A couple of days ago, the official Backrooms Theatrical Trailer was finally released. Unlike the teaser trailer, we actually got to see footage from the movie, including of some of the actors.
And boy, did the internet react to this trailer! On the same day as trailers from a couple of the large Hollywood studios were released, Backrooms appeared to be trending up there and even above them. As the trailer went into the second 24 hours, it seemed to gain even more momentum than the first day – while the discussion had died down, the views were still going up. If this is an indication of the overall interest in the movie, we could be seeing Backrooms become A24’s biggest movie ever!
The Stats
The following is a list of stats on the official YouTube and social media sites at the 48 hour mark of the trailer’s release (in order of most views to least).
- TikTok ‒ Views: 38.2M / Likes: 5.2M / Shares: 1.4M / Comments: 33K
- YouTube (A24) ‒ Views: 10.36M / Likes: 416K / Comments: 21K
- Instagram ‒ Views: 13.2M/ Likes: 993K / Shares: 639K / Comments: 8.1K
- X/Twitter ‒ Views: 8M / Likes: 67K / Shares: 22.2K / Comments: 772K
- YouTube (KanePixels) ‒ Views: 6.7M / Likes: 420K / Comments: 22K
- Facebook ‒ Likes: 40.7K / Shares: 10.7K / Comments: 1.6K
Out of interest, one of the largest movie channels on X, Discussing Film posted the trailer as well, the views from this profile almost doubled those on the A24 account, with 15M views and 142K likes in the first 48 hours. This would likely be because of the large number of followers this page has, it is always going to reach people with an interest in movie trailers. While the people viewing it via A24 are either shown it though the algorithm or because someone they followed shared it.
For most of the channels, this trailer has also surpassed the teaser trailer – even though that trailer has been out for just over a month.
Are we Going Viral Yet?
When the Backrooms went viral the first time, it was really only confined to certain corners of the Internet, but it was still considered by some people to have gone viral. In 2022, it went viral again which was on a more larger scale spurred on with the popularity of Kane’s first Found Footage video.
I’m not sure what something has to do to be considered viral in 2026, but it really does feel like The Backrooms has gone viral again, or if not, it’s on the verge of such.
There has been so many people talking about the movie over the past couple of days. In the first day, I spotted Backrooms trending on X, and not just in the entertainment section either – it was on the main trends! A couple of days later it was still sitting at the top of the trending entertainment articles.
@kanehypeguy also has been posting some charts for YouTube trending trailers in which Backrooms has been moving up the chart with each day. In the latest one (posted a few hours after the 48 hours), it was sitting at #2 with only the Harry Potter Series being above it.
The Hype Continues…
If we thought we saw a lot of hype after the last trailer, then it had to be much more this time around. Official comments were filled with people saying how excited they were for this movie, how much they loved the trailer and how they were going to go and see it in the cinema. May people mentioned that the trailer felt exactly like something that Kane would create and that it still managed to keep the feeling of the YouTube video series.
People loved that the movie was still going to have a found footage component. There was praise for both Renate Reinsve and Chiwetel Ejiofor, feeling that their acting performance portrayed the characters and situations extremely well. Finn Bennett’s character – as little as we saw him – appears to have become the fan favorite amongst some of the Gen-Z fans, with them exclaiming on how attractive they found him. I can see a slew of fan art and crushes coming out of this!
Others commented about how the trailer made them feel uncomfortable – but as a positive, meaning that they wanted to see it because it made them feel that way. Others said that it had them on the edge of their seat, made them feel chills, scared, uneasy and more. These are the kinds of reactions that a horror movie should have! (As a side note, it didn’t make me feel any of those things, even though I recognized they were there – but I’m a somewhat unusual Backrooms fan, Backrooms content doesn’t often scare me, but always fascinates me).
Fans of the Backrooms were excited by how it still felt like the Backrooms. Those familiar with the original photo loved that this area had been recreated in the movie (I was one of them, it still is my favorite part of the entire trailer!). While others more familiar with Kane’s lore loved all of the Easter eggs and hidden references that were included in the trailer.
I watched a few review videos on YouTube by creators. Some of them knew of the series (but weren’t huge fans) while others didn’t know anything about it and admitted they had to research and watch a couple of episodes. Nearly all of these videos I watched were extremely impressed with the trailer and felt that it had a sense of dread running through it and made people feel scared without using jump scares or showing monsters. One thing I really found surprising was that nearly all of these video creators said that if done right, the Backrooms could be the horror movie of the year. One video even went on to say it could be the biggest horror movie of the past 10 years!
Unleashing Creativity
One of the things I love about the Backrooms in general is how much it inspires people to create (after all, it inspired me to create this site!). The release of this trailer was no different. Not even 24 hours had passed and I was beginning to see posts of things inspired by the Backrooms – artwork, fan posters, video remixes and renders. There were even some very unique creations out there too. My favorites were a reproduction of the original photo in Playdoh, and a scene from the trailer recreated in Lego.
We’re Not Sure What this is…
Because Backrooms was reaching beyond it’s core audience and even beyond horror fans, there were a lot more people than previous asking about what it is. The place we seemed to come across this more than anywhere else was Facebook (which is also where the trailer got the least views). Traditionally I have found there to be less Backrooms fans on that platform (even my own page there took a long time to even get 100 likes). Most people though seemed genuinely curious and even though some asked some questions that might have seemed obvious to us fans, at least they were asking instead of making incorrect assumptions (although there were some of those too).
Negatives were a Minus
Much like the teaser trailer, negatives were overshadowed by the positives. For any movie, TV show, game, etc there’s always going to be people who will not like it. That’s a given as not everyone is going to like the same things. But with the trailer, the negatives seemed to be few and far between.
Probably the most negative comment we saw was people saying that the concept wouldn’t work beyond a creepypasta / online videos. Other negative comments, didn’t seem overly critical of it, they more just didn’t think the trailer was interesting enough, or it wasn’t their kind of movie/horror. Can’t really fault them for that, it’s just personal opinion.
Amongst fans of the series, the negative comment that stood out was about the color grading of the movie – some didn’t like that the yellow used for the walls of ‘The Complex’ was not like it was in the series (as it is more of a lemon yellow in the movie instead of the dark yellow of the series).
Side note: we did venture onto a 4chan thread about the trailer, which was full of negative comments – but I took those with a grain of salt as it was 4chan, where it’s almost standard for people to show dislike of things. It was interesting to read a couple of comments on there that wondered if 4chan would get any credit for the origin.
Misconceptions … Still
There did seem to be less misconceptions about the movie this time around. This could be mainly because the trailer had actual footage of the movie, whereas the teaser was deliberately vague which caused people to make assumptions.
The main misconception we came across was that the movie was based on a game. This was one of the common ones we came across after the release of the teaser trailer too. It seems to mainly stem from the fact that there are so many Backrooms games out there, so people are making the assumption based on what they are familiar with. As the Backrooms has very much been an internet-based thing until now, there are a lot of gamers who interact with it who may not necessarily be interested in watching horror on YouTube.
And there were still some people thinking that Kane created the Backrooms concept as well. But it seemed that the original location being in the trailer was helpful to quell these, as people only had to direct said people to the image to show where it came from.
The other misconception that is common is that the movie is based on the Extended Lore. We did find this was somewhat less, but there were still people asking about levels and the like. I came across multiple people who thought that the popular level “The Poolrooms” was going to be in the movie, just because a swimming pool was shown. I’m not really sure why a single swimming pool equates to an entire water-based level. Perhaps it is because they do truly hope that the movie will be based on the extended lore, so just that little inclusion of a swimming pool, expands on that hope. The other one I came across was the glimpse of the sky indicating that Level 93 (Motion) would be in the movie – yet the glimpse of the sky was that tiny, it was barely noticeable, yet alone something that could show what was at the other end.
And I won’t go into the one video I saw that had someone saying the Partygoers and Smilers would be in the movie, even after seeing the trailer. The misinformation some parts of the internet likes to spread just makes you shake your head.
Overall though, there was so much to love about the release of this trailer. The excitement and hype really is real. As a Backrooms fan I am so excited to be part of this and to see the thing I love go beyond the internet. To see new people discovering this realm that many people didn’t even know existed until now.
Things are only going to get bigger from there! Kane and A24 have been able to bring us a trailer that has truly excited so many people and interested many others.
And for us fans … it’s an amazing time to be a Backrooms fan!
Leave a Reply