Backrooms: The creepy internet phenomenon, explained

Article excerpt

A 20-year-old YouTuber's low-budget horror film based on "The Backrooms", a viral internet creepypasta about endless, maze-like office spaces, is outperforming the new Star Wars movie at the box office. The phenomenon began as a simple 4chan post in 2019 and has since spawned thousands of fan theories, artwork, games, and short films across platforms like YouTube and TikTok. What started as a spooky internet meme has evolved into a sprawling collaborative fictional universe that's proving unexpectedly bankable, with the movie's success suggesting mainstream audiences are hungry for grassroots horror spawned from online communities rather than traditional studios.