‘Backrooms’ Takes You Deeper Inside the Internet’s Most Uncanny Horror Myth

Miles Klee Culture May 30, 2026 7:00 AM Backrooms Takes You Deeper Inside the Internet’s Most Uncanny Horror Myth Kane Parsons was just 16 years old when he created a viral YouTube horror series based on a 4chan meme. Now he’s ready to conquer the big screen. Still from Backrooms. Courtesy of A24 Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story The 20-year-old filmmaker Kane Parsons has risen to the top so fast that he’s had zero time to process how far he’s come. “It's been go, go, go,” Parsons tells WIRED. “Even the tiniest bit of a break,” he says, would give him some better perspective on everything that’s happened over the past few years. But for the moment, he’s soaking up the limelight—and thinks it’ll be at least another month before he has the space to reflect on his big break. Backrooms , a moody horror piece that stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, is a cerebral expansion of Parsons’ atmospheric YouTube web series of the same name. It marks his feature debut as A24’s youngest director to date, at the helm of a movie long anticipated by a huge and hungry internet fan base. You could hardly ask for a better kick start to summer blockbuster season. Yet Parsons makes his meteoric success sound like something of an accident. “I never went into making that first short or making the series with the intention of, ‘I want to do this so I can prove to Hollywood that this is an engine that is viable for a film,’” he says. That original nine-minute video , titled “The Backrooms (Found Footage)” and uploaded by Parsons in 2022, was inspired by—of all things—a sinister 4chan meme that spawned a collaborative mythology. The 2019 post on the notorious image board’s /x/ forum included a disquieting photo of an empty hallway bathed in sickly light. An anonymous user described being transported into “the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old, moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of