A24 has confirmed that The Backrooms will be rated R and will run 1 hour and 45 minutes (105 minutes), marking the first time that internet creepypasta culture has been given a proper theatrical horror treatment.
For the uninitiated - and there are many - the Backrooms is an internet horror phenomenon that originated on a 4chan thread in 2019. The concept: imagine if you "no-clipped" out of reality and found yourself in an endless maze of yellow-wallpapered office spaces with fluorescent lighting and damp carpet. It's liminal space horror at its purest - the terror of being trapped somewhere that's simultaneously familiar and utterly wrong.
What started as a single image and caption spawned an entire wiki, YouTube videos, video games, and now, a feature film. It's the kind of grassroots internet mythology that studios usually ignore or botch completely. But A24, bless them, understands how to adapt weird internet content into legitimate cinema.
The R-rating is interesting. The Backrooms concept is more about dread and existential horror than gore or violence. The rating suggests that A24 is leaning into body horror or psychological intensity rather than trying to make this PG-13 accessible. Smart move. The audience for this already exists online, and they're not looking for a sanitized version.
The 105-minute runtime is even more telling. That's lean for a modern horror film, which tend to bloat to two hours. It suggests the filmmakers understand that the Backrooms concept, while compelling, is also inherently limited. You can only sustain "wandering through endless yellow rooms" for so long before it becomes tedious. Keep it tight, keep it intense, get out before the audience starts checking their phones.
This is also a fascinating test case for whether internet horror can successfully make the jump to theatrical release. Slender Man tried and failed spectacularly. Five Nights at Freddy's succeeded financially but was critically panned. The Backrooms has the advantage of being genuinely unsettling source material and having A24's quality control behind it.
The bigger question is whether general audiences will connect with something that's been so thoroughly dissected and remixed online. Part of the Backrooms' appeal is its crowdsourced, collaborative nature - different creators adding different "levels" and entities to the mythology. Can a single linear film capture that? Or will it feel like just one person's interpretation of something that belongs to everyone?
In Hollywood, nobody knows anything - except me, occasionally. And I know that A24 has a better track record with weird horror than anyone else in the business. If anyone can make the Backrooms work as a movie, it's them. But this is still a massive gamble on internet culture translating to theatrical success.
