has brought up, in videogames too (most recently we have had co-op games like Escape the Backrooms, or mood pieces like Pools). There were lots of people who sort of dedicated themselves to describing one 'level' of the Backrooms in great detail, the way that people would do with creating a specific SCP Foundation monster encounter. Which was very creative but also like the SCP Foundation project led to quite disparate results between different pieces, from the moody, to the scary, to the just plain goofy.

So when Kane Parsons came along with his first Backrooms-style video it was initially seen as just part of that trend. But being a glitchy found footage videocamera production added an extra scary quality to it, and there was a real sense of narrative beats and musical rhythms to his work, as well as very effective capturing of both the sense of curiosity of exploration and the handling of monster encounters that made it stand out from everything else. As he added more videos that helped to develop the lore within his own series larger and larger until it grew into its own thing, and now is almost starting to become synonymous with the Backrooms concept itself as a whole, and probably even more so now that he is making the official film version of it. So whilst the Backrooms, like say Slender Man, is a concept that bubbled up out of the collective subconscious of the internet and message boards, Kane Parsons has already really left his own indelible mark on the map for that territory.

[cantinflas]

Yeah the best ones are all about the uneasy atmosphere where nothing happens. I thought the Pools were nice to zone out to when they were first coming out. Many of the others I've seen try too hard for jump scares.

How do you think the movie will approach the narrative/lore? Apparently there are additional writers and so far I've read a couple of different synopses:

After a therapist's patient goes missing into a dimension beyond reality, she has to enter the unknown to save him.

A strange doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom.

[domino harvey]

I’ll quote one more post of my exchange with Colin

I dutifully watched a few more from a couple different channels but there is really only so many variations on this theme I need, and for the most part, the more “lore” these creators try to shoehorn in, the more amateurish they appear.

However, I enjoyed the channel Return to Render’s ambitious entries, as they have a dark sense of humor (“Who’s this guy?”) that acts as an effective corrective of the self-seriousness of many of these kind of videos, and the adventures are played for grim laughs rather than jump scares. This is a particularly creative one

It will be interesting to see if the film forgoes the VHS filter that hides a lot of the CGI in these kind of shorts. Presumably the film will focus a lot on the “lore” aspect, probably via a secret corporation like in some of Parsons’ more recent shorts (which, honestly, I couldn’t finish). I don’t think any of us have linked to an example of this particular flavor of these videos, but leaked set pics confirm they’re doing the uncanny uniform outdoor neighborhood setting as well (picture a Windows default stock wallpaper from 2001 coming to life). Wonder if he’ll also include that other big recurring feature in other creators’ shorts, labyrinthine slides?

I’d worry about the box office for a film being aimed at the terminally online bloc but markiplier just showed us that the days of Snakes on a Plane may be behind us, and surely having two Oscar nominees in the cast can’t hurt

[colinr0380]

How do you think the movie will approach the narrative/lore? Apparently there are additional writers and so far I've read a couple of different synopses:

I am not entirely sure, though the therapist/patient dynamic idea sounds interesting! There has been the growing sense that the 'monsters' in the Kane Parsons videos (as distinct to the Backrooms videos done by others, which can all have their own takes) are probably just the missing people who fell into the Backrooms over the decades and something about the atmosphere of the place over time spent there is decaying and corrupting them into new forms as much as the environments are getting twisted around. We have never actually seen what the 'monsters' do to people once they catch them, just the chase sequences so far. So maybe they are terrifying as they run towards us, but are not out to kill per se(?)

And the last long form Backrooms video in the YouTube series at the current time fully brought out the what had only been heavily implied until now idea of how these environments appear to be co-existing with the 'real world' simultaneously and layered on top of it in a different kind of dimensional space. Hence how more and more innocent civilians are accidentally 'noclipping' into the environment, as opposed to the hazmat suited scientists who have opened their own 'official' entry points. And maybe the situation is growing faster and faster from just a trickle in the 1990s to the present because more people are falling in and making the situation snowball; or because the scientific experiments have actually caused the rift in the universe, in a kind of 'Large Hadron Collider wrecking reality' kind of way! But that is still more of a tantalising implication than anything concrete at this stage of things.

How that all will translate into the upcoming film, if at all, I do not know, but am excited to find out! The only thing I need from the film right now is the assurance that there will be the a brief moment of a first person perspective camera crawling over a carpet in extreme close up, in a manner we have not been treated to in cinema since Terence Davies! (IYKYK)

[colinr0380]

I thought that I should separate this more personal section into a entirely separate post (so, sorry for spamming the thread!) but I thought I should add this separate post as a kind of 'declaration of bias' on this subject, so that you will all know where I will probably be coming from in trying to explain why this particular series (and the whole "Analog Horror" subgenre in general) appeals to me so much, as I have spent a bit of time wondering that myself. I think for me, beyond the appeal of liminal space horror and these particular videos, it comes down to it hitting simultaneously on three things that I find particularly appealing:

1. House of Leaves - the classic liminal space novel of expanding space that is much celebrated;
2. As a J.G. Ballard fan, with these Backroom videos I get strongly reminded of his short story, Report on an Unidentified Space Station, which captured this same sense of the compelling beauty, and terror, of enormous, exponentially expanding spaces decades ago; and the weirdest one:
3. I have a bit of a fascination with studying the Twin Towers and 9/11 which I hope is not too morbid a fixation since it is not so much regarding the event itself, though that is the traumatic aspect that fixed the Twin Towers into a particular nexus of time, but more for what is left behind in terms of exploring the buildings in the period before the disaster occurred; and what material there has been left behind depicting them from a just pre-digital world where they would not have been documented as thoroughly as today. The aspect that most fascinates me are the empty photographs of the interiors capturing spaces that no longer exist in reality anymore. And spaces that not only no longer exist, but through these images are fixed at a kind of late 90s aesthetic of design and decor that only feels more strangely melancholy as we get further away from it in time. Like a glimpse of a lost past, or a divergent timeline. And that 'mournful fascination' of exploring the subject matter (like the ultimate version of the "Dead Mall" series) is what particularly resonates to me on going on to watch the Kane Parsons videos of solitary people anxiously exploring empty environments of a bygone era that were built and intended for bustling human activity, but are now silent.

I keep thinking if I ever did something like a thesis or an article this would be a subject I would want to explore more deeply, because whilst I think this is probably just a very strange and quirky personal-to-just-me connection that is being drawn (as in, I am not expecting any of this to factor into any official Backrooms content in any shape or form!), I do wonder if there may be some sort of linkage that can be drawn from the way that such a brutally zeitgeist (dis)rupturing event factors into the whole genre of "Analog Horror", in the way that there is a kind of anxious nostalgic melancholy for a lost era from the turn of the Millennium, as providing a faded glimpse of some sort of previously existing world that somehow disappeared into memory aside from brief snatches of glitchy VHS and pictures of strangely furnished to modern eyes rooms.

[colinr0380]

On the videogame versions of the Backrooms, there was this rather touching comment left under the teaser trailer:

Creator of the game "Enter The Backrooms" here. I released my game on Steam just over 5 years ago because I thought the concept was really neat and because I wanted to try making a commercial game. It was very rough around the edges, but I had fun and continued pushing updates after release. About a year later, Kane Pixels started releasing his Found Footage videos, and their virality trickled down to my game. Despite its subpar quality (I didn't even use a proper game engine), the hype around The Backrooms brought more attention to my game than it ever deserved. If it weren't for his work, I couldn't have afforded my college degree in game development, which I am completing this year. The Backrooms and Kane Pixels literally gave me a head start in life and I couldn't be more excited to see a movie about it all.

[cantinflas]

Some brilliant thoughts and ideas above! My head is swirling in anticipation.

The therapist/patient dynamic is what made me think of the sunken place, coupled with the chair and descending down of the floor.

It does worry me a bit that there's a more conventional writer attached, would've preferred Parsons was let loose with his own material.

[domino harvey]

I had no idea Ryan Murphy did a Backrooms episode for his American Horror Stories anthology series. Based on the clips/summary in this YT recap, it looks worse than almost any zero budget Blender Backrooms short uploaded to YT

[TechnicolorAcid]

I didn’t know that the teaser for this dropped but I love Kane Parsons’ work so I’ll definitely check this out when it drops. Although I’m more of a fan of The Oldest View than Backrooms especially in how Parsons uses his singular sense of liminal space to create a decaying memory of a history long forgotten while also being genuinely horrifying. Part 3: The Rolling Giant is easily my favorite of the parts and I find that you don’t even really need much context to enjoy it as I watched it without watching the prior 2 segments and still really enjoyed it.

[brundlefly]

Trailer.

[colinr0380]

Very exciting! That was kind of what I was hoping for, with the filmic structure containing a VHS-style exploration within it and perhaps viewed Cannibal Holocaust-style by the Renate Reinsve character. We even get a quick glimpse of what appears to be the hazmat suited scientists as well. The idea of one character seemingly getting out and then 'leading an expedition' into the Backrooms feels very House of Leaves, too.

(We've never seen a non-hazmat suited civilian character escape from the Backrooms before - Peter Tench aside - although we have in Kane's other series that TechnicolorAcid mentions above, The Oldest View, which was presumably being made in tandem with working on this film. In that one we literally get two alternate endings of the protagonist failing to escape in one timeline; and in the other escaping back into the real world again, but seemingly possessed by the spirit of the 'Rolling Giant'. Presumably the underlying idea there is that you either die along with the era itself; or, if you live, you continue onwards carrying the memories of it within you)

Also in this trailer we are getting many allusions to similar moments that occurred in the "Found Footage" videos, such as the glimpse through a crack between two walls moment from the first video; the figures half in the floor from the third video; and the standee figure lurking ominously halfway down a corridor, also from the third video.

EDIT: Re-watching that trailer a few times over, I also really like the aesthetics of the briefly glimpsed 'real world' office, living room and bedroom as well, which appear to be trying to capture that soft pastel, minimalist 80-90s-style of design and decor mentioned earlier. Just the kind of place a person may want to go back to for a bit of respite after a hard day at the fluroescently lit office space!

[colinr0380]

Here's Chiwetel Ejiofor playing a pirate in a furniture store commercial that looks like it has come straight out of Found Footage Fest's archive of old adverts.

[cantinflas]

Here's Chiwetel Ejiofor playing a pirate in a furniture store commercial that looks like it has come straight out of Found Footage Fest's archive of old adverts.

This is great and there's also the flyer that gets produced from the fax number:



The ARG elements certainly have the potential to be next level on this one.

Plus around the 1 min mark in the trailer if you can catch it this flashes up:

[colinr0380]

Also the 17th May 1990 date of the fax connects with the 29th June 1990 date on the CCTV camera of Ejiofor in the Backrooms in the trailer itself. So that seems to be where these events are going to fit in the whole timeline of the series. That sent me down a date rabbit hole:

The first Found Footage video is September 1996; the second 19th August 1995; and the third is undated but the brief radio clip at the opening talks about the Oklahoma City bombing of April 1995.

(9780415263573 - an ISBN code - and home_27647 are alluding to things happened upon during Found Footage 2, so date from at least before that point)

In the hazmat suited Async scientists timeline:
Overflow is dating the government involvement all the way back to August 1972!
___
Prototype is 10th May 1982;
___
The Third Test is 2nd July 1988;
First Contact is 17th October 1989; (there is a tie in unlisted video - once called "Collateral" and now called "faultline.mov" - that implies that this event caused the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake)
___
Lighting and Tile Survey is 14th/15th November 1989;
Missing Persons is 3rd February 1990 (showing that the spike in missing civilians is beginning around this time);
Autopsy Report is 5th February 1990;
Informational Video is 29th February 1990 ("Never enter The Complex alone. All expeditions are to be comprised of no fewer than three individuals"), which, yes, is a date that never existed. That's the one that first suggested that people are travelling through space in the real world as they go through the Backrooms dimension, as it pays off in Presentation and Reunion.
Mar11_90_ARCHIVE is self explanatory;
Motion Detected is 3rd May 1990, showing footage from 5th and 6th March (and introducing the famous "Big red circle around object of interest" meme! It feels that this specific video also had a significant structural influence on a number of videos in the other great analog horror production, the "Greylock" series);
Pitfalls is 6th May 1990; as is Report - Pitfalls appears to be the chronological first monster encounter of the series, seemingly with someone who fell into the area, as well as the first representation of an 'outside' area in the Backrooms; and Report is the first short with a full shot on non-glitchy VHS third person filmic approach;
Presentation is 8th May 1990; as is _recording014. Interestingly in this run of videos we are seeing some of the Executives of the Async corporation wandering about the Backrooms without suits, which potentially may have been an unwise move!
Reunion is 25th May 1990;
Damage Control is 26th May 1990;
Static Dead End is 29th May 1990
___

So, it looks as if the events of the film are taking place long before the other "Found Footage" mid-1990s civilian explorations, and are close to the final videos in the Async scientists part of the series. Which itself is making me wonder whether the origin of the monsters we see in the later Found Footage videos are the main characters here, after having been trapped in the Backrooms for years?

[colinr0380]

The next teaser trailers. Which in the brief flash of the credits block reveal that it has now been "Rated R: Language and some violent content / Bloody Images", and confirms that Parsons is involved and co-credited for the music as well.

I like that it appears that the 'portal' into the Backrooms may be based on that blue backing tape image from the Everywhere At The End of Time album art. We know that Kane Parsons knows about this since the album image appears in amongst the pile of imagery montage picture of his "The Algorithm Loves You" track.

[domino harvey]

Interesting, I would have bet money they’d go for PG-13 to get the Five Nights at Freddy’s audience

[cantinflas]

Yet somehow it's only M in Australia so will definitely get that crowd.

I love that they actually built 30,000 square feet of backrooms for this with people really getting lost.

[cantinflas]

Enjoyed this convo between Parsons and Wan