The YouTube series that inspired Kane Parsons’ Backrooms movie adaptation includes some of the most shocking, terrifying, and entertaining moments in the young filmmaker’s budding franchise. Parsons, known as Kane Pixels on YouTube, took the concept of the Backrooms to new heights with his 2022 web series. Adding characters, world-building, story history, and believable dangers to the internet creepypasta, Parsons made the Backrooms feel like a real possibility.
Originally inspired by a 2019 image posted on 4chan taken during a Wisconsin furniture store’s renovations, the Backrooms embody the liminal space aesthetic as an otherworldly location that people can “noclip” into and easily get lost. Starting in 2022, Parsons developed an entire story and mythology around the Backrooms in a series of popular YouTube shorts that have now inspired A24’s highest-grossing movie ever, Backrooms, and some of the YouTube episodes are hard to forget.
As of writing, Parsons’ YouTube series comprises 24 short films that have expanded on the Backrooms and revealed more of the history behind the organization that discovered them, the Async Research Institute. It all started, however, with “The Backrooms (Found Footage),” which was uploaded on January 7, 2022. As the series has grown, more poignant stories have been told, but the first episode laid strong foundations for the rest to stand tall.
In “The Backrooms (Found Footage),” a cameraman noclips into the Backrooms in 1991 while shooting a short film and continues to film as he explores the otherworldly corridors and rooms. He finds a wall covered in graffiti, sees strange architectural phenomena, and is pursued by a “Lifeform,” which eventually catches up to him and attacks. His camera is thrust back into the real world in 1996, teasing time dilations that would be explored in later episodes.
This episode established the aesthetic and dangers of the Backrooms, including the Lifeform, which has been seen several times in subsequent episodes, and even made a brief appearance in A24’s popular Backrooms adaptation. It’s the Lifeform’s lair that Bobby (Finn Bennett) explores in Backrooms, shortly before he is snatched and killed by the entity. It was this episode that started it all, and it’s still one of the best.
Parsons’ web series not only followed innocent individuals exploring the Backrooms but also built an entire lore and history surrounding the location and the organization tasked with studying them. The Async Research Institute was introduced in “The Third Test,” but it was the next episode, “First Contact,” that revealed how the organization, originally formed to build MRI machines, first discovered the Backrooms — there referred to as “the Complex.”
On October 17, 1989, Async performed the sixth test of their “Low-Proximity Magnetic Distortion System” in “First Contact,” which dramatically opens a gateway into the Backrooms. This also accidentally caused the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which claimed the lives of 63 people and injured almost 3800 more. Parsons cleverly connected his Backrooms series to a tragic real-world event, making the discovery of the Backrooms and the events that happened after feel all the more real.
“Damage Control” Concludes Peter Tench’s Story
Released much later as the 21st episode on January 30, 2023, “Damage Control” includes the audio of a meeting in which the dramatic events of Async employee Peter Tench’s rampage through the facility are detailed. This includes the circumstances surrounding his disappearance in “Informational Video,” Async’s faking of his death, his arrival back at the Backrooms’ threshold months later, and his deteriorating mental state after being recovered.
Peter Tench became a main character in Parsons’ YouTube series and was one of the most important figures, given that he himself was displaced in time. “Damage Control” revealed the truth of the matter, but also showed just how far Async would be willing to go to cover their tracks. This ultimately spells bad news for Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve) in the Backrooms movie, given that she’s now a captive of Async and a survivor of the Backrooms.
While the original “The Backrooms (Found Footage)” introduced the titular location, “Found Footage #2” started to flesh it out properly on August 21, 2022. This episode saw a young woman noclip into the Backrooms while filming a “null zone” she discovered on her garage floor. Null zones allow individuals to phase out of reality into the Backrooms, and, inside, she finds enlarged furniture, strange architecture, a crashed car that disappeared from the road in “9780415263573,” and a room full of a plant-like mass.
This is revealed to be the bacteria that the Lifeform is made of, having become sentient and protecting the Backrooms as if they were its territory. The woman is chased by the Lifeform after focusing on a mysterious painting of a woman, but becomes cornered in a room where green cracks start to form around her. This hasn’t yet been explained by Parsons, but since his YouTube series will continue, we may get answers soon.
“Found Footage #2” ends with the woman’s entire ordeal being watched on a TV screen, similarly to how Clark’s (Chiwetel Ejiofor) adventure is watched by Async researcher Phil (Mark Duplass) in Backrooms. The episode also introduces the blue tape surrounding a null zone, which Clark replicates in the Backrooms movie after he finds the entrance in the basement of his furniture store. There’s a lot here that still needs explaining, which makes this episode even more intriguing.
“Pitfalls” Made the Lifeform Even More Terrifying
Long before they reunited with Peter Tench in “Reunion,” Async researchers Mark Blume and Marvin E. Leigh were introduced in “Pitfalls,” which was uploaded on May 1, 2022. Here, the Async team discovers a room, later referred to as “Room 14D,” which contains several deep rectangular pits. While trying to reach a door on the other side, cameraman Marvin falls into one of these pits, allowing him to explore more of the Backrooms while waiting for rescue.
Marvin follows the sound of distant screams to a section of the Backrooms that looks like a regular residential street, similar to the one seen in the Backrooms movie. Marvin enters a house, but doesn’t find a human in need inside, rather a Lifeform imitating a human voice to lure prey. It chases him, but he is rescued by his team just in time. This episode revealed more about Async’s operations and the Lifeform itself, and made it an even more terrifying entity.
The most recent found footage installment, “Found Footage #3,” uploaded on September 13, 2024, is also the longest video in Kane Parsons’ web series, clocking in at 45 minutes. This allows it to become a full story with a beginning, middle, and end, while other episodes have felt more like chapters. “Found Footage #3” follows Ravi, who enters the Backrooms through his own basement and explores the area while being pursued by a Lifeform.
While similar to the previous found footage episodes, “Found Footage #3” reveals new and unexplored corners of the Backrooms. Ravi explores what looks like rooms in an office block, finds a room with chairs organized in a circle, sees furniture in unusual places, including piles piled up against a door akin to the piles in the Backrooms movie, finds a room full of radio equipment, walks across a skywalk overlooking a cityscape, and finds an entire neighborhood housed in a large room.
Ravi is also chased by new entities that look far more human than the Lifeform, and eventually finds a house in which he hears a human on the other side of an impossible wall. This bears a resemblance to Clark speaking to Kat (Lukita Maxwell) in Backrooms. The video ends with Ravi, some time later, speaking to the dying camera, resigned to his fate, perfectly encapsulating just how haunting, harrowing, and inescapable the Backrooms are, which could be explored in the franchise’s future.
- Release Date
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May 27, 2026
- Runtime
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110 minutes
- Director
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Kane Parsons
- Writers
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Will Soodik
- Producers
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Chris Ferguson, Dan Cohen, Dan Levine, James Wan, Jenno Topping, Kori Adelson, Michael Clear, Osgood Perkins, Peter Chernin, Roberto Patino, Shawn Levy
