Before Kane Parsons’ hit horror film, Backrooms started life as an online phenomenon based on a single viral photo.

Backrooms is one of the most talked-about movies in the world right now

Few modern films have as interesting a backstory as Kane Parsons’ Backrooms.

Before it became one of 2026’s most talked-about horror movies, Backrooms started life as a spooky meme of sorts on the message board 4Chan, first as a viral photo in response to a call-out for “images that just feel ‘off’”, and then as a widely-shared “creepypasta” passage, after an anonymous user came up with an unsettling paragraph of text to accompany the picture.

A then-16-year-old Kane Parsons subsequently had the idea in 2022 to make a YouTube series set in the “backrooms” universe, drawing even more people’s attention to the trend, which became so popular that he was approached by production company A24 about turning the project into a feature-length film.

However, what you might not realise is that the “backrooms” concept was previously explored in another mainstream project.

Back in 2024, the Ryan Murphy-created American Horror Story spin-off American Horror Stories devoted an entire episode to the online phenomenon.

Also titled Backrooms, the stand-alone episode featured The White Lotus and The Sopranos star Michael Imperioli as a man who can’t stop switching in and out of “backrooms” as he deals with the aftermath of his son’s disappearance.

Metacritic and IMDB have the episode’s approval ratings listed as 8.8 out of 10 and 5.3 out of 10, respectively, while Kane Parsons himself appeared unimpressed with it during an interview with horror producer James Wan shared last month.

“I think people do miss the mark sometimes with their own Backrooms projects when they go for a space where the lights get too dark,” he claimed, while discussing other adaptations of the online phenomenon. “It’s too green, it’s like scary-scary. 

“Like, it’s trying to be a dark haunted house or a dungeon, it just falls apart. The original image is very bright, and it’s very low-contrast, and kinda faded looking.”

Kane has already hinted at future projects to come set in the Backrooms universe, claiming it was always his idea for the project to be “a series that goes outside the confines of this film”.

Backrooms is in cinemas now. American Horror Stories is streaming on Disney+.