On January 7, 2022, Kane Parsons posted a nine-minute short film to YouTube titled The Backrooms (Found Footage) . It depicts a young filmmaker who falls into an unsettling dimension consisting of—seemingly—unoccupied office space. Four years and more than 79 million views later, Parsons is taking his viral hit from social media to the big screen with Backrooms . The liminal horror movie arrives in theaters Friday, May 29, and features an A-list cast including Golden Globe nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor and Academy Award nominee Renate Reinsve. Parsons, only 20, is the latest director to progress through the YouTube-to-feature-film pipeline, building off the success of Curry Barker (behind this summer’s first horror smash, Obsession ), Danny and Michael Philippou ( Talk to Me , Bring Her Back ), and others. “When I was younger, there was this feeling that projects I looked up to were in the stratosphere … like they come from above,” Parsons told Esquire .…