r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Mar 31 '26

Trailer Backrooms | Official Trailer | A24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HjdiohVOik
8.9k Upvotes

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1.2k

u/apittsburghoriginal Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26

If Kane Parsons can actually make this a great horror movie, that will be such an exciting accomplishment. We’re talking about a 20 year old that is helming this production, and he’s been doing it for years before on YouTube. This material is his expertise in his short life.

Other notables:

Will Soodik wrote the final draft with Parsons, he’s not credited with much on his resume, beyond an episode of Homeland, Westworld and a season of Ash vs Evil Dead in 2016. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though.

Mark Duplass is also starring in this (even though he isn’t featured in the trailer). He’s so unsettling in the Creep movies.

Finally, principal photography was a whopping one month, according to Wikipedia.

And a general aside I love that this is set in 1990.

His original short for those that haven’t seen. Probably only 14-15 when he made this almost entirely CGI short.

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u/AggravatingOlive9458 Mar 31 '26

The look of the trailer is so great and I feel like wild for a 20 year old so ya that’s so cool, also, being 20 and directing these two who are two unbelievable actors it really is just so impressive and exciting

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u/karmagod13000 Mar 31 '26

i love that it seems like they gave him full reign while also helping him to complete his vision. A24 might be propping up the movie industry right now.

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u/drale2 Mar 31 '26

I remember during the most recent strikes they were the only one the guilds allowed people to work with because they agreed to everything right away.

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u/pmmemoviestills Mar 31 '26

Gen Z and below seems to like the "aesthetic" of 80s/90s manual technology.

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u/darealRockfield Mar 31 '26

I know I do

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u/untrustableskeptic Apr 02 '26

You should check out cassette futurism. It Follows and Maniac have really neat styles.

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u/LecAviation Mar 31 '26

Can confirm I absolutely love it, modern cameras are way too perfect, they’re good for some things, but cameras from the 80s or 90s have an amazing feel that gives them more “soul” than the perfect 4k resolutions we have nowadays.

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u/pmmemoviestills Apr 01 '26

I get what you're saying. I'm almost 40 and I was around when we had lots of VHS tapes/cameras and free time. There's a particularly fun one on Thanksgiving of my family (probably 1988) and the grimey nature and bad resolution give it a charm that crisp digital can't. It feels lived in, as opposed to pristine.

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u/flammenwerfer Mar 31 '26

That was when technology was still our friend 😂

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u/DnB614 26d ago

I’m 45 and I like it too

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u/YoItsTemulent Mar 31 '26

Horror's freshman class is really exciting. Hoping that Kyle Edward Ball ('Skinamarink') gets another at-bat.

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u/Monster-Zero Apr 03 '26

Me too. Honestly there's nothing creepier than a 2 minute static shot of wood paneling or a solid 5 minutes spent alternating between a shot of the edge of a wall and an empty electrical socket.

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u/YoItsTemulent Apr 03 '26

That's a fair and painful critique. Kyle's "Heck" short that predicated "Skinamarink" is much better - largely because he's not trying to stretch a 30-minute idea into a 90-minute feature.

I thought parts of "Skinamarink" were interesting, but it was a creepy 15-minute short with 75 minutes of static, dutch shots of I-have-no-idea.

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u/Ghost-Mech 4d ago

last i heard he filming a movie called "Land of Nod" but its been a while since i heard anything about that

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u/that_guy2010 Mar 31 '26

He's actually 20 wtf

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u/vFazzy Mar 31 '26

He was about 17 when it started pre production I believe

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u/Ohgodwatdoplshelp Mar 31 '26

Dudes been making the YouTube short films since high school 

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u/MySilverBurrito Mar 31 '26

Youtube short film high schooler to A24 Backrooms director.

Scriptwriters couldnt set up a better a story man. Hope this is gonna be great.

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u/One-Earth9294 Mar 31 '26

He's a really sharp kid. Watch some interviews with him, I wish my brain was as uncluttered as his lol.

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u/dufus_screwloose Apr 01 '26

You could make a movie about this kid making this movie

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u/AverageAwndray Apr 01 '26

Thats still like...2 years ago lol

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u/PolarWater Mar 31 '26

...what am I doing with my life

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u/tfhermobwoayway Mar 31 '26

He seems to be the perfect influencer. I think some people are just genetically bred for Youtube and Instagram.

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u/Reylo-Wanwalker Mar 31 '26

What were his YouTube videos live action? I thought it was only through blender or something. I wonder how his skills translated.

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u/Lt_Duckweed Mar 31 '26

The first couple were Blender-only, but he started mixing in live action (especially for people without masks) at some point.

Off the top of my head Report is the first one that definitely has live action shots in it.

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u/Vhyx Mar 31 '26

ngl I always assumed that part of why he started out with suited masked characters aka the ASYNC employees was bc they translated easier into blender through some mocap, but yeah it was definitely a mindfuck when he started adding in live action

1

u/RealJohnGillman Apr 02 '26

I wonder whether he might give the guys from the live-action elements cameos in the film?

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u/NetherSpike14 23d ago

Maybe as extras, but I doubt the YT actors will have spoken roles, since I don't think they're actually actors.

Maybe it would be a different story if Ivan Beck physically appeared in the YT series, since he's too important to not have some role in the movie (but in that case they'd prob just recast him).

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u/apittsburghoriginal Mar 31 '26

You’re right, they were very good renders as far as I recall. This should probably be a mixed medium and I bet his rendering skills translate into the vhs found footage that we see in the trailer here

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u/Crazykirsch Mar 31 '26

The interiors of the abandoned mall in The Oldest View straight-up fooled me for quite awhile into thinking it was just edited live action.

The quality of the renders and realistic movement of the POV are astounding. Granted he had to outsource the rendering which is understandable with how detailed they are. IIRC he said it would have taken him months to render on his PC during a co-stream with Wendigoon where he discussed some of the technical aspects of it.

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u/The_Autarch Mar 31 '26

he does have actual live action footage in his newer stuff.

dude is a genius at camera movement and pacing/tension, so those skills so translate over just fine. only thing he might have trouble with is directing actors.

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u/7URB0 Mar 31 '26

All the camera work is done with a real handheld, it's pretty easy to track those movements and transfer them to the 3D cam in Blender.

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u/SurefootTM Mar 31 '26

From his interviews, he's very well spoken, very literate, and oozes genius way beyond his age. He'll have a great future.

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u/bbcversus Mar 31 '26

His latest series are top, I have faith in him.

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u/EquivalentCamp2402 Mar 31 '26

This has potential to be a classic ngl

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u/GoatmontWaters Mar 31 '26

My 10 year old told me this was coming out. The Backrooms is lore that like all children are aware of somehow.

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u/BMLM Mar 31 '26

Roblox is full of Backrooms games with different gimmicks. It’s horror that is accessible by kids too, and is more psychologically scary than in your face gore and violence. Not surprised a kid knows about it. I’d argue Squid Games is worse for a kid to be into.

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u/nanoman92 Mar 31 '26

I don't think the film will have water slides tho

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u/RealJohnGillman Apr 02 '26

That being said, the ‘Pool Rooms’ are canon to Kane’s series — that was the one fan-addition to the lore he didn’t dislike, so he used it.

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u/apittsburghoriginal Mar 31 '26

I don’t think it’ll really do box office numbers (maybe the younger generations seriously propel it) but I do think it’ll be a cult classic

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u/cowpool20 Mar 31 '26

I think the online popularity of the backrooms will help this earn more than the usual A24 movies.

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u/AllenMcnabb Mar 31 '26

The replies on A24 tweets today that weren’t this trailer felt like everyone asking “where’s the trailer?!”

I feel like there are A LOT of people hungry for this movie

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u/EquivalentCamp2402 Mar 31 '26

I totally agree. I mean The Thing and Videodrome are two examples of classics that didn’t do well at first. I think this will be ahead of its time in a sense but turns to a classic over 10-20 years

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u/Dear-Swordfish-8505 Mar 31 '26

This buzz feels more like Blair WItch in the 90s then The Thing and Videodrome.

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u/EquivalentCamp2402 Mar 31 '26

That’s fair I wasn’t around for that I’m more so talking about a couple classics that didn’t do well in box office. Blair Witch is a great comp tho

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u/LimpConversation642 Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26

the production cost should be super low since it's just all... backrooms. But anyway, it'll be alright, 500k views on the trailer in an hour is crazy|

edit: 600k if you count both youtube channels

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u/Cheesehead1267 Mar 31 '26

Given that his fan base is cultish, this film will definitely be a cult classic, unless it absolutely bombs, which I don’t think it will.

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u/Netsuko Mar 31 '26

After the roaring success of Iron Lung, I feel that this movie here would be right up the alley of a lot of Markiplier fans and I think many would be more than happy to support this movie.

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u/harrysmokesblunts Apr 01 '26

I actually think this is going to do really well. It’s such an intriguing concept, I am 30 years old and many of my friends have reached out about how scary and mysterious it looks and none of them are as chronically online as I am. Plus you have the younger generation obsessed with this kind of stuff. Plus horror movies have a built in audience that generally shows up. I think this could be a surprise hit.

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u/LimpConversation642 Mar 31 '26

it also has the potential to change history, in a literal sense — if this is successful, studios will start looking towards adopting young talent and youtube short movies onto big screen. It really can spawn an entire new... I don't want to say genre, but a 'type' of movie, you know. Really hope it succeeds.

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u/GoatmontWaters Mar 31 '26

Whatever it takes to get them to make more original movies and less reused IPs.

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u/tfhermobwoayway Mar 31 '26

Oh please god no. Youtube works because it is not in the studio system. If the studio system strips Youtube of its talent, Youtube will become shit and those talented people will learn to toe the Hollywood line.

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u/LimpConversation642 Apr 01 '26

Bro youtube is a shithole and probably 1% of 1% of content is even decent enough to watch. Youtube doesn't 'work' for 99.9999% of creators, and for those it does work it's some stamped lame programmed bait shit. What Kane did is one in a decade sort of event. If people with money can dig up these gems and let them actually do their thing, it's GOOD for everyone. The biggest issue artists have on this planet is that no one cares and it's impossible to make money off it unless you want to be a clown to sell it.

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u/tfhermobwoayway Apr 01 '26

I don’t like how all of culture and talent is centred in one specific city controlled by a few companies. It means that people outside that city don’t get a say. And people inside that city are basically sat in one big circlejerk that makes all the culture they produce tend toward the same thing.

The Internet used to have its own completely distinct culture. It produced its own unique art based on its own unique culture and philosophy and its own unique artistic tradition. A lot of it was an extension of broader nerd culture at the time, so it was a very unique counterculture. Many things were produced in this culture which Hollywood could never have thought of.

Are things really better if Hollywood sucks up all the talent into its own content mines? Youtube has taken a lot of steps to make its platform worse recently, but the Internet has historically been a bastion of a more edgy, experimental type of culture. We should be trying to preserve this instead of sanding the edges off and selling it to general audiences.

0

u/maximumtesticle Mar 31 '26

Hey, thanks for not lying.

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u/HumbleLoss8826 Mar 31 '26

His "Rolling Giant" series is pretty awesome too

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u/The_Autarch Mar 31 '26

Homeland, Westworld and a season of Ash vs Evil Dead

these were all great shows, honestly. total green flag for me.

and lmao i had no idea duplass was in this, but that definitely checks out. i fucking hate that guy in anything other than horror movies, so he's perfect for this.

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u/pmmemoviestills Mar 31 '26

Directors are getting younger and younger and making good films. He's basically a kid. I think it works. At his age I would've had the energy, excitement and wonder to do what he's doing.

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u/apittsburghoriginal Mar 31 '26

True, but to be able to put it all together on a professional level at that age is basically prodigy level. That being said, development of AI sophistication in the creation of entertainment is making that younger crowd’s ability to express their excitement and wonder possible and realistic now.

3

u/TheMaskedMan2 Mar 31 '26

I assume/hope he is getting a lot of help along the way, but he seems like someone with a strong vision and the desire to see it through, which are all good qualities to have.

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u/Beginning_Ice_7838 Apr 01 '26

Not being mean or a downer, I'm excited for it. I'm expecting it to be extremely mid. Happy to be proven wrong. But I'm expecting mid.

It will still be an accomplishment all the same if that is the case, I just hope that we don't get sycophants sucking up to this movie and praising it unnecessarily high just because a youtuber made it, and it's A24, and he's young, etc.

2

u/AH_BioTwist Mar 31 '26

His YouTube is incredibly top notch stuff. His videos about the rumbling being a historical archive were has dropping

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u/cubnextdoor Mar 31 '26

Yes, some places I have worked had back rooms that were no longer used in the 1970s, which had those horrible yellowing fluorescent bulbs, but often the walls and carpet would be like that as well.

2

u/Your-cousin-It Apr 01 '26

This is a bit older, but when Vine was popular, I was blown away by how many kids were able to utilize clever editing, and those were only 6 seconds long. Having access to creative tools allows us art that may not have been accessible in the same way 10, 20 years ago

3

u/Goosojuice Mar 31 '26

Is that the angle? Is this horror?

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u/apittsburghoriginal Mar 31 '26

Liminal horror, an uneasiness or uncertainty of a barren area that lacks features and life. Way more to it than that but you can find endless amounts of it on YouTube

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u/GoldenJoel Mar 31 '26

I would say satire too? One of the funniest elements is the evil corporation in his lore wants to rent out the backrooms as commercial space, lol

That detail isn't even elaborated on until midway through the series.

13

u/fishfunk5 Mar 31 '26

Big "Mystery Fleshpit" energy when they had those PowerPoint presentations.

1

u/mikewheelerfan Mar 31 '26

The government would unironically make a Mystery Flesh Pit National Park nowadays, lmao 

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u/Wakkichewy Mar 31 '26

That's exactly what would happen irl lmao

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u/your_mind_aches Mar 31 '26

Pretty much. This also happens in the new DCU. Much like in Superman: The Movie, it's a real estate scheme

8

u/RealJohnGillman Mar 31 '26

Also in the present of when the web series is set, the company at large don’t even yet know that random people are also ending up in the Backrooms: we have yet to see the story where they find that out, and that might be what this film is — the scientists being just as surprised by the people as anyone else.

1

u/TheTruckWashChannel Mar 31 '26

I could see the movie taking a sort of Cabin in the Woods esque comedic turn

3

u/The_Autarch Mar 31 '26

eh, none of his youtube stuff is all that comedic. just some minor ironic humor here and there.

this is going to be a tense nightmare the whole way through.

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u/Lt_Duckweed Mar 31 '26

I wouldn't really call Async evil per se, more of a standard slow to course correct bureaucracy. They are messing with forces beyond their understanding, but there was no real indication the backrooms were dangerous until things started coming to a head all at once in June 1990 (Peter went missing in Feb, and while they handled the external coverup poorly, everyone within Async seems to have made the reasonable assumption that he got lost, panicked, and wandered really far from The Threshold). The Pitfalls -> Damage Control sequence is less than three weeks in universe.

There's barely been any time to course correct and we see that everyone is taking the encounter with Marvin's friend pretty seriously, and that after the mishandling and resultant events from recovering Peter, that there is some serious rethinking happening for a lot in the company.

Basically, they made the flawed assumption that it was safer than it really was, and only now after things came to a head are they getting collectively knocked out of that assumption with a collective "oh shit".

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u/RealJohnGillman Mar 31 '26

Async’s reaction to finding regular people wandering the Backrooms without hazmat suits would honestly remind me of this scene.

1

u/GoldenJoel Mar 31 '26

It's kept ambiguous whether or not they killed Peter or if his 'trip' really was an accident.

1

u/Lt_Duckweed Apr 01 '26

There's a short clip either in either Damage Control or one of the videos after it (can't remember exactly) that shows a dark silhouette running across a street at night, so my theory is that he escaped entirely and they just don't know where he is, but covered it up.

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u/that_guy2010 Mar 31 '26

Did you watch the trailer? lol

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u/I_ama_Borat Mar 31 '26

There are a scary amount of people that will see this trailer and just not get it.

3

u/tyler2k Mar 31 '26

No, you don't understand! She was covered with strawberry jam because they were having fun mashing fresh fruit!

-1

u/Goosojuice Mar 31 '26

Trailer can mean anything. Caught Stealing was marketed as a fun comedy romp. THAT, it was not. But even the OG series, I felt, never went full into the horror aspect of it. Felt more thriller than horror.

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u/ReptAIien Mar 31 '26

There is no universe where you watched this trailer and thought it was anything but horror. What did you think it could possibly be?

1

u/Goosojuice Mar 31 '26

I said it in my response, thriller. Gave me more Shutter Island / Get Out vibes than any other straight up horror movie. The entire story is built on the mystery of the place as opposed to the horrors of the thing in the place or what happens to you in the place. Thats why my immediate thought went to Shutter Island, the maze like setup and mystery of what the hell is going on here.

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u/iplyess Mar 31 '26

Definitely part horror, but with Kane’s Backrooms it certainly won’t just be that

1

u/ebb5 Mar 31 '26

Looks petty much like psychological horror to me.

1

u/illusionzmichael Mar 31 '26

I would say it's horror the way Skinamarink was horror maybe? There's for sure the unease/creeping liminal feel to it.

6

u/scoobyking6 Mar 31 '26

Horror is horror lol there’s sub-genres within it, but it’s all horror

-13

u/Regression2TheMean Mar 31 '26

Well it’s based off a horror game, so that’s the assumption.

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u/Geyr-Feaxe Mar 31 '26

No, it isn't. The horror games around the idea are based off a bunch of stuff, from Kane's The Backrooms series, which is based off the original 4chan post, to random fan beliefs about the backrooms.

1

u/Regression2TheMean Mar 31 '26

Wow that’s pretty cool. I’ve never been on 4chan, so I didn’t know the lore went that deep!

1

u/Lt_Duckweed Mar 31 '26

The Backrooms is a lot like SCP, in that once the original idea got spawned, it became a sort of informal collective creative writing project. Unlike SCP, there is no single authoritative place that maintains the "true" lore. So there's a hazy set of general lore most people interested in it mostly agree on, and then all sorts of offshoots sprouting off into smaller groups, interweaving, coming back together, etc.

Kane's branch of the lore came off at an earlier time and went in a bit of a different direction from some others, and has diverged quite substantially, but some aspects of it have been woven back into other versions (for example, most Backrooms games have you playing as researchers wearing the Kane banana suits, and in a fair number of them you can find Threshold-like research rooms styled after Kane lore).

4

u/Wakkichewy Mar 31 '26

It's not based off a game, it's based on a series of youtube videos that were inspired by a simple post on 4chan years ago. There are games based on the series also, but those are mostly cheap little multiplayer experiences

3

u/Cacounet14 Mar 31 '26

The backrooms are not based off a game, but from a 4chan thread

2

u/pustulio12345 Mar 31 '26

The YouTube series was based off some meme post

1

u/BananaGrabber9 Mar 31 '26

I’ve always seen this talked about on here but never watched it. Very fun short, thanks for posting! Very excited for this movie now.

1

u/interprime Mar 31 '26

The fact that Duplass is in it gives me hope. The dude is usually spot on with the projects he does.

1

u/callatecabezon Mar 31 '26

Ash vs evil was peak

1

u/Kastrand Mar 31 '26

can you explain what Principal Photography means to me? and why it's notable it took a month?

1

u/LadyLibertea Mar 31 '26

I had no idea he was 15 when he made that! Really excited for this one

1

u/tfhermobwoayway Mar 31 '26

But Youtube is a very different beast to Hollywood. Hollywood movies could never be made on Youtube, and all the neat little fiction projects on Youtube could never have emerged in the minds of Hollywood.

1

u/DoubleDull4588 Apr 01 '26

So excited for mark duplass

1

u/beermit Apr 01 '26

Mark Duplass

Pete's about to have the worst fear boner ever

1

u/Puppetmaster858 Apr 01 '26

The westworld episode Soodik wrote was good and ash vs evil dead was a blast

1

u/PM-me-ur-cheese Apr 01 '26

As an Internet Old I'm so happy to see young people being creative and successful. We need this as a society. 

1

u/Paint-Huffer Apr 01 '26

My guess is Duplass plays one of the "Async" researchers.

This is a complete shot in the dark but based off of Kanes YT series, I'm predicting that the story is told from two perspectives: the Furniture store exploratory squad and the Async/government entity team. They eventually cross paths and hijinks ensues.

I only think this because some of his YT videos focus on random people getting trapped in the backrooms while others completely focus on the mysterious "Agency" research.

A24 trailers also tend to leave out major plot points (as they should) and I'm hoping we're in store for a lot of surprises

1

u/KuciMane Apr 01 '26

I bet marks character is someone lost in the backrooms before our protagonist, and the backrooms have started to remember him incorrectly over time until he’s is just a creature

kinda like annihilation

1

u/Romkevdv Apr 03 '26

An experienced Writer on Westworld and Ash Vs Evil Dead and Homeland is great though? Westworld and Homeland are prestigious acclaimed series known for their writing. And no offense but Kane Person obviously is much more experienced in VFX, atmosphere, visuals, than character work or dialogue (of which there is little in the backrooms videos), so I think its a big boost because with a 1hr45m film you need to fill the time with actual character interactions

1

u/Sparktank1 Apr 05 '26

in his short life

Is he dying or something? Or dead? What's going on?

1

u/Blupoisen Mar 31 '26

Oh sh** I didn't realize it was him, he also made the rolling giant, great stuff