One Backrooms Reveal Will Make Longtime Fans Very Happy

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Warning: Spoilers for "Backrooms" follow.

Kane Parsons' skin-crawling liminal nightmare "Backrooms" arrives in theaters this week riding a wave of hype and likely box office glory. The excitement surrounding the horror film stems from online lore built up over the years. While Parsons may be the person most associated with the Backrooms, he didn't create the concept. The idea of the spooky liminal space that invokes a mixture of menace and unsettling '90s nostalgia was originally formed on the message board 4chan (you can learn more about the Backrooms origins here).

Parsons drew inspiration from this ever-evolving creepypasta to create a webseries that has now blossomed into a feature film. On this front, the young filmmaker is following a long-standing horror tradition: the genre has always thrived on creators taking urban legends and reshaping them into something distinct, and what are creepypasta tales if not the modern-day equivalent of urban legends?

When it comes to the new "Backrooms" movie, the script, penned by Will Soodik, takes steps to make sure fans of Parsons' webseries see indications that this is his version of the Backrooms. That comes most directly in the form of Async, a research institute Parsons created for his Backrooms webseries.

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Parsons' webseries takes the form of a collection of found-footage videos exploring an endless, seemingly impossible liminal space that looks like an empty office building from hell. While there's not a specific overarching storyline in the webseries, the outlines of one take shape. We learn that a mysterious research group known as Async is exploring and conducting experiments in the Backrooms in an attempt to figure out just what the hell they are and how they work.

In the "Backrooms" movie, the Async connection is given to the audience from the jump, as we watch VHS footage from an unlucky man wandering around in the Backrooms, or "The Complex," as some call it, and meeting an untimely end. We see that this footage is being monitored by scientists and researchers working for the mysterious Async, and indeed, the doomed man also worked for Async. 

This will all bring a sense of familiarity to fans of the webseries. It also, I imagine, goes a long way towards firmly establishing this take on the Backrooms as springing from Parsons' imagination, since there are so many different incarnations of the Backrooms online that have nothing to do with Parsons' work.

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The "Backrooms" film wisely doesn't give us too much insight into Async, but we do learn a bit more about their backstory. In the final moments of the film, Mary (Renate Reinsve), who has been wandering around the Backrooms and almost met her untimely death there, is rescued by nondescript figures in Hazmat suits and brought to a kind of interrogation room. There, she meets Phil (Mark Duplass), a character we've seen vague glimpses of throughout the movie. Phil tells Mary he works for Async, and reveals that at one point, Async made MRI machines. However, at some point, they stumbled upon the strange phenomenon that is the Backrooms and have been studying it ever since.

While Phil seems sympathetic to Mary, we also get the sense that Async's intentions are potentially sinister. The film ends on an ambiguous note, but it is heavily implied that Async will not be letting Mary go. They want to gather information from her about her experience in the Backrooms, but when Mary asks if she'll be allowed to return home after providing that information, Phil indicates that's not up to him.

It's wise of the film to keep things vague both because it makes the movie all the more unsettling, and also serves as a point of entry for both fans of the webseries and newcomers. Fans will be able to draw their own conclusions and form new theories based on what they've already watched on YouTube, while those new to the Backrooms universe might head off to watch Parsons' short films to try to solve a seemingly unsolvable mystery.