Backrooms (2026) Review
4/5
Kane Parsons’ Backrooms follows furniture store owner Clark discovering a never-ending maze of liminal spaces in the basement of his store. He becomes entranced in the maze, and his therapist, Mary, is left to try to rescue him from the horrors that rest within. Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark and Renate Reinsve as Mary, Parsons is able to turn his youtube creepypasta sensation into a big-screen hit.
Like we saw earlier this month with Curry Barker and Obsession, Kane Parsons is an extremely young, talented creative who got started on Youtube, making an anthological series for the Backrooms. These videos sparked so much dialogue for the creepypasta, that when the material was ready for a big screen adaption, Parsons was all for the opportunity. A24 began the development with co-production from James Wan, Shawn Levy, and Osgood Perkins all for around 10 million. Ejiofor and Cristin Milioti were originally tabbed to star, but when Milioti had to back out, Reinsve stepped in.
I present this information because I want to emphasize how ridiculous and how incredible this is: A 20 year old who started his career on Youtube landed a multi-million dollar A24 deal with horror icons James Wan and Osgood Perkins on board for his first movie. He also got Academy Award winner Chiwetel Ejiofor and Academy Award Nominee and Queen of Cannes Renate Reinsve to lead in it. It’s an absolutely incredible time that we are living through with young filmmakers that Aaryn wrote about in his most recent Reel Reflections.
What stood out the most off the jump with Backrooms is how technically sound it is. The score perfectly accentuates the mood of each scene, and the sound design, especially in the backrooms, turns each breath, each step, and each creak of the floor into a tick of an unseen bomb that we don’t know when it will detonate. The movie impressively mixes first-person POV from a handheld camera that calls back to his youtube series with traditional filmmaking techniques audiences are used to. The movie isn’t heavy on jumpscares, but in these moments with the camera, the visuals are more dreadful than any loud cue could ever be.
Reinsve and Ejiofor put in fantastic work. They both tap into raw emotional depth for their characters and display both ends of the spectrum of how trauma and our actions can be controlled. I was a big fan of Mark Duplass in his limited role as Phil, the Async scientist behind the backrooms, as well as Lukita Maxwel and Finn Bennett as Kat and Bobby, who help Clark explore the rooms. Their inclusion played as an audience stand-in as they explored the rooms for the first time and learned there are consequences with each decision.
What Parsons captures well is the feeling of everything being a couple degrees off from being “right,” even when he’s shooting in the real world. This becomes amplified in the backrooms as everything gets further and further from reality. Furniture is melded together and stacked unnaturally, signs are written backward, and the people it tries to create, called “Still Lifes,” are based on a memory of what it saw and look like what an AI would spit out without ever seeing a human before.
The movie’s plot is heavily centered around these people and their past trauma: Clark’s wife left him for a bevy of reasons, and Mary’s relationship with her mother was ruined by her mental well-being deteriorating as well as the demolition of her childhood home.
One thing I think is clear is that the rooms can be seen as a manifestation of memories. The rooms are often described in the movie as if you asked someone who has never seen a dog to draw a dog after describing one to them. They understand the essence of the being but miss all the details. As you hold a memory longer and longer, the essence of the memory is there, but the details are fuzzy. I can tell you what my childhood house looked like, but I can’t describe what pictures I had on my wall, as an example. As the rooms try to remember the world, it can only remember the essence; only the strongest elements of the things it tries to create.
In my opinion, I think the rooms and the specific creatures within we are shown are created because of Clark. He is shown to be succumbing to his own mental state, in part to his inability to accept responsibility for his actions that have hurt the people around him, like his ex-wife, his coworkers, and Mary. The “Still Lifes” that Clark encounters seem inconspicuous at first, two random men, but the one that resembles his ex-wife Barbara has multiple faces. His resentment towards her, him feeling that she got everything while he worked and paid for her, made this Still Life this way.
Clark’s fatal flaw, however, manifests through the Captain Clark creature. He refuses to accept responsibility for his actions. He hurts people, he drives them away, and it leaves him alone, but he never accepts fault for his actions. The backrooms in turn create a version of Clark that is monstrous and chases away all the other beings who are in there. Specifically, the Barbara Still Life sprints away when it enters the room while the others remain where they are. After Mary realizes she can’t help him and human Clark tries to absolve them both of their responsibility, Captain Clark kills him, continuing his cycle of pain.
For Mary, she is trapped at the mercy of her patient’s mind, just like as a child, when she was trapped in her house at the mercy of her mother’s deteriorating mind. When she is told at the end that she is most likely not going to be ever leaving, the rooms remember that feeling and create a Still Life of her, reminding us and her that the rooms are ever-changing and always evolving to whoever is there.
What’s most effective about the film is there really isn’t a defined reason behind the backrooms. Their existence makes no sense, and while there is plenty of lore to get familiar with, Backrooms as a movie doesn’t hold its audience responsible for knowing any of it. It truly works knowing as little as possible because the characters in this world know little to nothing, even the scientists who study it. This allows you and me to grasp onto things we see and make them make sense to us, however we can. I really like that approach, as it the movie needs to be seen and felt, not necessarily understood.
Concluding Thoughts
Backrooms is a bold, ambitious embarkment for both its director, Kane Parsons, and the film industry in general. It is currently smashing the box office on its opening weekend, and for good reason. Led by two excellent performers in Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, it captures a terrifying, dreadful feeling with its unique filmmaking style. Maybe its narrative structure doesn’t completely mesh well with the backrooms setting, but I would recommend this to all whether they know the Backrooms as an entity or not, because I believe we are seeing the beginning of something special with Kane Parsons.