Editorials
What Exactly Are The ‘Backrooms’ and Where Did They Come From?
There’s a popular interview where David Bowie is explaining how the internet is going to revolutionize media and ends up describing the web as “an alien lifeform.” Despite the video being from all the way back in 1999, I’ve always thought that this was one of the wisest and most concise descriptions of what cyberspace has become since it first expanded from government intranets and evolved into an invisible overlay that haunts and manipulates the real world.
If you need proof that the internet is a living, breathing entity, look no further than the ever-evolving collection of viral myths and online folktales that seem to organically spread across the world as if promoted by a singular intelligence. It just so happens that one of these ideas has finally blossomed into popular culture outside the internet, with The Backrooms – a Creepypasta dating all the way back to 2011 – finally being turned into a fully-fledged studio horror film courtesy of A24 and YouTube prodigy Kane Parsons.
In honor of the first teaser promising that the upcoming adaptation is a faithful retelling of the internet legend that conquered the world, we thought that this might be a good moment to refresh readers’ memories about what the Backrooms actually are and where this story originally came from. So strap in because we’re about noclip into layers of reality that the human mind was never meant to comprehend…
The Rise of a New Creepypasta
The original Backrooms.
For the uninitiated, Creepyastas are the horror form of “Copypastas”, a term meant to refer to frequently reposted stories that were “copy-pasted” and shared across numerous forums, websites, and even viral e-mails. As these bite-sized horror yarns became more popular, online communities soon gathered to collect and collaborate on them. The Backrooms mythos was actually the result of a single photograph, which sparked users’ imaginations and led to a form of collaborative fiction.
The original image that began the story was later revealed to be a HobbyTown store under renovation, but the uniform carpets, bizarre wallpaper, and seemingly never-ending hallways somehow lent themselves to storycrafting about a place that looked both utterly alien and eerily familiar at the same time. This is where we get into liminal horror, a topic that we’ve previously covered due to the genre’s inspirations in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (itself a book about an infinitely expanding house that’s larger on the inside).
Though I argued in that article that liminal horror can be traced back to Danielewski’s 2000 novel and possibly even further in media like The Shining (with the genre being best described as architectural terror derived from uncanny spaces), I don’t think anyone can deny that The Backrooms really popularized the concept. Liminal horror became a household name as users attempted to classify this collection of seemingly innocuous and “empty” images that made them feel uncomfortable.
The Backrooms Game
Of course, the Backrooms ball only really started rolling in 2019 when an anonymous 4Chan user answered a repost of the original picture in a thread about disquieting images. This is where we got the now-iconic nano-horror story that serves as the first example of Backrooms lore:
“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.
“God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.”
*A term used to describe exiting the designated play-area in videogames in a way that wasn’t intended by the developers.
The Backrooms Leads to New Wave of Liminal Horror
This brief little piece of existential terror was enough to kickstart the liminal horror movement into overdrive, with other users creating their own liminal hellscapes (such as the liminal pools) and some even choosing to expand the existing mythology with additional “levels” to the Backrooms – each featuring their own collection of photoshopped images depicting all manners of monsters and oddities.
The popularity of these stories also led to adaptations in the form of several video games and even a bizarre episode of the American Horror Stories anthology show. However, the biggest addition to the mythology would only come in early 2022 when High Schooler and YouTuber extraordinaire Kane Parsons (then going by the online moniker Kane Pixels) uploaded the iconic first entry in his incredibly popular Backrooms webseries.
The short film served as a perfect introduction to the concept of a terrifying alternate world layered underneath our own, with its found footage elements and retro aesthetics turning the video into something of a viral phenomenon even outside of the Creepypasta community. Parsons wasn’t a one-trick pony, however, with the YouTuber soon expanding on his (ongoing) series and coming up with his own mythology surrounding an institute named Async and the challenges that they face in attempting to study the Backrooms Complex.
With the web-series becoming a worldwide hit, it’s only natural that Hollywood soon came knocking as several studios were interested in bringing Parsons’ vision of liminal terror to the big screen. A24 was ultimately the one to convince the young filmmaker to adapt his ideas into a feature film, though Parsons wisely decided to finish High School before committing to directing such a massive project.
That’s how we get to the long-awaited release of the first trailer for Parsons’ and A24’s Backrooms film. A nightmarish dream come true for fans of liminal horror, the adaptation stars heavyweights like Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve and is set to come out in May of this year.
From what we’ve seen from the trailer so far, it looks like the movie will incorporate aspects from the entire history of the Backrooms, not just the series. That’s why I can’t wait to check it out – so long as there’s a way to noclip back out of the experience once the credits roll!
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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