I’d bet money on there being a contingent of horror fans who have always wanted to experience the viral phenomena known as the Backrooms for themselves — and now they can. To celebrate the release of the film of the same name, they’ve announced an exclusive experience for California audiences that will allow them to step inside the otherworldly liminal spaces to see just what they’re like.
There is, naturally, very little information available about the experience, other than its location in Burbank and a website where you can make reservations to enter the mysterious event. A24 did, however, release a DJ set from Instupendo filmed “live from the Backrooms,” which you can watch now on YouTube for the weirdest low-fi study vibes you’ve ever experienced.
Backrooms stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, and comes from twenty-something YouTube sensation Kane Parsons, who directed the Backrooms short films that spawned in 2022 from the original 4chan creepypasta thread. (Not a sentence I ever thought I’d write, but here we are.) The film’s synopsis is as follows:
After a therapist's patient goes missing into a dimension beyond reality, she has to enter the unknown to save him.
Not exactly the most descriptive logline ever written, but the Backrooms are all about the less is more aesthetic that categorizes liminal space horror films. Hell, Exit 8 did something similar in the last few months, adapting the terrifying video game concept of being stuck in a neverending hallway.
Backrooms is directed by Parson from a script by Will Soodik, with Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, Dan Levine, Michael Clear, and James Wan serving as producers. It joins a list of other horror films A24 is releasing this spring/summer, including the already released Mother Mary, starring Anne Hathaway, and the upcoming The Death of Robin Hood.
Backrooms premieres on May 29.
