It’s 2026 And I Just Watched The Backrooms Web Series For The First Time – These Are My Honest Thoughts – SlashFilm

Did everyone know that Kane Parsons’ “Backrooms” series on YouTube is straight-up horrifying? Well, it’s May of 2026, and I am just now learning this.

I’m a notorious scaredy-cat here at /Film, so when an editor asked if I’d watch “Backrooms (Found Footage)” and a few of its follow-up episodes, I knew I was in for a rough ride. I’ll say this: the YouTube series, pioneered by Parsons (under the name “Kane Pixels”) after he became aware of a “creepypasta,” or strange Internet legend, about a series of rooms that you can’t hope to escape, is pretty well done for a short film. It’s actually very easy to see how this became such a big deal.

In fact, the craze around Parsons’ original “Backrooms” videos got so huge that if you search YouTube, you can find a ton of explainers about all of the levels of these endless, mysterious rooms that get discovered at the beginning of the video, subtitled “(Found Footage).” (I personally thought creator Wendigoon covered the topic particularly well, following up on the original video he made several years ago.)

“(Found Footage)” is the first entry in the Backrooms series on YouTube, which Parsons carefully crafted from 2022 to 2024. Even though I’m definitely too scared to see the feature film that my colleague BJ Colangelo called “an unnerving psychological horror-drama that thrives on atmosphere, uncertainty, and the queasy feeling that reality itself has quietly slipped off its axis” in her review, I agreed to watch some of the original videos, and guess what? I’m afraid of every single empty room now.

When you sit down and watch the first YouTube video that Kane Parsons made — again, called “Backrooms (Found Footage)” — it doesn’t really seem like something that could get an entire narrative plot. While making a short film with two guys who seem to be his friends, an unseen cameraman falls into a horrifying liminal space now known as the Backrooms, characterized by dingy yellow walls and what appears to be an endless maze of rooms. As the cameraman walks around shouting for help, he finally spots the creature known to fans as “the Lifeform,” which chases him and causes him to fall into yet another layer of strange liminal space.

The entire conceit of Parsons’ take on this story is, truly, so clever, especially as the series continues and he introduces shadowy forces like the Async Research Institute, a gateway called the Threshold, and the institute’s possible connection to a very real natural disaster (a 1989 earthquake that occurred in California near the Loma Prieta peak in the Santa Cruz mountains). Again, this is really smart. It’s also really scary.

I think the reason I reacted so strongly and so immediately to the freaky vibe of the Backrooms videos is that Parsons does an excellent job making stillness frightening. Every time the cameraman discovers a new layer or room, you’re filled with dread; there’s a moment in the first video where the cameraman considers going up a flight of stairs leading into darkness, which I watched through my hands. It’s ultimately unsurprising, all things considered, that Parsons got to create a full-fledged movie from the world he helped expand.

That brings everything full circle to “Backrooms,” the first feature film directed by Kane Parsons, which is finally coming to theaters to fully freak everyone out. (Honestly, the scariest part of any of this is that Parsons was born in 2005.) Led by Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark — a furniture store owner who discovers the presence of the titular backrooms in the basement of his store — “Backrooms,” produced by arthouse studio A24, also features Oscar nominee Renate Reinsve, “Shrinking” standout Lukita Maxwell, mumblecore king and indie actor Mark Duplass, and “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” star Finn Bennett. (Bennett played the deeply awful Aerion Targaryen, who might even be a worse Game of Thrones villain than Jack Gleeson’s odious Joffrey Baratheon.)

“Backrooms” could very well become the sleeper box office hit of the summer, especially because it’s going to draw in a huge crowd that’s been following Parsons’ videos since 2022. So what about me? Unfortunately, I’m far too chickensh** to sit in a theater and let this movie make me afraid to turn random corners; I might watch it in broad daylight, in the privacy of my own home, at some point. At the end of the day, though, I respect the hell out of “Backrooms,” an ambitious and audacious debut film from a young artist whose career is just getting started. Sadly, I am just not brave enough to actually see it.

“Backrooms” is in theaters now.