Backrooms is a more than competent horror film with an expertly assembled cast, sleek cinematography, and a complex narrative about the subterranean emotional roots of who we are and where we come from. There are strange, cerebral horrors mapped against its characters’ fears, objectives, and states of mind. It follows the rules of a well-made film, which would once have seemed unexpected, maybe even disruptive, in mainstream horror. But after a decade of A24-backed genre prestige, that kind of discipline is no longer novel. Horror has become comfortable with dramatic structure, clean character arcs, and the familiar machinery of Save the Cat logic.
Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Clark, a furniture store owner whose disappearance pulls his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), into the orbit of something impossible. When Mary goes to Clark’s store looking for answers, she discovers an entrance to the Backrooms: a vast fluorescent labyrinth of empty corridors and dead space. What she finds inside is not just a maze but a hideous collection of humanoid figures and a monstrous presence beyond anything she could have imagined. Her search for a missing patient becomes a descent into a world where familiar spaces warp into something hostile, unknowable, and alive.
It is a shame, then, that when presented with the opportunity to make a horror film about the existential cruelty of nothingness, Backrooms keeps reaching for safer, more familiar shapes. Kane Parsons, who directed the film based on his game-changing short films, has a one-in-a-million perspective. His work carries a tragic and dynamic understanding of eternity, liminality, and the cruel punishment of forever. A reductive read might call what he does “vibes-based,” but that misses the point. At his best, Parsons creates a strange form of sinister philosophy.`
He did not invent the Backrooms creepypasta, but he defined its modern cinematic language with The Backrooms (Found Footage). Without studio interference and without major resources, Parsons crafted some of the most astonishing experimental horror images of his generation. That is what makes this adaptation frustrating. Why take a filmmaker with such a singular grasp of empty, uncanny space and reverse-engineer his vision into something so familiar? Why smooth down the very qualities that made the material feel dangerous in the first place?
Parsons does not receive a writing credit on Backrooms, but he was fortunately brought on to direct, and visually, there are still memories of his untouched vision. The film’s tones, hues, and uncomfortable visions of forgotten waiting rooms elevate this adaptation into something worth experiencing in a theater. Even for audience members with little to no knowledge of the source material, Backrooms leaves plenty to ponder.
If Skinamarink transports its audience back to our childhood homes and leaves us there, unattended, abandoned, and lost, then The Backrooms, in its short-film form, did something similar. Instead of abducting us into our own corrupted nostalgia, Parsons’ original short rehomed its audience inside someone else’s. An uncanny place between us and them. A memory left to rot and decompose. God help the poor souls who wind up there by mistake. Skinamarink had its haters and was more polarizing than beloved, but it was brave enough to walk directly into the philosophical horror territory Parsons has previously explored so well.
The film’s best horror belongs to its central creature, whose relationship to Clark gives Backrooms a badly needed jolt of personality. Without spoiling the reveal, the design is large, grotesque, and strange enough to feel pulled from a nightmare rather than a conventional monster movie. For a moment, the film becomes dangerous. But it doesn’t last. The creature works, and some of its moments are genuinely chilling, but Backrooms moves past it too quickly. It should be the image that defines this version of the story. Instead, it lands, unsettles, and disappears into the larger mechanics of the film.
Backrooms offers audiences a suite of bizarre and original horrors well worth experiencing in theaters, and there is no question that Ejiofor and Reinsve bring impressive, authentically human performances to the A24 adaptation. Unfortunately, the film’s traditional character arcs and plot structure work against the sinister meaninglessness and perversion of nostalgia that make its source material so uniquely unsettling. It is a strong film, but a safer one than it needed to be.
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