Teen horror short fuels surrealist feature film – a digital nightmare realized

A24’s latest offering, Backrooms, began with a bewildering challenge: translating the unsettling aesthetic of a series of YouTube shorts created by a then-unknown teenager into a full-blown theatrical experience. The result is a visually arresting, psychologically dense descent into a reality crafted by production designer Danny Vermette and director Kane Parsons – a collision of digital influence and practical set design that’s both captivating and deeply unsettling.

From creepypasta to cinematic maze

Vermette found himself wrestling with the very concept of endlessness early in the project. Parsons’ initial idea, born from a ‘creepypasta’ – a digitally-created ghost story – manifested as a massive, crashing digital mockup of the Backrooms space. “It crashed my computer,” Vermette recounts, highlighting the sheer scale of the vision. The film’s director, a mere 20 years old at the time, had conceived of a labyrinthine world of beige rooms, a visual echo of the dank basements that fueled the original online phenomenon.

But the story doesn’t stop there. A24’s strategic investment transformed this internet curiosity into a tangible, immersive experience, utilizing four soundstages to build a convincing replica of Parsons' initial vision. The sheer volume of data – nearly 8 terabytes – initially rendered the project unfeasible, showcasing the evolving nature of contemporary filmmaking and the increasing reliance on digital tools.

Captain Clark, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, navigates this strange new world, a world mirroring the internal struggles of his character and his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve). The film cleverly uses the repetitive nature of the maze to reflect the characters’ anxieties and the oppressive nature of their lives above. What begins as drab furniture – initially mimicking the uniformity of Clark’s office and Kline’s sterile therapy room – rapidly devolves into a nightmarish accumulation of Frankensteined ottomans and chairs, a grotesque transformation driven by Vermette’s meticulous attention to detail.

Vermette’s approach drew heavily on ‘digital clipping’ – a technique used in video games to create the illusion of objects phasing through walls. This inspired the film’s surrealist aesthetic, layering practical effects with sophisticated VFX. “We really wanted to have as much practical as we could,” Vermette explains, emphasizing the commitment to a tangible experience. The Toronto-based soundstages, cleverly doubling for San José, California, served as the crucial bridge between digital concept and physical reality, immersing both the cast and the crew in Parsons’ unsettling vision. Director Kane Parsons even brought his children on set, finding an unexpected joy in the challenging ramps and bizarre furniture.

Backrooms isn’t a standard horror film; it’s a digital echo chamber, a testament to the power of internet culture and the surprising ways it can manifest on the big screen. It’s a reminder that even the most fleeting online trends can be transformed into something genuinely unsettling, something that lingers long after the credits roll. A film undeniably strange, but one that feels remarkably, disturbingly real.”n