Every new release at the box office on January 7, 2022, was deemed mediocre at best. Among others, films like The 355 starring Penélope Cruz and The Kindred starring Samantha Bond both had problems succeeding as well, faltering with both critics and ticket sales. Unlike the numerous features premiering at the movie theater, a short film entirely shot in the first person was quietly released to YouTube on that day which would soon take hold of the internet’s attention and not let go.
With a much more sophisticated premise than 1997's Cube and very creepily evolving the once comfortable aesthetic of liminal spaces, which is centered around the uncanny valley feeling connected to crowded spaces once they become empty, 16-year-old director Kane Parsons uploaded a video called The Backrooms (Found Footage).
With Kane Parsons’ series exploring a dangerous, new world that is hidden within our own, covert operational facilities that ignore very obvious dangers in pursuit of profit, and terrifying lifeforms birthed from mold that mimic human noises in order to kill them, a very intriguing story was created.
Not only attracting the attention of a worldwide audience but film studios as well, a press release on February 6 shared that Parsons is teaming up with production companies A24, Atomic Monster, Chernin Entertainment, and 21 Laps Entertainment to turn The Backrooms into a full-fledged feature film. With titles like Midsommar, the Annabelle trilogy, and the upcoming Boogeyman adaptation made by these companies, a retelling of The Backrooms is sure to be phenomenal.
With production starting soon, the next thought on everybody’s mind is which story elements from the original work are going to be touched upon for the movie theater audience. Let’s take a look at what everybody hopes to see.
The Premise of The Backrooms
In the grainy featurette, a young filmmaker named Kane Pints strangely trips through the floor and winds up in an ongoing labyrinth that is made up of old office corridors with bright, blinding lights and repeating striped wallpapers.
After traversing around trying to find an exit, Kane is stalked by a Lifeform, a being made up of metamorphosed bacteria. Moving fast with skinny, dark limbs and sounding human-like with its screams, the man ends up cornered. Tripping backward, he phases through the floor and keeps on falling through the clouds that are in the sky. The video ends with a still feed of the camcorder on the ground, implying that Pine is dead.
Since then, the lore surrounding The Backrooms has greatly expanded, with Parsons releasing fifteen more entries that show off different areas of the mysterious space and other people phasing through the floor, only to end up in this twisted realm of existence. We also come to learn about a shady company called the Async Research Institute that wants to learn about, explore, and inevitably somehow monetize the seemingly endless space.
Danger Lurks Around Every Corner
Discovered early on in Kane Parson’s series, viewers were introduced to the Threshold, a door-sized device that connects our world with the eerie plane. Even though early prototypes of the Threshold were so volatile in nature that a devastating earthquake was caused, the issues were later fixed and a new construction stands. With a demanding presence similar to that of the portal from Stargate, a well-timed reveal of the Threshold in The Backrooms movie could put old and new fans in awe of such a mechanical Goliath.
In numerous uploads, Async sends in a highly trained team of four scientists dressed in large yellow hazmat suits into new areas of The Backrooms to better assess any dangers or possible uses for that space. Through the squad’s findings over time, null zones have been discovered where the ever-branching complex can actually make a connection to the real world. A dark space like a movie theater would be perfect for a unique, transitional scene where at first, researchers would be methodically scanning a new area.
Blowing through the low-buzzing fluorescent lights, a car could suddenly phase through with such a thunderous impact that a scientist we’ve come to know through the movie’s plot could instantly be killed. With such an impactful and striking contrast compared to the consistent low hum from the lights that reverberate through the yellow wallpaper, such a jump scare would shock more than any YouTube video could.
Is The Backrooms One Giant Living Entity?
What is potentially the most interesting idea to come out of The Backrooms that could be thrilling to viewers on screen comes from a single video uploaded by Kane Parsons called I Remember. Whether the short narration for this entry is simply done by a delusional, tormented captive or the winding complex itself is seemingly forming a conscious mind, it seems as though a malignant force is happy that people’s realities (both livelihoods and physical homes) are so easily being folded unto themselves. If this is indeed a sign of The Backrooms being an ever-growing mass of living bacteria that has learned how to speak, such a revelation will certainly leave an impression in moviegoers’ minds.
With no release date not yet mentioned, fans are impatiently waiting for any more news regarding the online horror adaptation. With the right production companies on board and Kane Parsons himself directing, we will all get lost in the intricacies of The Backrooms soon enough.