Sawt Falasteen - 'Backrooms' born of 'itch to explore' online horror meme

Ahead of the release, 20-year-old director Kane Parsons told AFP how the project developed from a creepy story that spread online about a claustrophobic, labyrinthine alternate dimension.

- When did you come across the 'Backrooms' universe? -

"It was May of 2019. I would have been 13 at the time. I do not recall the first time I saw (the original photo that inspired the stories) exactly, because it was very prevalent as a meme... I kind of saw it everywhere for a couple of weeks.

"Initially I think the thing that was speaking to me was the fact that I have certainly been in a million different spaces that resemble the backrooms and feel like the backrooms.

"The generic aspect to them is evocative of vague memories from childhood you can't quite pin down. It wasn't actually until probably a couple of years later (that)... I had the itch to try to explore that myself and that's what I did with that first short."

- Q.: Your first video, posted in 2022, showed a young boy straying through terrifying corridors and topped 20 million views in two weeks. How did that affect you? -

"It did very well on YouTube initially, which I did not expect... within a month of that, I started getting emails from a whole bunch of different companies.

"I had no interaction with the film industry at that point. I was 16 at the time. So it was all very new and I was very sceptical of what it could mean to try to adapt this or to be engaging with suits at all for something that I cared so personally about.

"I wanted to appreciate and be very careful with the legacy of this thing. If we're gonna go down that road, we've got to do it very specifically and very meticulously."

- Why did you make the jump to cinema after making more than 20 short films on YouTube? -

"My whole life I've used YouTube... I've always been of the mind that there's not really a direct barrier other than a financial one, that separates a project that is online from something that is in the industrial film world.

"There are reasons why internet projects are maybe not always taken seriously, but I also do think there's a lot of genuinely really great work being done by a lot of independent creators out there.

"I'm surprised this is not a strategy being employed more, of trying to seed an IP online and test it there for cheap. That's not a bad way to go about it. Testing this thing out and seeing if it can grow organically and take root with people in a more simple form.

"It does feel like a good majority of these projects that are kind of mentioned in the same breath are all in the horror vein. That feels like the biggest launching point for independent stuff on YouTube that I've seen."

- Did you always want to be the one to direct the film? -

"There was no version of this where I wasn't the one directing that I would personally be open to. I've always been very stingy about that.

"I would say the creative freedom got higher the further along the process went.

"The original script is probably the bit I had the least immediate (involvement in), I wasn't writing the thing.

"From there it's been a continuous process of sculpting it in little ways and sometimes bigger ways until it's exactly the project that I wouldbe wanting to put out.

"I think maybe it's going to be weird seeing how much this has dropped into the mainstream for people (for whom) formerly this has been semi-niche.

"It's jarring for myself as well to be seeing it on bus stops and stuff, that does not feel right for Backrooms."

- Will you continue to develop the 'Backrooms' universe in the cinema? -

"Backrooms is not done. I know that for a fact. I am more concerned with the narrative and the specifics of how I wish to convey these arcs on a intellectual, emotional level rather than the exact containers they'll fall into.

"I can't see the future in terms of exactly what the most viable option will be. I wouldn't rule out film. I wouldn't rule out even television series. That would be my personal hope for Backrooms."

R.Shaban--SF-PST