About 15 years ago, the word "creepypasta" sounded like something from teenage slang that adults would hear and nod politely, not understanding what it was about at all. Today, internet legends about faceless monsters, cursed videos, and endless office corridors are storming movie theaters and grossing box office numbers that even some superhero franchises would envy. Suffice it to recall that "The Backrooms" — a film about a space born from a single creepy forum post — recently surpassed $380 million worldwide. Let's break down which horrors turned online folklore into a true cinematic phenomenon — in chronological order of release.

«2AM: The Smiling Man» (2013)

Opening the list is a short film that became one of the first truly successful attempts to bring creepypasta to the screen. The plot is simple: a man returning home late at night notices another passerby nearby — with an unnatural, frozen smile. Eight minutes of screen time, no unnecessary explanation of what's happening, and a monster whose horror is built not on special effects but on a single terrifying facial detail.

It is this minimalism that became the hallmark of the genre: creepypasta works best when it explains as little as possible.

«Unfriended» (2014)

The film by Levan Gabriadze unfolds entirely on the heroine's computer screen during a video call that gradually turns into a nightmare with a classmate who died a year earlier on the other end. The idea grew out of internet stories about stalking through social media.

With a budget of $1 million, the film grossed just over $60 million — a ratio that makes any producer's heart beat faster. The film proved the main point: the genre doesn't need expensive special effects; it's enough to understand what exactly scares us on the internet better than any rubber monster.

«Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story» (2015)

A local TV news crew investigates the disappearance of an entire family and finds a box of old tapes with recordings of a faceless creature in a dark suit, visible only through the camera lens. Watching these tapes triggers a curse: Slender begins to stalk the crew itself.

The film is based on the cult web series "Marble Hornets", which largely shaped the canonical image of Slenderman for millions of internet users. Critics received the film coolly, but it was the first to attempt turning the amateur web format of creepypasta into a full-fledged cinematic genre of found footage.

«Slender Man» (2018)

The big-budget studio version of the same legend tells of four schoolgirls who watch a cursed video and inadvertently summon the long-armed, faceless "gentleman." By the time of the film's release, Slenderman had long become a symbol of internet folklore, on par with the Boogeyman from children's horror stories of past generations.

Critics panned the film almost unanimously, calling it cheap and completely unscary — a missed opportunity to explore the character's rich mythology. Paradoxically, this failure made studios realize that the creepypasta audience is huge, but such films need to be made with greater respect for the source material, not following the template of typical horror movies.

«The Backrooms» (2026)

The main character of the current box office season was born from a single photograph of an empty office space with yellow walls and the hum of fluorescent lamps — an image that grew into one of the most recognizable symbols of liminal horror in recent years.

Kane Parsons, the author of the original web series, has graduated to a feature film with an A24 budget and producers of the caliber of James Wan and Shawn Levy. The cast includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, and Mark Duplass, which for a project born from an internet meme sounds like a fairy tale. At the start of its release, the film outperformed the Disney blockbuster "The Mandalorian & Grogu" — not a bad result for a story about an endless corridor in yellow tones.

Who's Next in Line

If Slenderman was the king of creepypasta in the 2010s, the throne of the new decade is claimed by Siren Head — a creature with sirens for a head, created by artist Trevor Henderson in 2018. Warner Bros. won a multi-million dollar bidding war for the film rights against Sony, Universal, 20th Century Studios, and Paramount, which in itself speaks to the scale of the stakes. The script is being written by Zak Cregger, and the director's chair will presumably be taken by Brian Duffield — names that currently work as a guarantee of quality in the horror genre. The premiere date has not yet been announced, but studios clearly expect to replicate the success of "The Backrooms."