Backrooms: The Viral Liminal Space Movie Hits The Big Screen Soon

A24 brings the internet’s famous “liminal space” to the big screen with Backrooms. Sci-Fi fans don’t have to wait long because it drops in theaters on May 29. There are a lot of folks who seem keen on watching it, so read on to find out why.

YouTube Moves To The Big Screen

The film captures the same eerie atmosphere that made the original YouTube shorts globally popular. At least, from the little bits that folks saw in the March trailer.

Kane Parsons, just 20, directs the science-fiction horror, and that’s a huge win for him. Actually, it already seems like that alone appeals to younger moviegoers. If you don’t know, he first went viral for his found footage shorts produced while still in high school.

Now, he’s one of A24’s youngest directors. According to Nerd Bot, the film “is based on Parsons’ viral YouTube series and the original ‘Backrooms’ creepypasta.” By sticking to the found footage aesthetic, the film maintains a disorienting tone that fans enjoy.

A New Take

In the movie, instead of anonymous explorers, Dr. Mary Kline, a therapist, arrived. Acted by Renate Reinsve, she finds herself in a yellow-walled dimension. In fact, she seems rather dedicated as a therapist because she went there to find a missing patient.

Interestingly, the entrance to a nightmare world was tucked away in the basement of a furniture showroom. Clearly, normal isn’t always found in utility stores! Anyway, it’s called “Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire.” Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as the showroom owner, Clark.

Maintaining The Original Feel

Fans of the original web series seem happy that the feature film isn’t abandoning its roots. The trailer suggests that the production team keeps the grainy VHS look and the original soundtrack that featured in the YouTube episodes.

Obviously, that adds to the canon in the low-fi source material. Naturally, viewers seemed excited about it sticking close to the “liminal space” aesthetic rather than turning it into a Hollywood slasher.

Viewers React

When the trailer dropped, complete with the commercial for the furniture store, viewers seemed keen to have their say about it. One of them penned, “The fact that they are not only keeping the VHS aesthetic, but also the soundtrack from the webseries tells me this is going to be pure peak.”

Here are a few more responses from the discussion, and they seem to show a lot of folks are very interested in the movie:

• The fact it’s both Found Footage and Normal Cinematography is all I needed.
• That dude from 4chan who started all this is probably in disbelief seeing how big it’s gotten.
• I’ve never been so excited for a film that’s completely piss yellow before in my whole life.
• 20 Years old and you get to direct a movie with that kind of cast is crazy. Dude really hit the jackpot in life.
• I can’t believe A24 let the guy who popularized the backrooms concept actually direct the movie, this is what it should always be like.

The film runs for 1 hour and 45 minutes and carries an R rating for language and violence.

What are your thoughts? Are you looking forward to watching Backrooms? Let us know in the comments below, and remember to come back here often for all your interesting movies and stories about the mysterious and unexplained.