Enter another unsettling world inspired by the breakout success of Backrooms in the exclusive first The Pools images.
Marking the directorial debuts of Galen Christy and Sasha Yelaun, previously known for their work on the likes of M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass and Nicolas Cage’s The Old Way, the new horror movie centers on a teenager who finds himself transported and trapped inside a labyrinth full of aquatic structures. Facing a variety of puzzles and ominous rooms, his desperate search for escape leads him to realize he may not be alone.
Following the announcement of its Christmas 2026 release date, ScreenRant is proud to exclusively premiere the first images from The Pools. The stills offer a look at one of the rooms its central character will venture through in the Backrooms-inspired horror film, with three slides being shown and symbols painted above them hinting at the levels of safety for each slide, as well as its filmmakers on set. Check out the images below:
Christy and Yelaun also shared statements regarding their work on The Pools, with the former expressing that “there’s something uniquely unsettling about pools,” highlighting the contrast between being “places associated with fun, childhood and safety” to the ones being “empty, abandoned or seemingly endless” and saying the film “takes that feeling and turns it into a nightmare.” Yelaun, meanwhile recalled being immediately taken by the concept as a whole:
Sasha Yelaun: The concept immediately stood out because it combines exploration, mystery, and survival horror in a setting we’ve never really seen before. The deeper our protagonist goes, the more impossible and terrifying the world becomes.
Grytt Picture Shows’ Alexander Kane, having previously worked on the Mel Gibson-starring Bandit, explained that the team’s approach to The Pools was “as if we were documenting a real place that shouldn’t exist.” He also teased that the designs of the various rooms in the film will “feel familiar enough to be believable,” but also be “strange enough to make audiences question what they’re seeing.”
The Pools marks the latest film to be inspired by the liminal space popularity of the backrooms, as well as the creepypasta subgenre as a whole. The most notable is that of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms, adapted from his YouTube series, which has broken multiple records since its May release, namely becoming A24’s highest-grossing film of all time with over $301 million grossed thus far and making him the youngest filmmaker to reach No. 1 at the US box office.
The other most notable creepypasta in recent years was that of Undertone, centered on a pair of podcasters whose investigation into a series of mysterious audio files sparks a string of hauntings and secret messages in classic childhood rhymes. Also released by A24, the horror film was a smash hit at the box office, grossing over $22 million against its $500,000 budget, and writer/director Ian Tuason having a trilogy planned for his universe.
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Though not sharing too much about the film, the first images of The Pools do offer an intriguing tease of how Christy and Yelaun are adapting the Poolrooms. The slide puzzle featured in the stills was notably featured in 2025’s Escape the Backrooms, albeit slightly different in that they didn’t lead to an aquatic area, but rather another large room with an ominous tunnel nearby. Being housed in a yellow-tinted room, it will be interesting to see if the new film will play off of some Poolrooms interpretations in which it is an extension of the backrooms.
One unique twist that The Pools has going forward in comparison to most other Poolrooms adaptations, particularly the 2024 game, is that it will feature an unspecified creature haunting its central character. The majority of said adaptations have leaned on the labyrinthian nature of the mysterious realm and its twisty puzzles to build dread. With creepypasta entities sometimes serving as reflections of their characters’ lives, it will be intriguing to see if the new film’s creature similarly acts as some connector to its teenage protagonist’s real life.
- Release Date
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December 25, 2026
- Producers
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Sasha Yelaun, Galen Christy