The Internet is a famous hub for creatives, allowing communities to unite across the globe for their passion. It’s a place where you can share your talents anonymously, with the support of faceless others. The online art community is one of the Internet’s oldest.
We see the results of this cultivation now, as the Internet becomes more and more intertwined with our daily lives. Online connections can mean the difference between job opportunities, successful movies, and more. It seems that where the internet originally took inspiration from mainstream media, the lines have started to blur.
So, what happens when that crosses over into moviemaking?
With the recent success of Iron Lung (2026), viewers are starting to realize that blockbusters can be more than the star-studded, major productions we’ve seen for decades. New talent has just as much of a place in the film industry as old money, and the Internet’s helping to highlight that.
Perhaps the best example is that of the upcoming film, The Backrooms, an American sci-fi horror film. Produced by A24, Atomic Monster, and 21 Laps Entertainment, the film is set to release on May 29th, 2026. Its cast consists of Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell and Avan Jogia.
On the surface, it sounds like any new horror film: An eerie production about exploring an alternate dimension, haunted with creatures we don’t understand. But it can be argued that the story behind its creation is more interesting than the story behind its trailer.
The “Backrooms” concept began back in 2019, when a user uploaded this unsettling image on the website 4Chan. A day later, lore about the image was released in a string of text– the idea of someone falling, or “noclipping” out of reality into an endless void of mundane hallways. The image blew up on multiple platforms, becoming an iconic online image.
Then, in 2022, American youtuber Kane Parsons, known online as “Kane Pixels”, released a video titled “The Backrooms (Found Footage)”. At just nine minutes, the video features a man falling through reality and “noclipping” into the mundane halls of the Backrooms. From there, he wanders the halls and avoids the creatures in it. It ends with his (assumed) death to an entity known as “The Lifeform.”
The video has since garnered over 70 million views, and just a year later, Parsons, only 17 years old, announced the film in February 2023 as a partnership between Parsons, A24, and other studios. Filming began in 2025, and the world received its first look in early 2026.
This film is monumental in many ways; not only is Parsons the youngest director in A24 history, but this is the first time such an internet classic is being captured in cinema.
This proves how important the Internet has become in day-to-day industries. Where modern, big-budget films fail to excite audiences, it seems that talent must be found in the corners of a place once considered unprofessional. The future of cinema is in the hands of not just billionaires, but now also the Internet.
