Some titles arrive with built-in myth before a single frame of marketing lands, and “The Backrooms” is one of them. What started as Kane Parsons’ viral analog-horror web series is now an A24 feature, and the trailer marks the moment the internet creepypasta formally crosses into studio-scale genre territory.
Parsons directing the feature was already the hook—a young filmmaker adapting his own breakout nightmare world after the shorts exploded online—and A24 has been positioning the project as one of its bigger horror swings on the 2026 slate. The film is based on the “Backrooms” urban legend/creepypasta concept that Parsons helped redefine for a new generation through his YouTube series.
The feature’s reported cast includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell, and Avan Jogia, with Parsons directing from a screenplay credited in reporting to Roberto Patino (with later draft work also reported by Will Soodik).
Story-wise, publicly available synopses describe a therapist forced to confront a terrifying dimension beyond reality after a patient goes missing—an angle that gives the feature a clearer narrative spine than the more fragmentary dread architecture of the original shorts. That’s the balancing act here: preserving the liminal-space terror that made Parsons’ work feel genuinely uncanny while building something that can sustain feature-length character stakes.
The larger industry angle is just as interesting. “The Backrooms” is one of the cleaner examples of Hollywood chasing internet-native horror and doing it by handing the keys to the creator who made the thing matter in the first place. That’s a smarter bet than flattening the concept into a generic IP grab, especially when the source’s appeal is so tied to Parsons’ specific visual logic and pacing.
A24 has the film slated for 2026 in the U.S., and reports indicate principal photography wrapped in 2025. If the trailer lands the way the concept suggests it should, this could be one of the year’s more interesting tests of whether analog horror can survive the jump from viral short-form dread to mainstream theatrical feature.
Watch the first, very cryptic, trailer below.
