The backrooms have lived on the internet—or maybe just in our memories—for years, but they’re making the jump to the big screen. A24 shared the first teaser for Backrooms today, a very online horror movie that will make the jump to theaters, with stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, on May 29.
We don’t get too much about a potential Backrooms plot from the teaser, but it does seem to tap into a similar unsettling, lo-fi energy as recent horror films like Skinamarink. The backrooms seem to be copying itself over and over. As the voice in the trailer tells us, “The more times it remembers something, the less it does,” as the room on the screen gets blander and blander. The synopsis provided by A24 merely says, “A strange doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom.”
Even discounting all the history of the backrooms on the internet—which dates back to at least 2018—this film has been in the works for some time. In early 2023, A24 announced the project with then-17-year-old director Kane Parsons. Parsons had been already uploading videos on YouTube when he ended up linking up with James Wan’s Atomic Monster, director Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps, and Chernin Entertainment for this movie. Beside Ejiofor and Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, and Lukita Maxwell will also star.