What started as a viral YouTube horror series made by a teenager is now an A24 feature film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, the first trailer suggests the wait was absolutely worth it
There is something deeply unsettling about a long, empty hallway bathed in yellow fluorescent light, and A24 is banking on the fact that the internet already knows exactly why. The studio has released the first full trailer for Backrooms, a sci-fi horror film that takes one of the most persistent and genuinely creepy urban legends of the internet age and gives it a full cinematic treatment, complete with two of the most compelling performers working today and a director who, not long ago, was still a teenager making videos on YouTube.
From a viral YouTube series to A24
The story behind how Backrooms came to exist as a feature film is almost as fascinating as the film itself. Kane Parsons launched his found footage horror series on YouTube in 2022 at the age of 19, building an anthological universe around the concept of the backrooms, a place that exists, according to internet lore, just behind the walls of ordinary spaces. The series focused on a therapist searching for a patient who had vanished into a dimension beyond normal reality, and it accumulated a devoted following drawn to its raw, disorienting atmosphere and the specificity of its dread.
A24 took notice. Parsons signed with the studio while still 19 years old, making him the youngest filmmaker ever to collaborate with the label. That association alone was enough to generate serious anticipation. A24 attaching itself to a horror concept rooted in internet mythology, filtered through the sensibility of a genuinely gifted young director, was the kind of creative alignment that tends to produce something worth watching.
What the trailer reveals
The trailer leans fully into the claustrophobic terror that made the original series so effective. The setting draws from a creepypasta, a category of user-generated internet horror, that first appeared on the website 4chan in 2019. The original image was deceptively simple: an endlessly repeating maze of carpeted, fluorescent-lit rooms behind the walls of an ordinary retail space, utterly devoid of people but somehow suggesting that something is very much present.
The film’s version of that world appears to expand the scale considerably. Characters move through cavernous, labyrinthine spaces that stretch in every direction with no visible exit, the kind of environment that weaponizes familiarity against itself. An empty office corridor has no business being frightening, and yet the trailer makes a convincing case that it absolutely can be.
The tagline, Everything Must Go, plays on the retail setting with a double meaning that lands somewhere between darkly funny and genuinely ominous.
The cast assembled around this world
The decision to place Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve at the center of this story gives Backrooms a dramatic weight that separates it from most horror releases. Ejiofor brings an intensity and intelligence to every role he takes, and Reinsve, whose performance in Sentimental Value earned her an Oscar nomination, is one of the most quietly magnetic screen presences in contemporary cinema. Watching the two of them navigate a world designed to disorient is a compelling prospect on its own terms.
The supporting cast adds further texture. Mark Duplass, known to horror audiences for his work in Creep, joins Finn Bennett of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms fame, Lukita Maxwell from Generation and Avan Jogia of 56 Days. It is a cast built with care, populated by performers who understand how to make genre material feel grounded and human.
A production with serious backing
The film was shot in Canada in July and carries a production infrastructure that reflects how seriously the industry took this project from the beginning. Alongside A24 and co-financier Chernin Entertainment, the producing credits include Atomic Monster, the company founded by James Wan, as well as 21 Laps Entertainment, whose principals Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen and Dan Levine are among the most accomplished producers in contemporary Hollywood. The screenplay was written by Will Soodik, whose previous credits include Ash vs. Evil Dead.
Backrooms opens in theaters on May 29.
Story credit: DEADLINE