Bad news for horror fans hoping to noclip into a liminal space today: Backrooms is not yet on digital platforms to buy and rent, despite reports that Backrooms was going to release on PVOD today.
Directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, with a script written by Will Soodik, the Backrooms movie is based on the short film and subsequent web series created by Parsons when he was just 16 years old. The concept—a mysterious, impossible, labyrinth of rooms that house a terrifying monster—was inspired by an anonymous 4chan “copypasta,” aka an internet legend that gets copy, pasted and shared over many platforms.
“If you’re not careful and you noclip [a gaming term that describes a mode where users can pass through solid objects] out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms,” the anonymous user wrote, “Where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.”
Using an open-source 3D animation software, Parsons turned that description into a CGI reality. The result was so popular, he landed a movie deal at A24 as the company’s youngest director. And this time, it’s not animated—it’s a real, elaborate, practical set. (The set is so big that crew reportedly got lost in it during production.) Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as the film’s lead, a furniture store owner who goes missing into the Backrooms. Norwegian actor Renate Reinsve co-stars as his therapist who goes in after him.
When is the Backrooms digital release date?
You might see Backrooms on digital, available to buy and rent on premium video-on-demand on Tuesday, July 21. That said, that date has not yet been confirmed by A24.
Right now, there is no confirmed Backrooms digital release date. Many horror fans thought they would see Backrooms on VOD today, on July 7, thanks to a report from WhenToStream. However, this morning, after Backrooms did not arrive on digital, WhenToStream posted an update, writing, “The A24 horror thriller BACKROOMS did not arrive on PVOD today, as we had expected. We’ll post as soon as we have confirmation of a launch date.”
Most A24 films tend to hit digital about one month after opening in theaters on a Tuesday, which is the typical day of the week for PVOD release. Backrooms opened in theaters on May 29, which means it’s already been over a month since the film’s release.
The delay might be related to the fact that a new version of the film was release in theaters on July 3, titled Backrooms: Everything Must Go, which featured 16-minutes of new, previously unreleased footage.
You can purchase tickets for Backrooms: Everything Must Go through Thursday, July 16, which might be an indication that we’ll need to wait until at least Tuesday, July 21 until we see Backrooms on digital.
This is all speculation. The A24 digital and streaming releases have varied by title. If you want to watch Backrooms right away, you can still catch the movie, and the extended addition of the movie, in theaters until Thursday, July 14.