The Backrooms: A Terrifying, Liminal Paradigm Shift

Have you ever thought about what's underneath the ground we step on daily, what secrets are being kept from us, what the possibilities would be and what could be hiding there? Since I was pretty young, I have always had a great curiosity about the spaces out of our most immediate reach, about the unknown and also about the eerily known. For a few days now, a part of this eagerness to want to know more has been triggered by everything related to what a teenager has been imagining for the last three years and that, in these last few weeks, was confirmed as a project that will be brought to life in the future.

I want to clarify from the very beginning what this article's title is about, since it has two meanings. Sure, you didn't write it and, if you are reading this, it's because you either don't know absolutely anything about the endless universe created by this 20-year-old YouTuber and your curiosity started to pique, or you simply know a little bit and want to understand more about the matter. If you belong to the first group, let me tell you we are before an imminent paradigm shift in horror and science-fiction cinema, but mostly in audiovisual creation as such. If you belong to the second group, you might be interested in the news I'm about to give you.

Either way, this young man's future impact—yes, I dare to engage a little in futurology—will be a slap in the face from reality for many seasoned filmmakers who blindly hold onto the method of continuing to tell us the same stories in the same way. I first encountered the news I will give below and, a few days later, I came across another one that unsettled me. For a while now—I didn't have the foggiest idea—there has been a small war between Blumhouse, Jordan Peele's production company, the charismatic Glen Powell and Osgood Perkins together with Neon to obtain the rights to a new installment of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Yes, the recycling pattern is repeated once again.

And why did this unsettle me? In times when it's more necessary to give closure to several rehashed legends and ideas, these businessmen of the industry insist on recycling and forcing the audience to witness something more about the 70s classic directed by Tobe Hooper. This is something that happens mostly in the United States and, being the most "consumed" cinema of the world, its impact ends up being inevitable. Meanwhile, three years ago on his room's desk and being extremely thirsty for novelty, a teenager of just 16 years old created a new concept within the microunivere of found footage/creepypasta with his series of short films and "archive" videos titled The Backrooms, exposing unprecedented images on YouTube to millions of astonished people at home.

Kane Parsons is a seventh art's enthusiast who, just like the Philippou twins—YouTubers who in 2023 released their first great supernatural horror hit and this year will premiere Bring Her Back—has a HUGE fandom in the most famous video platform of the world. With this piece of information from the get-go, the first major paradigm shift is evident: content creation as such can replace—or actually is replacing—filmmaking education as the first link of the production chain. There are no excuses, no limits. With many research hours, knowledge of production and edition in Blender and a lot of imagination, this young man accomplished what several Hollywood executives spend years discussing around a table.

Now, just to give you an idea about the work, The Backrooms can be summarized as the result of mixing Severance, Matrix, Barbarian, The Blair Witch Project and The Shining in a passionate maze of liminal microuniverses… and, even so, I would still fall short. There are no words to express the dimensions Parsons' creation has and, even though it has certain established rules, the concept as such invites us to challenge the limits of our imagination and, paradoxically, those of its creator too.

But what are the "Backrooms" and how do they work?

On January 7, 2022, Parsons uploaded a nine-minute found footage video on YouTube in which a young cameraman is shooting a short independent horror film and, while walking through the location, "falls" into another reality, as if swallowed by the ground. He then finds himself in the "Backrooms," a place beyond the known sites of our reality whose first level seems to be an infinite arrangement of hallways that connect offices and other spaces without any logic. And I say that it seems because, as the young man records everything with his video camera, we can tell that much of what happens there—beyond falling into another reality—doesn't make sense. There are small spaces where a human can't fit that reveal other offices and hallways, stairs that lead nowhere, rooms with circles of chairs… and structures one would only find in dreams or nightmares.

In this initial approach to the idea of Backrooms, we witness this reality's first terrifying creature: "the Lifeform," which starts to pursue the cameraman and then charges at him against a dead-end hallway, making the young man fall back into reality, moribund, as if he had been pushed from an aircraft. Yes, this fifth dimension's distorted spaces lack all logic, but also seem to be controlled by something much bigger, by some entity or kind of authoritarian figure that pulls the strings from a certain place.

The Backrooms were discovered by a private organization called Async, located in San Jose, California—major detail—which, in an attempt to build a revolutionary storage space for North American society, ended up creating a portal to another dimension, revealing the entrance to these endless offices. The first contact was on October 17, 1989, at 5:04 p.m., precisely at the same time an earthquake was broadcasted live for the first time in the San Francisco Bay Area. Parsons brilliantly connected reality with fiction through a series of encrypted videos full of mystery and led many YouTubers to create conspiracy theories and even some short films inspired by the Backrooms' liminal spaces.

But not everything is limited to average people getting lost in another dimension without any justification. The concept also addresses ideas like parallel realities, where the invisible becomes tangible. Let's imagine we are having dinner with our family, and we hear the voice of a stranger too close. We can't see them, but we can feel their words as if they were next to us. It would be extremely unsettling, but Parsons steps away from the paranormal stuff to present another perspective much more… scientific, although not less terrifying. A simulation within reality?

The limits of what's explicable and inexplicable will merge with the premiere of The Backrooms first movie, directed by Parsons, co-produced by A24 and Atomic Monster—James Wan's production company—and that's currently being shot in Vancouver, Canada. The plot is a complete mystery. There's no need to say that the absolute truth will be revealed when the film premieres in 2026. The paradigm shift is just around the corner.

Published on JUNE 20, 2025, 11:18 AM | UTC-GMT -3

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