"The Backrooms (Found Footage)" is the premiere episode of the American science fiction analog horror web series Backrooms, based on the creepypasta of the same name. The episode premiered on YouTube on January 7, 2022. Starring, written, directed, and animated by Kane Parsons (credited as Kane Pixels), it was independently produced by the filmmaker using Blender when he was 16 years old.
Following the episode going viral as a short film, Parsons elected to expand the film into a full semi-anthological web series.
Plot
On July 4, 1991, three students are filming a short film. As the cameraman backs up for a wide angle, he suddenly falls into the Backrooms. After falling down, he calls out for his friends. Finding no response, he walks around the yellow rooms, oblivious to a gangly humanoid figure observing him, briefly caught on his camera.
After climbing a ladder to a new room, he follows arrows painted on the walls of several rooms, leading to wall with a message saying "don't move, stay still". Hearing a roaring sound behind him, the cameraman turns to find the figure far behind him. The figure pursues the cameraman, who jumps down a hole into a lower floor to escape.
The cameraman finds himself in an area unlike the previous yellow rooms, instead finding a house's basement, hallways with white walls, an indoor courtyard of windows and other architectural anomalies. After some time, the cameraman eventually finds and enters a door with a fire exit that leads him back to another section of yellow rooms. After turning a corner, the cameraman sees a chair thrown at a wall by the figure. Startled, the cameraman flees by entering a narrow gap in the wall.
Upon approaching a steep edge, the cameraman turns around to again find the figure. It grabs him, causing him to drop his camera down the edge, noclipping the camera back to reality on September 23, 1996 high in the air, landing in a backyard. The video ends with footsteps approaching the camera as birds chirp.
Development
Reception The episode was critically acclaimed, with WPST calling it "the scariest video on the Internet". Otaku USA categorized it as analog horror, while Dread Central and Nerdist compared it favorably to the 2019 video game Control.
Boing Boings Rob Beschizza claimed that the episode—like the creepypasta Slender Man and its panned 2018 film adaptation—would eventually be adapted into a "slick but dismal 2-hour Hollywood movie".
See also
The Oldest View – another web series by Kane Parsons.
Notes
References
External links
"The Backrooms (Found Footage)" at YouTube