Chiwetel Ejiofor has been on many film sets, but the Backrooms set was unlike any other: a 30,000 sq ft labyrinth of random corridors and chambers, all carpeted, fluorescent-lit, and decorated in sickly yellow wallpaper. So vast was the set that people got lost. 'Especially on those first days,' Ejiofor recalls. 'As you try to navigate your way around and you’re like: “I’m sure it’s this door, I’m sure that’s the way.” And you find yourself just back in the wrong corner of the whole studio.'
The Backrooms concept began as a single photograph taken in 2003, posted on a 4chan message board in May 2019. The image of a vacant shop space in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with fluorescent lighting and dingy yellow wallpaper, struck a nerve online. It spawned a 'creepypasta' universe of unsettling 'liminal spaces', with fan fiction, over 100 levels, and a wiki cataloguing entities. The r/Backrooms subreddit now has over 350,000 members.
Kane Parsons, the 20-year-old director, first saw the image in eighth grade. 'I probably saved it to my computer at the time and was generally like: “I get an interesting feeling from this,”' he says. Parsons, who grew up in Petaluma, California, has been making films since childhood, producing hundreds of short works. Despite his youth, he directed seasoned actors like Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, and Mark Duplass on the A24 horror film.
Parsons acknowledges the leap from online content to feature film. 'Holy shit, I am on an accelerated fast track somehow, because some shadowy overlord decided to… I have no idea how all of this spiralled to the place it’s at now,' he says. 'But I was there, and I know I wanted to make the movie, and I knew how to make what I make online.'
