What Are the ‘Backrooms’ in A24’s New Horror Movie, Anyway?

The first teaser for A24’s Backrooms leans into unsettling visuals and a haunting narration. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s character describes finding a massive place with countless rooms that "just goes on and on and on," as the footage shifts through yellowed rooms, dropping level after level until furniture yields to a sterile hallway that could belong to an abandoned early-1990s business center.

The voiceover adds that the place doesn’t build rooms so much as it "remembers" them, and “the more it remembers something, the less it does.” The Backrooms began as a 2019 4chan post: an image of an empty hallway accompanied by a warning about "noclipping" out of reality.

The idea grew into a creepypasta and an online mythology of a sprawling expanse of yellow hallways and strange spaces—an unfinished dimension "behind" our reality. It’s said to be entered by "no-clipping" with no guaranteed exit, and its many levels range from abandoned pools to 1990s-style carpeted rooms, all lit by unbearably buzzy fluorescent lights.

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