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Backrooms (R)

Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett

Release Date: May 29, 2026

Runtime: 1 hr. 51 mins.

Genre: Horror, Science Fiction

A strange doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom.

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Review

Calling Backrooms "horror" is probably a misnomer. Although there are horror elements to be found in Kane Parsons' feature debut, this is more of an existential mind-fuck than anything else. The film exists not so much to unspool a story as to generate uncertainty and allow the viewer to ponder the numerous ambiguous plot points and unresolved questions it poses. The ending, for example, could be interpreted in any number of ways. Although there are concrete narrative guideposts along the way, those expecting anything conventional from Backrooms are likely to be disappointed.

Set in 1990, Backrooms follows Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a failed architect whose discount furniture store is on the verge of going out of business. Divorced and drowning in debt, Clark has been reduced to living in his own showroom and sleeping on a display bed when he discovers the entrance to an extradimensional space in the building's basement. At first startled by his discovery, Clark becomes obsessed with the seemingly endless maze of corridors and rooms with their yellow wallpaper and monotonous sameness. When Clark tells his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), about The Backrooms, she is skeptical but not entirely dismissive. When he disappears, she attempts to track him down - an act that leads her to the furniture store and into the same claustrophobic weirdness that claimed Clark. And she, like him, learns that they are most definitely not alone.

The Backrooms conceit has been around since the 2010s, when it developed on 4chan. A 2019 anonymous post described it in this way: "If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in." Despite having been written seven years ago, long before Parsons became interested in the concept, this is an accurate description of what the film presents. In 2022, when he was 16 years old, Parsons began making a popular web series based on The Backrooms. The film emerged out of that project, but no previous awareness of it is necessary to experience what the director has put on screen.

Parsons uses camera work, angles, and set design to paradoxically maximize both space and claustrophobia. Although the Backrooms are impossibly large, they are also inherently unfriendly, and their vastness plays a large part in enhancing their creepiness. Especially during the early scenes with Clark exploring his discovery, the pace is unhurried, favoring atmosphere over horror tropes. Later, during a chase involving a twisted avatar, the action is allowed to ramp up.

Watching Backrooms, I was reminded of several other productions that, while not materially similar, share related ideas. Kubrick's The Shining, for example, had a like-minded slow-burn approach to building dread. Nolan's Inception also toyed with reality and employed space-bending techniques. And the Apple TV+ series Severance has a similar vibe with its maze-like internal building structure.

Although a foundational plot begins to emerge toward the end, this isn't going to satisfy a viewer who wants everything spoon-fed. Backrooms demands attention and participation. Parsons sees his job as delivering images - everything from found-footage sequences to long takes of people wandering down endless yellow corridors that grow darker and more twisted the deeper they go. He is not so much a conventional storyteller as a director who establishes a mood and sets the viewer adrift in a sea of moments. The experience can be frustrating, but it's also rewarding. And that alone allows it to stand out in the current "play it safe" era of big-screen entertainment.

© 2026 James Berardinelli

Synopsis

A strange doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom.