56 Days star Avan Jogia has a subtle role in the Backrooms movie that ties back to the web series and creepypasta lore. A24 is expanding the Backrooms lore to a far larger audience, taking the creepypasta from its humble beginnings on 4chan to the global box office, where it found massive success in its opening weekend.
Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor's Clark, Backrooms primarily builds its narrative around new characters, though it also draws on major connections to the lore Kane Parsons (aka Kane Pixels) built over the years on YouTube through his award-winning web series. Padding out Backrooms' cast are Renate Reinsve's Dr. Mary Kline, Mark Duplass' Phil, Finn Bennett's Bobby, Lukita Maxwell's Kat, and Avan Jogia's Naren Warne, an Async employee who ventures into the Backrooms.
Who Avan Jogia Plays in Backrooms Movie, Explained
Before Backrooms dove into its core narrative surrounding Ejiofor's Clark, the A24 horror opened with a recording from ASync Research Institute employee Naren Warne, captured on June 19, 1990.
Naren is portrayed by Canadian actor Avan Jogia, who is best known for Victorious, 56 Days, and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. That said, Jogia is only seen on Naren's Async name badge when Clark later finds it in Backrooms, since the opening is shot in a first-person found-footage style.
Async's primary goal is to research, understand, and map out the Backrooms, and Naren's hazmat-suited voyage is one of many that the company has conducted. For context, Naren's expedition took place 10 days before Clark first entered the Backrooms on June 29, 1990, creating some confusion.
Those paying attention to the Backrooms' mechanics know that the twisted reality mimics, or "remembers," from the memory of those who enter, and yet Naren is killed by Pirate Clark over a week before Clark crosses through the doorway. The Backrooms explorer is even grabbed by the Still Life in a room with tropical beach-covered walls, reminiscent of those in the Cap'n Clark's Ottoman Empire advert.
The movie maintains plenty of ambiguity about exactly how that is possible, as director Kane Parsons told Polygon that he is "a little averse to explaining the events" of his horror works. However, Pirate Clark's early arrival could stem from Backrooms' complicated timeline, in which the clock doesn't tick linearly.
How Naren Warne Connects to Backrooms' Established Web Series Lore
In 2024, one year after A24's Backrooms movie was announced, Kane Parsons posted and deleted a screenshot that named Naren Warne alongside two other Async employees, Mark Blume and Ronald McCarthy, who have appeared in his web series, indicating they endured an expedition together:
"... complex, three researchers: Mark Blume, Naren Warne, and Ronald McCarthy discover what..."
The snippet revealed that Blume, Warne, and McCarthy made some discovery while exploring the Complex, aka the Backrooms, but exactly what is unclear. Those events may have been depicted in the web series' fourth main episode, "Missing Persons," in which Blume and two unnamed Async colleagues (who could be Warne and McCarthy) discovered a corpse on February 3, 1990.
Of course, Avan Jogia's Backrooms character has no confirmed prior appearances or other mentions in Creepypasta lore before his big-screen debut. Still, if he was part of the "Missing Persons" episode, it proves that Parsons is committed to attaching the movie's bigger-name stars to web series lore.
By the time the credits rolled, Dr. Mary Kline had evaded Pirate Clark and was escorted out of the Backrooms by Async explorers, leading to her questioning at their facility. If A24 and Parsons move forward with a sequel, perhaps a deeper dive into Async and their employees (new and familiar) may be in order.
