BACKROOMS is the kind of movie that reminds you horror does not always need to explain itself to be effective. Sometimes it just needs to open a door, let you wander into a fluorescent nightmare, and trust that your brain will do the rest. For me, this absolutely worked. There are some legitimately terrifying moments in here, especially in the first half, where the film lives and dies on brooding tension, negative space, and that awful feeling that something is deeply wrong even when you cannot quite name it. But I can also see this movie not landing for everyone. It is moody, strange, and increasingly unconcerned with holding your hand.
A little background helps. BACKROOMS began as a viral internet horror concept inspired by the 2019 “Backrooms” creepypasta and then exploded through Kane Parsons’ 2022 YouTube short THE BACKROOMS (FOUND FOOTAGE) and the videos that followed. Parsons, now just 20, turned that online nightmare fuel into an A24 feature, making him the youngest director to helm a film for the studio. James Wan is among the producers, alongside Shawn Levy and Osgood Perkins, but this very much feels like a Kane Parsons movie first, i.e. a feature born out of internet horror, liminal spaces, and digital-age dread.
The movie centers on Clark, a furniture store owner played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who discovers a portal into the Backrooms beneath his showroom. Renate Reinsve plays Dr. Mary Kline, his therapist, with Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell, and Avan Jogia rounding out the main cast. The setup is simple enough to let the mood do the heavy lifting, and the ensemble sells the dread without ever feeling like they are overplaying the mystery. The acting is strong across the board, which matters in a movie this committed to atmosphere and ambiguity.
What I admired most is how the movie evolves. The first half is where most of the scariest stuff lives, and it is nasty in the best way – all tension, architecture, sound design, and the sense that these spaces were built by something that does not care whether humans belong there or not. Then the last third veers into something stranger. It feels less like something cooked up in James Wan’s kitchen and more like a lost TWILIGHT ZONE episode beamed in from a very bad dimension. That tonal shift may lose some people, but I respected the heck out of it. The movie gives zero Fs whether you walk out knowing exactly what just happened, and that is bold. That is brave. More of this, please.
Bottom line: BACKROOMS is creative, unnerving, and admirably uninterested in sanding down its edges for mass approval. It will not be everybody’s thing, but the parts that hit really hit. I’ll take a movie this weird and committed over something safer any day.
I spoke about this on yesterday’s KVNU For The People Movie Show, which you can listen to right now. Check out the trailer for BACKROOMS below.
