Featured Image Credit: A24
Horror is 'butchering' the box office competition in 2026, and in a year that's already given us 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Scream 7, Hokum, and Obsession, a stacked schedule still includes the likes of Evil Dead Burn and Zach Cregger's Resident Evil reboot.
Alongside Obsession, everyone is talking about Kane Parsons' Backrooms, which stars 12 Years a Slave's Chiwetel Ejiofor and The Worst Person in the World's Renate Reinsve. Based on Parsons' Backrooms web series that's been creeping us out on YouTube since 2022, the indie horror sees Ejiofor's Clark as a furniture store owner and failed architect who finds himself lost in the titular liminal space.
While Parsons' film drew inspiration from the Portal video games, Mr. Robot TV series, and Robin Williams-led One Hour Photo, the origins of Backrooms can be traced back to a singular 4chan post in 2019.
Backrooms has broken some impressive box office records despite being in its infancy, giving A24 its biggest opening weekend ever, being the largest original horror movie debut in history, and making Parsons the youngest person ever (aged 20) to have a #1 film at the global box office. Not bad for a movie that's based on a rogue 4chan post.
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Back in 2019, someone replied to a May 12 post in the x/Paranormal board, asking people to share "disquieting images that just feel 'off'." The OG post shared the 'Backrooms' and added: "If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll 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, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in."
Noclip is a popular term in the world of video games where characters slip out of bounds. While speedrunners will often noclip to get through levels faster, it takes on a much more sinister theme here.
The original Backrooms post concluded: "God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you." Backrooms became a popular Creepypasta on Reddit and then expanded into its own r/backrooms subreddit before Parsons really brought it to the mainstream.
It was eventually deciphered that the urine-colored Backrooms was a real locale, traced back to a HobbyTown store in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Speaking to Wisconsin Public Radio, Robert Penner, distinguished dissertating fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Department of Anthropology, said it's unclear how the image migrated from the HobbyTown store. Still, Penner mused: "Somehow, somebody saw it and the crossover happened at some very obscure juncture in human history."
In terms of the next big turning point, it's one of Parsons' videos from 2022 getting over 81 million views that "blew the whole concept open."
Sadly, for those wanting to visit HobbyTown, it's now been taken over by John Hetzel and turned into John’s Hobbies. As for the infamous Backrooms room, it's been replaced by a carpeted race track for radio-controlled cars.
Although Hetzel wasn't aware of the locale’s past, the previous owner had mentioned it in passing. Just nine months after getting the keys, we imagine it's a very different story, as more and more people are making pilgrimages to his humble hobby store.
According to Hetzel, the movie has shone a new light on the building, with someone even booking a birthday party there so that they can say they've celebrated in the OG Backrooms.
