The original viral "Backrooms" photo. (Unknown, likely either Bob Mazza or a Hobbytown Oshkosh manager))
OSHKOSH, WI (WTAQ) — An upcoming A24 horror movie has an interesting connection to Oshkosh.
An eerie photo taken in 2002 at the Oshkosh HobbyTown store, formerly owned by Bob Mazza, of an empty room with dated yellow wallpaper sparked an online phenomenon years later in 2019 known as ‘the backrooms’. Now, ‘Backrooms’ is a feature length film.
The original photo, seen above, was taken as a means of documenting a renovation project to turn a former furniture store into the HobbyTown store. Then, youtuber Kane Parsons turned it into a viral series. Kane Parsons is also the director of the new movie. The hype of the backrooms is something Mazza has grown to embrace over the years.
“The first video they did on YouTube, I guess I couldn’t understand why somebody would sit through it,” he said. “But this is done up much more professionally, it looks like it should be entertaining. I’m looking forward to seeing it.”
And, it’s something even he’s still learning about. Mazza says he’s part of a Discord form about the backrooms and has made connections with die-hard backrooms fans; locally, nationally, and globally.
“A couple of these guys had gone out and found actual design of wallpaper,” said Mazza. “They found it in another furniture store out in Pennsylvania and the owner allowed them to go in there and tear it all off the walls. They sent me a big piece of it, and it’s actually not yellow, the wallpaper that everybody is enthralled by looks very yellow in all the pictures and that was just lighting and how cameras were 25 years or whatever.”
The backrooms in reality were actually white.
Mazza says he hasn’t been in contact with anyone from the movie and it doesn’t sound like he’s getting any credit or compensation from the movie, but he’s okay with that.
“If somebody was there offering, I would have taken it,” he said. “But I’m a person that whole-heartedly believes that God will grant and gift you with what you have coming in life. I have what I need, I retired. I did what I like to do for 35 years.”
Mazza says two of the original backrooms photos are even used in the movie, and that he’s excited to see those photos and the world they inspired come to life on the big screen.
‘Backrooms’ arrives in theatres nationwide on May 29.
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