Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste
A couple of years back, we reported on a cinematic oddity that seemed to point mostly to A24’s generally tolerant attitude toward risk (and the low-budget nature of horror that makes such risk-taking a relatively easy lift): An adaptation of internet creepypasta phenomenon “The Backrooms,” helmed by Kane “Pixels” Parsons, who was all of 17 when the news broke. Two years later, Parsons (who earned the job via an extremely successful web series built around this concept) is still crazy-young to be helming a Hollywood movie, but now there’s also some actual adult names attached to this thing, as Deadline reports that Actual Grown-Up Actors Chiwetel Ejiofor and Cristin Milioti are in talks to star in the movie.
If you’re not familiar with “The Backrooms,” it shares many traits with lots of other online horror stories that picked up serious circulation a few internet generations back: Weird liminal spaces, “rules” that don’t make a ton of sense but tend to be enforced with lethal vigor, and a heavy dose of “no tricky resolution required!” ambiguity. Parsons’ original film, posted online back in 2022 (several years after the first Backrooms stories started circulating), presents itself as a found footage exploration of one of these bizarro places, and has picked up a hefty 66 million views on YouTube. (It’s also pretty genuinely cool, with a nicely presented monster and some genuinely impressive effect shots.)
Deadline is careful to note that Ejiofor and Milioti’s involvement is still strictly in the “Let’s have some conversations” phase, and nothing official has been set. Ejiofor most recently appeared in theaters in this year’s Eleanor The Great and Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy. Milioti, meanwhile, is coming off of a pretty banner year, having picked up rave reviews for her performance in The Penguin. The upshot is that they’re both genuine names, which is more than we’d assume you might get for a horror film with an internet provenance and an “unproven” director like this one. (Which isn’t to run down Parsons’ talents; the original “Backrooms” shorts are undeniably technically impressive.) To be fair, the film does have some pretty hefty backing behind it: In addition to A24, Atomic Monster, Chernin Entertainment and 21 Laps are also helping to produce.
