What evil lurks in the drabbest of interiors?The meme-rooted “Backrooms” is the latest movie to pull its mounting horrors out of liminal spaces. “Exit 8,” released earlier this year, was set entirely in a subway corridor. In “Backrooms,” a struggling furniture salesperson discovers beneath his store an underground labyrinth, all lined with yellow wallpapered walls and fluorescent lighting.Where “Backrooms” came from is more interesting — and potentially meaningful — than the result. The movie, directed by 20-year-old YouTuber-turned-filmmaker Kane Parsons, is a fitfully unsettling nightmare that never convincingly builds beyond its creepy, dated-decor premise.But the “Backrooms” backstory is more intriguing. In 2019, an anonymous post on 4chan creepypasta — an online repository for internet-created urban legends — provided the initial image of the seemingly infinite Backrooms with a caption describing “nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz.”
Like many others, Parsons — who has posted under “Kane Pixels” — picked up the idea and ran with it. His YouTube series expanded on the 4chan post, adding a found footage approach. Eventually, A24 greenlit his movie, the big-screen product of an internet-born concept.
