Parsons’ Backrooms stirred up something in online communities that has rarely been seen before. Born of an internet urban legend and cultivated on Parsons’ own YouTube channel, the backrooms seemed so firmly locked within popular and gaming culture that the idea of it somehow being on the cinema screen, or eventually on our TV screens at home, felt oddly novel.
We are used to being entrenched in the digital zeitgeist, but we forget how isolated they can be – purely organically, too. Plenty of media naturally transcends the medium, from memes that are slipped into Hollywood movies to music that proliferates on social media, but some items feel landlocked within the medium that first created them. The Backrooms, in other words, felt like an internet thing. It was a niche among gamers and aesthetic chasers.
But this is all part of a broader trend. We’re used to the opposite story: real-life inspiring games, whether it’s Koei and Omega Force’s Samurai Warriors inspired by pre-industrial Japan, or Regal Rush Casino inspired by the most successful brick and mortar locations around the world. But now the tables are turning. First, it began with video games becoming the (at the time unlikely) inspiration for movies. It sounds so familiar and tried-and-tested now, but even just a few years ago, the idea felt unusual. World of Warcraft, Assassin’s Creed, Gran Turismo – on Netflix, the Witcher Series, the Fall Out Series on Amazon Prime, and the once-hyped Last of Us series on HBO.
It doesn’t just work because it’s a proven concept, or because it’s a novelty for gamers who have played the game already. There’s a real argument in favour of the idea that it works because audiences already know how heatwrenching, how exciting, or, in the case of horror games, how truly terrifying the world and lore can be. Of course, they don’t know everything. Jumpscares and creative liberties mean you don’t have a wave of audiences heading into the theatre fully prepared for what they’re going to encounter. But audiences of Backrooms or, say, Kawamura’s 2025 adaptation of EXIT 8, have already felt the terror – alone in a dimly lit room, usually – and that creates an entirely different relationship between the people on either side of the screen. Viewers don’t just think about what they would do differently in the characters’ shoes; they know exactly what they would do, because they’ve walked those worlds before – and, at the time, they felt very real.
It’s an exciting prospect for any director, although a very daunting one, too. Audiences who have played the video game first tend to be less forgiving and more attached to the intricate lore, seemingly irrelevant side quests, and casting preferences that have swirled online for years before Hollywood caught on. It’s a difficult position to be in, but the success of Backrooms and EXIT 8 – and, before them, Resident Evil and Detention – could be enough to tempt bolder, more adaptable directors toward the console favourites.