South Korea Gets the World Premiere of The Backrooms — The Internet's Most Iconic Horror Legend Finally Hits the Big Screen

South Korea will be the first country in the world to experience one of the internet's most iconic horror phenomena on the big screen. The Backrooms, a feature film adaptation of the legendary internet urban legend, is set to open in Korean theaters on May 27, 2026 — two days before its North American release on May 29. Distributed by Bypoem Studio in Korea and produced by the acclaimed studio A24, the film marks a major milestone: the feature debut of 20-year-old director Kane Parsons, who becomes A24's youngest-ever director.

For anyone unfamiliar with the concept, The Backrooms began as a simple but deeply unsettling 4chan post in 2019, describing a liminal space accessed by "no-clipping" out of reality — an endlessly looping network of empty yellow-walled rooms lit by humming fluorescent lights. The psychological terror of the idea, the sense of being trapped in a space that shouldn't exist, caught fire online and spawned an entire creative community. No one rode that wave more successfully than Kane Parsons, then known online as "Kane Pixels."

From a Teenage YouTube Experiment to an A24 Blockbuster

Parsons was around 16 years old when he uploaded his first Backrooms short film to YouTube, shot in found-footage style on a home computer and set in 1995. The video was so convincingly atmospheric — pale institutional walls, the low hum of bad lighting, and an inexplicable sense of dread — that it spread rapidly across the internet. That single video eventually crossed 55 million views, and Parsons went on to create a total of twelve Backrooms installments, accumulating a combined viewership of over 150 million views.

In 2023, when Parsons was just 17 years old, A24 — the studio behind prestige horror titles including Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019) — acquired the rights and signed him as director. He was officially A24's youngest director ever. Now 20, Parsons has brought The Backrooms from a bedroom YouTube experiment to a fully realized feature film with an internationally acclaimed cast and a 30,000-square-foot physical set built specifically for the production.

A Cast Ready for the Unknown

The film stars Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave, Doctor Strange) as Clark, a furniture store owner who suddenly finds himself lost in the Backrooms, and Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World) as Mary, a doctor who enters the impossible space searching for him. The cast also includes Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, and Lukita Maxwell.

Producers include James Wan (The Conjuring), Shawn Levy (Deadpool & Wolverine), and Osgood Perkins. The screenplay was written by Will Soodik. The score is composed by Edo Van Breemen alongside Parsons himself. Reports from the production suggest that crew members actually got lost on the labyrinthine 30,000-square-foot Backrooms set during filming — lending the project an appropriately unsettling production story.

Why South Korea Gets the World Premiere

The decision to open in South Korea before any other territory is a deliberate and commercially meaningful one. Korean audiences have consistently shown strong appetite for atmospheric, high-concept horror — the success of films like Parasite, The Wailing, and a steady stream of international genre films in Korean theaters reflects this pattern. Opening in Seoul two days before New York or Los Angeles positions Korean audiences as global tastemakers and early adopters of a film that will be watched very closely by the worldwide horror community.

The official Korean poster features two versions: one centered on Reinsve's character Mary pressing her back against the film's signature yellow-walled background with barely-controlled anxiety; and one centered on Ejiofor's Clark looking upward into incomprehensible space. Both posters carry the line: "World Premiere, Korean Theaters, May 27."

What to Expect When the Lights Go Down

Parsons has described the feature film as a significant expansion of the story he began on YouTube. The found-footage format of the original series gives way to a more conventionally cinematic visual language, but the core atmosphere — that nauseating combination of the mundane and the impossible — has been preserved and dramatically scaled up.

The film's trailer opens in a furniture store before something shifts. Reality bends. The walls narrow. The fluorescent lights flicker. If you know the internet legend, you'll recognize the transition immediately. If you don't, the effect is arguably more powerful.

The Backrooms arrives in Korean theaters on May 27, 2026, distributed by Bypoem Studio. It opens in North America on May 29. For anyone who has spent time online in the last several years and felt a creeping unease at photos of empty corridors and humming fluorescent spaces, the wait is almost over.