MOST horror movies are adapted from novels, old films, or even true crime stories. As years go by, creators and filmmakers alike find more diverse inspirations.
Today, some horror movies are sourced from the Internet, specifically community boards. Ever since the creation of the web, users online have shared horror stories in photo, text, or video form. You can't help but give in to the lore, whether it's real or not.
Some might even call these online horror stories urban legends. If you know the infamous Slender Man, then you know what we're talking about.
The new movie Backrooms is apparently based on an infamous urban legend from an online community board.
Is this true?
VERDICT:
TRUE
Know what a creepypasta is? Because that’s exactly what Backrooms is based on.
If you’ve ever read creepy horror stories on the Internet from community boards or from what are sometimes known as subreddits like Reddit to 4chan, that usually counts as a creepypasta.
Creepypasta is defined as short narratives of horror stories shared online, and it can be in different forms of media.
In 2019, an anonymous user posted a rather eerie photo of an empty office room that has yellowish walls that don’t scream friendly. The picture was accompanied with some text, which said:
“If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in.
"God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.”
The term “noclip” also originated from these community boards, particularly the gaming community, where it means a video game glitch or cheat that lets a player pass through walls or solid objects in the game environment. So when you put this into context, the movie sounds like it'll likely put its audience through a maze.
A24’s Backrooms stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as a furniture store owner who finds a secret doorway in his store that leads him to an endless number of rooms. He mysteriously disappears and his therapist tries to find him.
The eerie post, which was found on 4chan, led Kane Parsons, the eventual director of the box office hit, to make a nine-minute short film based on the post back in 2022, which he named Backrooms. He had free graphics software and a dream, which eventually led to his short achieving 78 million views and attracted many producers wanting to work with the then-16-year-old Parsons. This then brought him to be hired by A24 to make the feature-length film based on his short.
The movie is currently out locally so catch it if you’re curious.
References:
https://www.looper.com/
