Why Backrooms' Creator Returned with Everything Must Go

A viral nightmare refuses to stay shelved. Kane Parsons, the filmmaker who turned an internet creepypasta into a box-office phenomenon, has released a new installment of his original web series — a 16-minute piece titled 'Everything Must Go' that fans will recognize from the film's extended edition.

Parsons first built his Backrooms universe online in 2022, uploading a serialized take that quickly caught fire. The premiere episode alone has racked up more than 90 million views on YouTube. Between 2022 and early 2025 he released 24 episodes, cultivating an audience that followed him from small screens to the movie theater.

Then came the leap. Backrooms arrived in cinemas this year and did not whisper — it roared. The film opened at number one, nudging past The Mandalorian and Grogu in its debut week, and has since grossed $393 million worldwide. That haul makes it the highest-grossing title in A24's history and cemented Parsons as the youngest director to claim the top spot at the box office. Not bad for someone who was, until recently, more of an internet fixture than a Hollywood name. Big-name producers like Shawn Levy and James Wan were on board, lending muscle and visibility to the project.

Critical response reflected the crowd reaction. Backrooms earned an 87% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 74% audience rating, while the Critics’ Choice Super Awards recognized the film with nominations in three categories, including Best Horror and acting nods for Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve. The film’s success was both commercial and cultural — a rare double.

So why return to YouTube after conquering the box office? Parsons has been clear: he hasn't abandoned the web series that started it all. 'Everything Must Go' was part of the film’s extended cut, but releasing it as a standalone episode signals that the origin story still matters to him. Fans get deeper texture. Parsons keeps the grassroots connection alive, where the weird, empty corridors of the Backrooms first felt immediate and personal.

And there’s more on the horizon. Parsons has said he hopes to develop a full cinematic sequel to Backrooms, which feels inevitable given the film’s momentum and the appetite of its audience. The web episodes function like breadcrumbs — smaller, sharper scares that feed curiosity and keep theories alive while larger studio ambitions take shape.

For viewers who’ve loved the film, the new episode is a tidy bridge: familiar imagery and a compact, unsettling story that reminds you why the world of Backrooms began online. For everyone else, it’s a reminder that sometimes the scariest things travel fast — from forum threads to YouTube streams to multiplexes — and the story keeps expanding.

Watch the episode, form a theory, and then wait. Something tells me this is only the beginning.