Published May 28, 2026, 12:30 p.m. ET

If you don’t have an irrational fear of rooms, you will after you watch Backrooms, A24’s latest terrifying horror movie, which opens in theaters this weekend.

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.

There’s no doubt this will be a fun one to watch on the big screen. But if you’d rather wait to watch it at home, then read on to find out what we know about when and where the Backrooms movie will be streaming.

Where to watch the Backrooms movie:

For now, Backrooms will only be available to watch in a movie theater, when it opens in theaters nationwide in the U.S. on Friday, May 29. You can find a showing near you via Fandango. The Backrooms movie is not yet available to watch online or on streaming.

Is the Backrooms movie streaming on Netflix?

Backrooms is not streaming on Netflix and likely will not be on Netflix in the U.S. any time soon, due to the fact that the film is being released by A24 in the U.S., and the 2023 deal between A24 and Warner Bros. Discovery, brings all A24’s previous and upcoming theatrical releases to the Warner Bros. streaming service HBO Max. If you want to watch Backrooms at home, you’ll have to wait for the film to be available to buy or rent on digital platforms, or wait for it to stream on HBO Max.

If you’re new to HBO Max, you can sign up for as low as $10.99/month with ads, but an ad-free subscription will cost $18.49/month.

If you want to stream even more and save a few bucks a month while you’re at it, we recommend subscribing to one of the discounted Disney+ Bundles with Hulu and HBO Max. With ads, the bundle costs $19.99/month and without ads, $32.99/month.

When will the Backrooms movie be streaming on HBO Max?

You might see the Backrooms movie streaming on HBO Max around late September 2026.

Backrooms is not yet streaming on HBO Max. Right now, the movie is only in theaters. That said, we do expect to see Backrooms streaming on HBO Max eventually—thanks to the A24 and Warner Bros. deal—but we’re not sure when.

The A24 deal is a “Pay-1 deal,” which means A24 movies will start streaming on Max in the “Pay 1 window,” meaning that Max will be the first “TV channel” to pay for the rights Backrooms, after the film has been released on digital and home media. One recent A24 title, The Moment, will begin streaming on HBO Max this Friday, about four months after its release in theater.

If Backrooms follows a similar release strategy, you might see Backrooms on digital in about a month, around late June 2026, and streaming on HBO Max in about four months, around late September 2026.

This is all speculation. The A24 digital and streaming releases have varied by title. If you want to watch Backrooms right away, you can catch the movie everywhere in U.S. theaters on Friday. You can also check out the Backrooms (Found Footage) short film and Backrooms web series, streaming free on YouTube.