This morning, A24 dropped the next promotional images for the Backrooms movie with a mention of a trailer coming as well (this is standard practice for A24 to drop an image and then a trailer the next day). The two poster images show Renate Reinsve and Chiwatel Ejiofor in the Backrooms. The posters give off a very unsettling vibe with the actors showing looks of despair and helplessness. There’s no happy faces here, no hope. In fact one looks at these posters and feels a sense of uneasiness and even dread.
But isn’t that what the Backrooms are all about? The Backrooms aren’t really meant to be a happy place – even though technically they can be anything one wants them to be (guilty as charged for wanting them to be my happy place!). They’re meant to be make you feel uneasy, scared, uncomfortable and alone. In all three main Backrooms lores, this is ultimately the main theme when you look past all the things that differ between them. Sure, the Backrooms might seem familiar or nostalgic. But when you’re stuck in a damn yellow maze of endless rooms and hallways that mostly look the same and have no idea how to get out or how you got there. Well those negative feelings are going to overwhelm you.
And that’s just what these posters evoke.
When I first saw these posters it was difficult for me to get excited over them. Unlike when the Chevron poster dropped, where I got hyped because the wallpaper is just so iconic and means so much to us Backrooms fans. But these ones made me feel somewhat strange at first. I felt uncomfortable. I couldn’t really look at them properly. It took me a while before I was able to appreciate what they represented. And then the hype came to me!
I feel that the chevron poster was a bit of fanservice, a nod to us fans. But these posters, they’re something else again. They’re designed to get people trapped in the Backrooms so to speak. By that I mean people who may not be familiar with what the Backrooms are. The regular moviegoer or the general horror fan. They are designed to be seen and give people those feelings. And because humans are a curious bunch – we want to watch movies that scare us and make us feel uneasy. We are intrigued and want to see more.
And us fans … of course we love them too! Because we know what they represent. And we know that they are everything Kane Pixels Backrooms should be and that it’s just furthering our belief that this movie is going to be something special.
Thoughts on the Poster’s Appearance
Renate’s Poster: This poster includes the chevron wallpaper. It feels claustrophobic, almost like Renate is being consumed by the Backrooms themselves. They appear to be closing in on her. She looks as though she is going to melt into the wall – or is that no-clip into it. Or perhaps she is listening for something – a sound that she heard in the quiet depths of the Backrooms – is it something otherworldly, or Chiwetel’s character who she is looking for.
Chiwatel’s Poster: This poster features the Quixel wallpaper that is common in Kane Pixel’s Backrooms series. Chiwatel’s character feels small as the roof of the Backrooms tower over him. He may be looking up at something. The look on his face may even be fear which suggests he could be looking up at a lifeform – whether that be Bacteria or another creature entirely.
Alternate Poster Versions
While the posters themselves feature the yellow of Kane’s Backrooms series, there was another set of posters that featured the more dull mono-yellow from the original image. As far as we know, the only source of these has been from Mark Duplass, one of the actors in the film, which leads us to believe these are an official variant. We will have to wait and see if these turn up on any other official channels.
The Blue Tape
A very interesting detail in Chiwater’s poster is the blue tape that can be seen in the bottom corner. In her analysis video LittleRedSM offers a suggestion that it could be the same area we see in Static Dead End, where blue tape has been used to mark structural anomalies such as where the wallpaper has become stretched. The crossed corner on the poster appears to be identical to the tape from the episode. And while the wall is not glitched in the poster, it does have the same wallpaper. As Kane has confirmed that the movie takes place in 1990 this means that it would be the same year (ironically Static Dead End actually takes place on May 29 – which is the same date the movie releases in the US). Let’s just speculate that the movie takes place some months later – we don’t see the stretched wallpaper so it’s possible that The Complex has changed this area (like we see it change the room in the teaser trailer) and now it is back to “normal”. The stretchered wallpaper could even be something that occurs when a change takes place.
The other thing that is interesting is the location. Based on information posted by Kane in his Discord server, it appears likely that the movie will be set in Vancouver, Canada (where it was also filmed). However, Async are based in San Jose, California. If Chiwatel’s character is indeed in the same area as the series (also theorized by LittleRedSM in her video) then this gives credence to the theory that the Backrooms don’t mirror locations of Earth, but instead are in their own space-time with their own exits, or null-zones as they are known in the series.
Another theory put forth was by BananaKing3.0 on X. They theorized that the tape on the wall was instead put there by Chiwatel’s character to mark where they entered. If he found the entrance (in the basement of a furniture showroom as per the synopsis), perhaps it doesn’t appear as a door from the inside of The Complex. So therefore he wold need to mark this place in order to find his way out. It also would be why he is able to leave and return to our time to talk to Renate’s character about the place.
The marking of the wall is similar to how Madison marks the floor of her garage in Found Footage 2 when she discovers that objects can fall through it – the only difference being that he is marking inside The Backrooms while she had marked the null zone from the outside.
Online Reactions
Like previous official Backrooms image and trailer releases, we saw a huge surge in activity and interest in the Backrooms. At one point, Backrooms was trending at the top of the Entertainment section on Twitter/X.
Comments in the A24 official thread and other popular profiles such as that by Bloody Disgusting were extremely positive. Many comments mirrored what we have already mentioned about the sense of dread and uneasiness. Others indicated that the posters represented what the Backrooms truly were. Of course there were still a few haters here and there, or people expecting there to be levels form the Extended Lore, but these seemed to be even less than last time.
As of typing this (14 hours after the image drop), the viewing stats online are as follows:
- Twitter/X – 4.6M views, 90.2K Likes, 500 comments, 10.2K Retweets, 1.7K Quotes
- Instagram: 314K Likes, 1.5K comments, 79K story shares, 17K reshares
- Facebook: 10.7K Likes, 300 comments, 2.7K shares
In comparison, the chevron teaser poster poster has 78K likes on X and 261K likes on Instagram, meaning that these images have already surpassed the chevron poster in under 24 hours!
One thing I noticed this morning when the image was posted on Instagram was how quickly this was getting out to people. After only 2 minutes, the Instagram post already had 2000 likes. My mind boggled at how that many people could see it in such a short amount of time. Unless you follow one of the active Backrooms accounts like ours or engage with Backrooms content elsewhere, most people wouldn’t have even known that Kane had hinted at there being something this morning. Therefore it seems like the algorithm was definitely making sure it was going out to the right people!
Original Text Reference
@kanehypeguy pointed out that the tagline being used on the social media posts began the same way that the original text did, “If you’re not careful…”.
We really love that A24 are referencing parts of the Backrooms origins that existed before Kane even began his series. First the chevron, and now an ever slight nod to the original text! Even if it’s just clever marketing by A24, the fact that they have taken the time to not only find out this information, but also make use of it, certainly goes to show that not only are they are aware of the exiting fanbase The Backrooms has but the importance of the original Backrooms legend.
We’ll see you all again tomorrow after we have very likely viewed the trailer multiple times!
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