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Credit: Blumhouse, A24, Atomic Monster
The first trailer for Blumhouse and A24’s The Backrooms has landed on the 2026 movie schedule, and it’s doing something that most Hollywood adaptations of internet series struggle to pull off, especially when it comes to new horror movies. It actually feels like the thing people fell in love with in the first place.
Based on the viral YouTube series created by Kane Parsons, The Backrooms’ first trailer leans heavily into the lo-fi, found-footage movie aesthetic that helped the original videos explode online in 2022. At the same time, this is clearly a larger production, backed by A24, with recognizable actors and a wider theatrical release on the way.
That mix could have easily gone sideways. Instead, the trailer suggests the filmmakers understood the assignment because it’s giving me all the creepy vibes I could have asked for.
Credit: Blumhouse, A24, Atomic Monster
A Rare Case Of Hollywood Not Sanding Down The Edges
One of the biggest risks when adapting internet-born horror is over-polishing it. The roughness is often the point. The original Backrooms videos worked because they felt like something you weren’t supposed to see or found on some forgotten corner of the internet. The camera drifted. The lighting was harsh and wrong, and the spaces felt endless and empty. The trailer keeps that all intact.
There are long, uneasy shots of fluorescent-lit hallways that seem to loop in on themselves. The camera perspective shifts to handheld and lofi, giving it an unstable quality in comparison to something closer to modern digital cinema. It doesn’t abandon the analog horror roots that made the series popular.
That’s where the surprise comes in. Studio horror, especially when it originates from a niche source, often trades atmosphere for clarity. Here, the atmosphere appears to be the priority.
Credit: A24, Blumhouse, Atomic Monster
Found Footage Meets A Bigger Canvas
What makes this version of Backrooms stand out is how it blends two approaches that don’t usually coexist. On the one hand, there’s the stripped-down, almost DIY feel of the best found-footage movies and the creepiness of the “liminal space” aesthetic. It’s a similar vibe we got when the experimental viral film Skinamarink dropped in 2022. On the other hand, unlike Skinkamarink, there’s a clear expansion in scope, with actors like Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve stepping into a story with more defined characters and stakes.
The original series hinted at narrative threads but often left viewers to piece together the story. The film looks like it will give audiences more structure without over-explaining the central mystery. That balance is tricky, especially with a concept built around liminal spaces and the fear of getting lost in an unexplainable universe that doesn’t follow the rules of physics as we know them.
Parsons, who was still a teenager when his Backrooms videos took off, is at the helm of this big-screen adaptation, making his feature directorial debut here. The upcoming A24 project also marks a significant step for the production company, which continues to invest in unconventional horror that doesn’t fit neatly into mainstream formulas.
Credit: A24, Blumhouse, Atomic Monster
Backrooms Feels Different From Other Internet Lore Adaptations
There’s a long track record of adaptations taking something strange and internet-specific and flattening it into something generic. That doesn’t appear to be the case here. Just look at Slender Man. Not the HBO documentary Beware the Slenderman, which is worth watching, but the fictional studio version. The original concept and online lore are genuinely unsettling. The film, on the other hand, misses the mark entirely and earned its 8% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
If anything, the trailer suggests The Backrooms is trying to preserve the unease that made the original series work, while expanding it into something that can sustain a full theatrical runtime. It doesn’t look like it’s explaining away the mystery or smoothing out the weirdness. That restraint might be the most promising sign.
The Backrooms is set to hit theaters on May 29, and if the trailer is any indication, this could be one of the rare cases where a viral horror concept survives the jump to the big screen without losing what made it unsettling in the first place.