Backrooms (web series)

Backrooms is a semi-anthological web series created by American YouTuber Kane Parsons. It is loosely based on the Backrooms. The series debuted in 2022 with the short film "The Backrooms (Found Footage)" which has over 60 million views as of July 2024. Parsons would expand his series to include eighteen more short films. The series is slated for a film adaptation with Parsons set to direct, alongside A24 producing, and as such has been on hiatus since January 2023.

The series revolves around Async, a fictional research institute that discovers the Backrooms (in-universe referred to as “the Complex”) and attempts to document and research it.

Development and themes
After making several Attack on Titan themed videos, Parsons was looking for "new things to do". He was in between projects and was inspired to create a found-footage style animation of the Backrooms after rediscovering a render he had saved some time prior. Parsons was vaguely aware of the Backrooms in terms of the original image and caption he saw on Instagram two years prior. However, he was not aware of the community behind it. In an interview, he stated: "I came across the original image on my computer … and I just thought, huh, it would be interesting to see if I could go to my 3D software, Blender, and try to recreate a scene in this environment,". He would use Blender to create a test animation of a chair in the Backrooms being thrown and hitting a wall. The shot would later be used in the first video of the series. Parsons would use Blender alongside Adobe After Effects to create the first video. It would take Parsons a month to complete the short.

He would expand the concept into a series shortly after posting the first video. There, he would establish plot points such as Async, a fictional research facility that discovers the Backrooms in the late 1980s and actively researches in it. Various character animations included in these later installments would require the utilization of motion capture suits.

Michael Dobuski of ABC News would describe the themes of the series as "It's a slow burn story focusing on both the politics of Async and the United States government, as well as the otherworldly, confusing functions of the Complex, or The Backrooms."

Reception
Reception for the series has been mostly positive. The first video of the series received positive reviews from critics. WPST called it "the scariest video on the Internet". Otaku USA categorized it as analog horror, while Dread Central and Nerdist compared it favorably to the 2019 video game Control. Kotaku praised the series for exercising restraint in its horror and mystery. Boing Boing's Rob Beschizza predicted that the Backrooms, like the creepypasta Slender Man and its panned 2018 film adaptation, would eventually be adapted into a "slick but dismal 2-hour Hollywood movie."

Parsons said he had "no idea" there had been an existing fan community behind the original Backrooms legend, and recalled being surprised to see comments on his first video from people saying "You're doing the Backrooms wrong. What is this?" or "There's supposed to be smilers on level one." He said that this continued until eventually "people almost forgot about the old one" and his version had "sort of been adopted" by fans. For his work on the series, Parsons would receive a Creator Honor award from The Game Theorists during the 12th Streamy Awards. The series' installments have garnered a collective total of over 100 million views.

Film adaptation
After publishing The Backrooms (Found Footage), Parsons was approached by several studios for a feature-length adaptation. He initially pitched the idea as a comic serialization as opposed to a feature length film. In February 2023, A24, who successfully bid on the film, announced that work had begun on a film adaptation of the Backrooms based on Parsons' videos, with Parsons directing. Roberto Patino is set to write the screenplay, while James Wan, Michael Clear from Atomic Monster, Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, and Dan Levine of 21 Laps are set to produce.