A24 to Release 'Backrooms' Horror Film Directed by 20-Year-Old Kane Parsons

A24 will release *Backrooms*, a horror film directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons.

Hollywood Reporter

Parsons launched the *Backrooms* YouTube series in early 2022, drawing on an internet urban legend about an endless maze of yellow-wallpapered rooms lit by humming fluorescent lights. The concept resonated with viewers amid “collective anxiety around the system—economic, industrial or otherwise,” the director said.

Hollywood Reporter

Director Kane Parsons works from a script by Will Soodik, with producers James Wan, Shawn Levy and Osgood Perkins. The cast includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve (therapist), Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett and Lukita Maxwell. The film is produced by A24.

Hollywood Reporter

A physical set of 30,000 sq ft was built to replicate the backrooms, causing crew members to become disoriented. To match the web series, the team performed 50 wallpaper tests to achieve the exact yellow hue. Parsons used Blender for both pre-visualization and set modeling, ensuring digital designs matched the set.

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At CCXP Mexico, Parsons said the film treats the series’ lore as a “jumping-off point” to explore isolated characters, with most scenes featuring only one or two people to emphasize loneliness. He stressed that the backrooms are not a mutable dreamscape but a space that exploits the brain’s need to map its surroundings, creating confusion when environment never changes. Parsons also linked the setting to sensory-deprivation theory, arguing that prolonged exposure to a featureless room heightens the nervous system’s search for stimulation, intensifying horror.

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• “It does take more of a specific approach, where you’re seeing it through the lens of these specific characters — these individuals living these atomized, lonely lives,” — Kane Parsons, Director

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• “We built 30,000 square feet of actual backrooms that we could walk around in.” — Kane Parsons, Director

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• “The backrooms, to me, has felt aligned with what happens when someone goes through sensory deprivation on the individual level — and you go out in an empty room — and the body, the nervous system needs stimulation so badly [when] it’s deprived of it. It starts to find noise and information in the pattern of the walls and starts to take that noise more seriously than it normally would. It opens its threshold of what it’s willing to accept.” — Kane Parsons, Director

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The film translates an internet-born horror concept into a cinematic study of isolation, using a tangible set to amplify the unsettling effect of endless, unchanging space and reflecting societal anxieties about economic and industrial systems.

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*Backrooms* will debut in theaters on May 29, offering the first major studio adaptation of a YouTube-originated property and providing a test case for internet-culture translations.

Hollywood Reporter