Storytelling for the Screen: “Backrooms”

Backrooms (2026) follows Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a furniture store owner who discovers that a mysterious doorway has appeared in the basement of his showroom, leading him into an endless maze of eerie, nondescript rooms. After Clark disappears, his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve) enters the doorway in search of him, confronting a disorienting liminal space where the boundaries between reality and perception begin to collapse.

Inspired by a single eerie photograph of an empty, fluorescent-lit room, the backrooms started out as an anonymous imageboard post with no established mythology or narrative. Online communities soon expanded out the initial post into a larger internet phenomenon, collaboratively developing a sprawling archive of fan art, “creepypasta” short stories, amateur videos and animations, and online games. In 2022, 16-year-old director Kane Parsons adapted the viral image into a series of acclaimed found-footage short films on YouTube and rapidly found a devoted audience. Backrooms producer Kori Adelson brought Parsons and the project to A24, which subsequently greenlit its feature film adaptation, bringing this distinct slice of internet culture to mainstream cinema. The journey of Backrooms from online post to one of this year’s most successful (and talked about) theatrical releases raises compelling questions about where films and directors now originate, who gets to make them, and how audiences encounter cinematic worlds.

Producer Kori Adelson will join moderator Ross Melnick (Dick Wolf Director of the Carsey-Wolf Center, UCSB) for a pre- and post-screening discussion of Backrooms.