#Backrooms is the hashtag for “Backrooms,” the 2026 A24 horror film directed by Kane Parsons in his feature debut and adapted from his viral creepypasta web series. The tag aggregates fan theories, premiere reactions and box-office milestones around the most commercially successful debut in A24’s history.
Quick Facts
- Director: Kane Parsons (feature debut)
- Studio: A24
- Premiere: 7 May 2026, Aero Theatre, Los Angeles
- U.S. release: 29 May 2026
- Opening weekend: $81.5M domestic / $118M worldwide
- Rotten Tomatoes: 89% (219 reviews); average rating 7.5/10
- Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell
The Film
“Backrooms” is a psychological science-fiction horror about Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a furniture-store owner and failed architect struggling with alcoholism and a recent divorce, and Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), his therapist, who become entangled with a dimension of seemingly endless liminal hallways accessed through the store’s basement. Mark Duplass plays Phil, a scientist at the Async Research Institute secretly monitoring Clark, with Finn Bennett and Lukita Maxwell rounding out the cast. The script is by Will Soodik, and the film expands Kane Parsons’s “Backrooms” creepypasta — a long-running internet myth about wandering into off-grid, fluorescent-lit corridors — into a feature-length narrative anchored by the franchise’s signature visual language of empty office geometry.
Origin
Kane Parsons uploaded his original “Backrooms” found-footage web series to YouTube in January 2022 at age 16, drawing tens of millions of views and pulling the creepypasta concept into mainstream internet culture. Several studios approached him about adapting the series; A24 took the project, kept Parsons in the director’s chair, and gave him a budget reportedly anchored in the studio’s commercial-horror playbook to scale his shorts into a single feature.
Critical Reception
Reviews were strongly positive: 89% of the first 219 critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave it a positive notice for an average rating of 7.5/10, with the consensus calling it “a startlingly assured feature debut from director Kane Parsons” that “bends the liminal spaces that have haunted the internet for years into a horror film that’s as mesmerizing as it is terrifying.” Collider went further, calling it “a near-flawless horror film that demands to be seen,” while The Hollywood Reporter and Just Jared rounded up a wider review picture in their roundups.
Commercial Success
“Backrooms” took $38.4 million on its first day of domestic release and posted an $81.5 million opening weekend — A24’s biggest opening ever and the largest debut by a young filmmaker, surpassing Josh Trank’s “Chronicle” (2012). Worldwide it crossed $118 million in its first weekend, with roughly $37 million coming from international markets. ScreenRant noted that the result outgrossed almost every other 2026 horror film in just three days.
Cultural Impact
The release marked a generational handoff for the “Backrooms” internet myth: a fan-made concept that propagated through YouTube and Reddit in the early 2020s became, in 2026, the foundation of A24’s biggest theatrical debut. The film’s success on opening weekend reignited a wider online conversation about liminal-space horror, the creepypasta-to-cinema pipeline, and the studio’s willingness to let very young directors lead its biggest swings.
Variations & Related Tags
The film traveled under tags including #Backrooms, #BackroomsA24 and #KaneParsons, sitting next to the broader A24 and online liminal-spaces conversations.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backrooms_(film)
- https://a24films.com/films/backrooms
- https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/backrooms-review-roundup-critics-a24-horror-1236606544/
- https://collider.com/backrooms-a24-movie-horror-kane-parsons/
- https://www.justjared.com/2026/05/29/backrooms-reviews-are-in-see-what-critics-are-saying-about-the-viral-a24-horror-movie/
- https://screenrant.com/backrooms-2026-movie-global-box-office-debut/