It has now been over 48 hours since the teaser trailer for the Backrooms movie dropped. And from all early indications, we are at the beginning of an era where the Backrooms go viral again — except this time it’s set to go beyond the internet.
As I scroll through my feed on here, I am still seeing many posts that are about the trailer. There’s a few more discussions now. I’m still getting flooded with notifications on some of my posts that went viral on here.
It was a crazy couple of days for Backrooms fans. First we got the teaser poster which put certain parts of the internet into a mono-yellow frenzy. Then exactly 24 hours later the trailer that many people have been waiting years for is finally revealed.
The Stats
The trailer has been doing high numbers on all platforms. The following figures were taken as close to the 48 hour mark as possible (ordered by number of views).
- TikTok – Views: 17M, Likes: 3.4M, Comments: 23.2K, Shares: 780.2K
- X / Twitter – Views: 15.4M, Likes: 81.9K, Comments: 815, Reposts: 19K
- Instagram – Views: 12.3M, Likes: 1M, Comments: 7.6K, Story Posts: 572K
- YouTube (A24 Upload) – Views: 1.9M, Likes: 110K, Comments: 5.9K
- Facebook – Views: 1.5M, Likes: 23.1K, Comments: 1.3K, Shares: 8.3K
- YouTube (Kane’s Upload) – Views: 464K, Likes: 113K, Comments: 8.5K
Additionally, TikTok allows you to sort a channel’s videos by most likes. The Backrooms trailer actually is the most liked video of all time for the A24 channel, overtaking a video from the movie Priscilla (about Priscilla Presley) from 2023 which had 2.6M likes. It’s a big call, but there’s potential for this to become A24’s biggest movie ever.
TikTok / X / Instagram / YouTube (A24)
The Hype is Real!
If you scroll through the comments or posts on any of the social platforms, you are greeted with post after post of people who were genuinely excited for this movie.
Some were long-term fans of Kane Parsons and his Backrooms series. Others were even longer-term fans of The Backrooms in general. There were newer fans, casual fans, hardcore fans. And there were general movie fans even, expressing how much they wanted to see this. A lot of people were saying they wanted to go and see it on opening weekend – some even wanting to see it multiple times (that’s me!).
There were a also lot of fans of indie films and in particular indie horror were very excited as well, especially after the recent release of Markiplier’s movie Iron Lung – saying that these movies are heralding in a new era of horror. Along with those who were fans of A24 in general, who were excited to see what A24 would do with this concept.
During the day of the trailer’s posting, I had to scroll quite a long way down my feed on here before I came across a post that either wasn’t the trailer itself or something else Backrooms related. A lot of people were posting and engaging with this too! (This was also similar the previous day with the poster image — my page had been full of the mono-yellow poster!).
It’s an amazing feeling as a Backrooms content creator to see all of these people who are passionate about the same thing you are. I wasn’t a fan back in 2022 when the Backrooms went fully viral. But experiencing what I have over the past few days has been one of the greatest feelings. For me personally, it felt surreal and exciting. It still does. The next 3 months are going to be something. It’s a great time to be a Backrooms fan!
There were of course a few people who didn’t know what the Backrooms were but the trailer made them interested to ask where they could find out more. Generally if I came across one of these posts, I’ll just link them to Kane’s YouTube playlist. People were very interested to check it out and find out more.
One person I sent the link to however replied back saying “nope, I ain’t watching that”. Either the trailer or the thumbnail of Bacteria or both had really tapped into their fears. And they weren’t the only one there either. There were also people posting about how the trailer made them feel uncomfortable or that they were interested but they weren’t sure if they could watch it.
This is what the Backrooms truly can be.
Concerns
There was some concern (because of the use of CGI in the trailer) that the movie would appear low quality as a result.
Fans of the Backrooms expressed concerns about why a doorway was the entry point instead of a no-clip zone, especially since no-clipping is one of the key points from the original text. There was also concern that the protagonist could enter and exit the Backrooms at will as was indicated by him being able to tell the psychiatrist about the place he had found. Previously it has only been Async who could do this.
Other concerns were mainly things that had been bought up last year when the official images were posted. Things like how A24 will handle a film like this, that it would be turned into a jump-scare horror, that there would be too many monsters, and that it wasn’t going to be a found footage movie.
Misconceptions
It seems you can never stop misinformation, and even The Backrooms suffers from this problem. There were some people who had incorrect information when it came to not just The Backrooms in general, but also the movie.
The main one I found was that people thought it was based on a game. While true there is a lot of Backrooms games out there, as any fan of Kane’s work would know, the movie isn’t based on a game, it’s based on his Backrooms YouTube series (which in turn was based on the original Backrooms image and creepypasta).
The worst offender though was the X account for IGN (a large gaming and entertainment media site). They were also saying it was based on a game. When individuals get it wrong, I’ll cut them some slack because maybe they were provided misinformation; or they just made assumptions based on what they had heard. But when a media site does this, there’s no excuse! They have staff that should be researching this sort of thing and not just saying “oh, there’s Backrooms games, so it must be based on them”.
The next most common misconception I came across was that the movie was going to be based on the Extended Lore of the Wikis – I came across quite a few people hoping it would have levels and entities like Partygoers, Smilers, etc. Even one guy saying he hoped that there would be Almond Water!
It often is the games that cause this misconception — some Backrooms games “cross the lores”, they include parts of both Kane’s Universe and the Extended Lore. And while there’s nothing wrong with the games combining elements to create a better gameplay experience, it does have a downside of people thinking this is the case when it comes to the movie.
Other misconceptions I came across were that it was Kane who created the Backrooms (as in the concept). That the trailer was AI (this mainly appeared to be people who weren’t familiar with CG rendering). That the movie would only be rendered scenes therefore not being good quality. And of course was the ever-present misconception of The Backrooms originating on TikTok. This one always seems to come up in all manner of places for some reason.
It’s Not for Everyone
Of course every movie is going to have it’s haters. Or people who don’t have an interest. Although these people were very much in the minority from what I could tell.
Some people were polite about it and just commented that it wasn’t for them. But sadly there were people who used it as an opportunity to flame or put down the movie, A24, Kane or even the actors.
I did notice that often when someone made a comment implying the movie was going to be bad, then there usually was a bunch of people in their replies ready to defend the Backrooms (or whatever was the target). And while some of the comments towards the “haters”at times weren’t always polite, it did indicate that people were very passionate about the Backrooms / Kane, in so much there they wanted to defined them.
At the Mercy of the Algorithm
The other negative I came across was in the form of the algorithms – something as social media users we are often at the mercy of. While the trailer very definitely did make it to the feeds of many people, I couldn’t help but wonder if it hasn’t reached so many people who might be interested.
I asked some friends who were into movies and pop-culture (but aren’t Backrooms fans) if any of them had seen the Backrooms trailer. Sadly none of them had. One friend who was a horror fan hadn’t seen it until I sent it to her. My husband who watches a lot of movie content on YouTube didn’t get it recommended to him either. If it’s not being shown to people who engage with movie-based content, then that’s a lot of potential audience missed.
I barely touched the surface when it came to what I was reading. But I’m sure the sentiment was much the same everywhere.
I would have loved to reply to more people than I did – particularly people wanting to know more or the ones who had incorrect information. Those who I did help were always so grateful for letting them know (as many hadn’t been answered). I feel there’s a lot of people out there I can educate about this wonderful world of The Backrooms!
I saw many who had been fans of Kane’s series for years, fans who have been waiting since 2023 for this day who often were saying this one thing … We are so Back!
I don’t usually use AI chatbots, but out of interest asked Grok about the Backrooms at the moment. It told me that “the internet is losing its mind over the Backrooms trailer”.
So, yes we are Back in the Rooms…
We are so Back(rooms)!
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