In 2019, A24 briefly released an extended director’s cut of the unexpected horror hit Midsommar to theaters between its regular run and its home video debut. This year, the even more surprising success of the YouTube “liminal horror” adaptation Backrooms—which has, shockingly, become the studio’s highest grossing film of all time—inspired them to take a similar marketing tack. This time around, however, the offering was not a true extended cut, but rather the original theatrical release with a 15-minute bonus short set in the Backrooms universe playing after the credits rolled. In the theater I saw it in, less than half the audience stayed for the bonus film (presumably because they didn’t know it was coming—without researching it, you would not expect the extra content).
You likely missed Backrooms: Everything Must Go Edition in its one-week theatrical run (which is already over). The good news is that, although there was originally some question as to whether this short would be a theatrical exclusive, we now know that it will (soon) appear on director Kane Parsons’ YouTube channel. The other good news for those with Backrooms FOMO is that “Everything Must Go” is as inessential as inessential can be: it chronologically and temporally links the web series to the feature film, but it offers little excitement on its own.
The “Everything Must Go” edition exists only because of Backrooms’ strange journey to theaters. To recap quickly for those out of the loop: it began as a “creepypasta” digital legend about a man who discovers an endless labyrinth of rooms. Other users picked up the story and elaborated on it—most notably, a 16-year old named Kane Parsons, whose original liminal space found-footage “Backrooms” YouTube short picked up 90 million views (and a Weirdcademy Award) before being further expanded into a 24-episode webseries. The series eventually centered around the corporation ASYNC’s exploration of the Backrooms—an endless series of rooms with improbable geometries, surreally anomalous items, and dimly glimpsed monstrous entities. In yet another surprise in this constantly astonishing phenomenon, in 2023 art-house/elevated horror studio A24, fresh off a best picture nomination for Everything Everywhere All at Once, announced that they would sign then 17-year-old Parsons to direct a Backrooms feature film, with the backing of James Wan‘s Atomic Monster productions. Again defying the odds, the Backrooms feature film was a blockbuster.
And thus we come to the present. The purpose of the “Everything Must Go” edition—besides the obvious cash grab—is, as noted, to link Parsons’ original webseries to the feature film. In doing so, Backrooms must canvass two separate constituencies: the Gen Z fans of the original YouTube series and A24 cinephile crowd, who skew a bit older and who aren’t steeped in Backrooms’ lore. I won’t describe what goes on in the new short; Arushi Jacob provides an detailed plot breakdown for Variety, if you’re interested. Nevertheless, I will get into plot spoilers in the following discussion, because what interests me is this intersection of the web series and the feature film, which creates a liminal phenomenon of its own.
What works remarkably well in the feature film is the way the Backrooms themselves reflect lead character Clark’s personality. In narratives, houses (and by extension interior structures like mysterious labyrinths) almost always symbolize the mind, and in particular the subconscious. They are personal interiors that may differ from the facade presented to the world. When Clark listens to “The Window Within,” the book on tape as read by his personal therapist, Mary, that symbolism is made explicit, with talk of metaphorical wall-building and searching for an exit from a confining structure through a window. It is no mistake that Clark, now a frustrated furniture store owner, once aspired to be an architect. (“I am an architect!” he insists.) The Backrooms materialize as a virtual space that Clark has built for himself, somewhere to retreat to escape from an outside world which is unfulfilling. When Mary follows him into the Backrooms, she enacts the process of investigating Clark’s subconscious: i.e., therapy. She is an invitee, because Clark has asked her to come, but she is also an invader, threatening the peace he has built for himself with uncomfortable observations.
The Backrooms also mirror Mary’s psychology. The jumbled piles of furniture seen in the very first room refer to similar piles seen in the childhood home where she lived as a near prisoner with a paranoid schizophrenic mother—as much as they are funhouse mirror image of Clark’s furniture store. This suggests a merger between the two personalities (Animus and Anima) occurring in the intimate process of psychotherapy. It’s a straightforward, classic metaphor that works wonderfully in the context of the movie. All the more so because Clark isn’t suffering from a traumatic backstory; he is, in fact, just a bit of a jerk, due to an oppositional personality, too much drinking, and his own sense of failure. In other words, he’s quite believable and relatable, no melodramatics necessary. Mary’s backstory, which is less thoroughly explored, supplies enough trauma for the both of them.
None of this psychological depth, of course, is present in the original web series. And therein we find the extra-narrative tension, because there are two stories, and two strategies, mashed up here: the psychological thriller written for the feature film, and the pre-existing lore in which the Backrooms are an existing phenomenon being investigated by the ASYNC corporation. Watching the feature film for the second time, I caught more references to ASYNC, which, on further reflection, are unnecessary, and may even detract from the film’s actual story. At first viewing, the ASYNC sequences seem like a late-arriving red herring, simply an alternative theory casting ambiguity on what the Backrooms are, or might be. In the movie, Mary is never actually shown exiting the Backrooms, or the furniture store, but instead is rescued by hazard-suited men while inside the maze, then shown to be ushered through even more halls by white-coated technicians. Despite the change in aesthetic from the yellow-flourescent corridors to antiseptic white ones, it is conceivable that she has simply entered another, more sophisticated, section of the sprawling Backrooms. In the context of the film, without knowing the webseries backstory, the ASYNC sequences make for a delightfully weird epilogue, casting further doubt upon an already cloudy scenario.
You can feasibly merge these two ideas—the portrait of individual psychology and the independent existence of an ever-growing Backrooms entity “out there,” not tied to anyone’s personal subconscious—by supposing that the Backrooms-as-entity feeds upon individual psychologies to gather the raw materials it uses to build itself. In fact, this interpretation seems almost inevitable, if we insist on reconciling the series and feature as a coherent whole. But this approach feels a little disappointing; the sci-fi-ish explanation detracts from the elegance of the feature film’s metaphor, as if we had discovered that the scenario in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie was just an experiment by tentacled aliens in another galaxy in monitoring and engineering human dreams.
Furthermore, this inherent tension suggests why I personally think it would be best for the talented Kane Parsons to move on from the Backrooms and try out new ideas. (To his credit, Parsons sounds like he is leaning in that direction, despite earlier reports that he was already working on Backrooms sequel ideas). Regardless, with or without Parsons, it seems likely, if not inevitable, that we’ll get more Backrooms. And there are two paths that such a followup might take. In the best case, the auteurist scenario, the property follows the path trod by Twin Peaks, where new ideas and additions are piled on each other in a crazier and crazier fashion, until the original premise is so twisted and mutated that it’s hardly more than a distant memory. Unfortunately, the more likely scenario is that Backrooms franchises itself like Silent Hill and it’s disappointing sequels, re-enacting the same basic scenario over and over with new protagonists, based on the assumption that the magic inheres in the setting and will remain after the wonder has been drained out of it—at least for long enough to harvest another two or three bushels of profits.
In the “Everything Must Go” post-credits segment, representatives of ASYNC discover a promotional sign that (unbeknownst to them) is a copy of one in Clark’s store. There are actually three visible copies of the sign, each apparently identical but decreasing in size, with the first one suspended in the air and each succeeding one hung lower, until the final one is sinking into the floor. The technicians’ instinct is to measure it, confirm the dimensions, analyze images to confirm they are identical, and predict where the next iteration of the sign would be found. In other words, unlike Clark, who understands the Backrooms intuitively and who is so overcome with wonder that he chooses to dwell within them forever, ASYNC thrashes a miraculous phenomenon to death by analysis, then leaves. They come away with more knowledge, but less awe. I like to think this is an intentional metaphor from Parsons.