Backrooms: The creepy internet phenomenon, explained
A low-budget horror film directed by a 20-year-old YouTuber is beating the new Star Wars movie at the box office. Behind its success is an
A low-budget horror film directed by a 20-year-old YouTuber is beating the new Star Wars movie at the box office. Behind its success is an entire viral online maze. In "Backrooms," Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a failed architect who runs a dreary discount furniture-store, drinking himself to sleep in his shop, depressed by his divorce. One day, he discovers a portal to a mysterious labyrinth of corridors with no apparent end. His therapist, Mary, is played by "Sentimental Value" star Renate Reinsve. She also ends up in the creepy hallways, all while dealing with her own haunting childhood memories. Best known for Cannes hits, Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve is now in the global spotlight Image: A24/AP Photo/picture alliance At only 20 years old, director Kane Parsons has now become the youngest filmmaker in history to top the US box office with the movie produced by independent studio A24. On its opening weekend alone, the film with a production budget of $10 million has already brought in $81 million domestically and a total of $118 million with international sales, snatching the top spot from "The Mandalorian and Grogu," the latest film in the Star Wars franchise. Even though the film has yet to be released in many parts of the world in the first weeks of June, it is already smashing various records. It's the strongest North American box office debut in history for an original horror movie, and the best opening weekend for a first-time filmmaker behind a non-franchise film. Contributing to its success is the fact that the film was spawned by a viral phenomenon that equally feels like an endless maze.
Set in the 1990s, the film celebrates the dated technology and aesthetics of the era: Lukita Maxwell and Finn Bennett also star in it Image: A24/AP Photo/picture alliance A single photo inspires an expansive universe It all started with a photograph of a large, empty office room with fluorescent lights and depressing yellow walls that circulated on various message boards over the past decade. Then in May 2019, it was also posted on a thread of the anonymous imageboard website 4chan. A reply to the post provided the name "Backrooms" to the image: "If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in," reads the iconic post that sparked an entire online mythology surrounding the space. The post continued ominously: "God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you." The photo that sparked the Backrooms creepypasta was later found to have been taken by Bill Magritz before the renovation of a HobbyTown store Image: Bill Magritz "Noclipping" is a term used in video games to refer to cheat codes that allow players to go through solid surfaces. In internet urban legends, this refers to the concept of accidentally "glitching" out of reality and falling into secret dimensions. Another useful term to understand the internet phenomenon is creepypasta, which is the horror story variant of the internet slang "copypasta" (from "copy and paste"), through which entire blocks of text become viral by being copied around the internet.
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