A teenager climbs into a swimming pool and cannot find the far end of it. That is the engine of The Poolrooms, a found-footage horror film from directors Galen Christy and Sasha Yelaun, and it opens on Christmas Day. The first behind-the-scenes images arrived Tuesday as a Bloody Disgusting exclusive.
The setup is an impossible aquatic structure: endless pools, towering waterslides, hidden chambers and passageways that keep going. Rebel Raider Media and Grytt Picture Shows are the production companies, with Alexander Kane producing and Brian Katz executive producing. Somewhere inside it is a character the production calls SUNNY. Some coverage and listings carry the film as The Pools, but the production’s own site uses The Poolrooms.
The Poolrooms Started as Backrooms Lore
The Poolrooms is not an invention of this film. It is a specific level in Backrooms mythology, the flooded one: tiled walls, warm water, light with no obvious source, no exit. The aesthetic traces back to artist Jared Pike’s “Dream Pools” renders in 2020, and it had already produced a video game, 2024’s Pools, before anyone put a film camera in one. The Backrooms took the same internet folklore to theaters earlier this year. A pool is the better half of that lore anyway, because the location does the work on its own: the floor drops away, sound goes strange, and nobody can see what is underneath them.
They Shot It in a Real Water Park
Production used Rigby’s Water World and Assembly Studios in Atlanta rather than building the maze digitally. “There was something deeply disturbing about taking an object you associate with childhood and making you afraid of it,” Christy said. “The goal was to make you feel like you’re standing there yourself, with no idea what’s waiting around the corner.” Yelaun described the move behind the camera as a reset: “Stepping into directing gave us a completely new perspective and brought back the sheer fun of letting our imaginations run wild.”
December 25 Is an Unusual Release Date
Christmas Day belongs to prestige dramas and family animation, and horror normally clears out of it and comes back in January. A found-footage film with no announced cast taking a December 25 slot is either very confident or very cheap to open, and found footage has made that math work before.
No trailer has been released and the cast has not been announced. December 25 is twelve weeks out, which is late to still be holding the footage back.
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