After setting box-office records during its theatrical release, Backrooms is finally coming home to digital: A24 announced Friday that the liminal space horror thriller will be available for rent and purchase for $24.99 on Amazon, Apple TV, and other digital stores next week, starting Tuesday, July 14.
We’re still waiting for official details regarding a streaming release date and when physical media collectors will get Backrooms on Blu-ray.
Backrooms has been one of the movie industry’s biggest stories this year, quickly becoming production company A24’s highest-grossing picture ever. It has made over $359 million worldwide, ranking it ninth at this year’s global box office despite a tiny $10 million budget.
The film’s director, Kane Parsons, is now the youngest director (at 20) in cinema history to have a movie debut at the top of the domestic and global box office. He got his start creating horror videos on YouTube, including his The Backrooms web series.
Backrooms is based on an internet creepypasta (horror legends shared on the internet) originally inspired by a photo of an unnerving yellow room. From there, this picture grew via collaborative storytelling into an extradimensional complex that defies the laws of reality and is inhabited by unsettling creatures.
Parsons’ movie follows Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a depressed furniture store owner who stumbles on a passageway into the liminal infinity of the Backrooms. He eventually ropes in others to explore this space, including his therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve). As you could expect, things do not go well from there.
Alongside Blumhouse’s viral hit Obsession, this year’s box office has been dominated by cheaply produced horror movies that connected with younger audiences (Obsession’s director, Curry Barker, is also in his twenties and started on YouTube), capturing interest that big-budget Hollywood sequels like Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu and Supergirl have failed to.
Parsons said in an interview with Variety that he is “definitely not done with Backrooms,” meaning a sequel may be in the works. Curry Barker already has several projects in the pipeline, including the 2027 paranormal investigator film Anything But Ghosts, a Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot for A24, and another original for Universal Pictures. With Parsons and Barker’s respective movies catching fire in such close proximity, it’s probably fair to assume we’ll see quite a few more YouTubers and younger directors getting a chance behind the camera in the near future.