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On February 24th, 2026, A24 released the teaser trailer for Kane Parsons' upcoming horror film Backrooms, a horror movie based on the creepypasta of the same name. This will be the first time a major studio has taken on a movie directly based on an internet horror story since the infamous 2018 Slender Man movie.
For those unaware, a "creepypasta" (a portmanteau of "creepy" and "copypasta") is a horror story that originated and spread on the internet, such as Slender Man, Jeff the Killer, and the Rake. Often, they are retold by multiple authors, and the origins become hard to pinpoint, leading many to believe these stories are fact rather than fiction. A digital urban legend, if you will.
"The Backrooms" is one of the most popular creepypastas in recent memory, originating in 2019 on a 4chan thread. The thread in question warns the reader that if they're not careful, they may "noclip"(a video game term for passing through a solid object) through reality itself and wind up trapped in a dimension known as "The Backrooms", a never-ending maze of empty mono-yellow rooms with moist carpeting and fluorescent lighting. The concept was spread like wildfire and spawned multiple short stories, websites, and video games, all expanding "The Backrooms" mythos.
This, however, is not Hollywood's first attempt to capitalize on a popular creepypasta. As many may remember, in 2018, Sony Pictures released Slender Man, a supernatural horror movie by Sylvain White based on the creepypasta of the same name. While it was technically a box office success, this movie was pretty unanimously hated by critics, fans of the character, and pretty much everyone else who had to watch it. It even earned a Golden Raspberry award for Worst Supporting Actress.
Since then, creepypastas have been largely written off by Hollywood. There was briefly some buzz about a Steven Spielberg project based on the 2013 short story The Spire in the Woods, but it went away just as soon as the news came out.
So the question remains: will A24's Backrooms be a comeback for creepypasta movies, or will this be another swing and a miss? There's no way to know for sure until the movie is released, but there are some factors that give Backrooms a leg up on the infamous Slender Man movie.
When a movie fails spectacularly, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what caused it, as it's usually a result of many factors. However, in the case of Slender Man, we have something very specific in its production to point to. News of the movie first came out in May of 2016 when Sony studio, Screen Gems, hired David Birke to write the screenplay, then, in January of 2017, Sylvain White was announced as director. It is worth noting that neither Birke nor White had any creative stake in the Slender Man character before being attached to this project. A trailer was released on January 3rd, 2018, and Sony immediately saw backlash due to the infamous Slender Man stabbing that occurred in Wisconsin 4 years prior. With the father of one of the stabbing's perpetrators, Bill Weier, going so far as to say that Sony was popularizing the tragedy. This led to Screen Gems forcing a PG-13 rating on the movie months after filming had been completed, which led to several scenes being cut at the last minute. In their attempt to avoid a controversy, they managed to make a universally panned film while still causing controversy. It's not hard to see how this may have been the movie's downfall.
Besides the fact that A24's Backrooms doesn't have to navigate any controversy, there's another aspect of the film's development that sets it apart from Slender Man. As stated earlier, both the writer and director of Slender Man had no prior creative interest in the character prior to being hired by the studio. This could not be further from the truth for Kane Parsons, the director of Backrooms.
On January 7th, 2022, YouTuber Kane Parsons (also known as Kane pixels) released a short film entitled The Backrooms (Found Footage). As the title suggests, it was depicted as found footage from 1996 of a kid falling into the Backrooms in the middle of filming a movie with his friends. This video went viral, gaining 72 million views as of March 2026, and was the start of a 22 episode long found footage web series by Parsons. In February of 2023, it was officially announced that the 19-year-old VFX prodigy would be directing a film based on his viral web series with a script written by Roberto Patino as a collaboration between horror heavyweight studios A24, Atomic Monster, Chernin Entertainment, and 21 Laps.
Between the director's own experience with the creepypasta and the powerhouse studios behind it, it seems like this film has a solid chance of paving internet horror a path back onto the big screen. Only time will tell, but one thing is for certain – it won't be hard to beat out Slender Man.
