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Chiwetel Ejiofor encounters the eponymous Backrooms of Kane Parsons new film.
Backrooms takes “liminal horror” mainstream. Check out our guest review of Kane Parsons’ new film from Anthony Wetmore!
Backrooms is a film that asks “what is a memory?” An iteration on a prior event reflected back through the lens of the one remembering, one might say. The way they reoccur over time, again and again, memories become something else – an iteration of an iteration. In Backrooms, the directorial debut from Kane Parsons, this idea is explored to every nook and cranny of the yellow-tinged hallways. The surprising expansion of rooms, half rooms, too long hallways and tight corners are just another memory or reflection of something so much deeper bubbling under the surface here.
The three stories being told in layers, much like the titular backrooms, are fractured but clear enough to relay the message. A mysterious organization, a little girl pressing her hand into some wet concrete, a furniture salesman addressing his long-ignored demons, finally. There is much to be addressed and the ways in which it all intertwines is a beautiful metaphor richly told.
Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark, the previously mentioned furniture salesman and Renate Reinsve as Mary, his not dissimilarly broken therapist, we’re privy to the infamous 4chan meme post brought into full sad, terrifying focus. Clark, while struggling through his dissolved marriage and shattered dreams of becoming something better makes an attempt to pull himself from the wreckage of his own mind with the help of Mary. After sometimes things go sideways, upside down, and across neural pathways and hidden corridors.
What Parsons and writer Will Soodik have constructed here is a rare treasure of creeping dread and existential reflection wrapped a large sheaths of dingy yellowed wallpaper and absurd, confounding imagery. Opening on a research team in hazmat suits exploring the vast expanse populated not only with the consistent-hum of halogen bulbs, but also couches, chairs, tables, even shoes and cardboard cut-outs of cavemen littered about, Backrooms plays it’s hand close to the vest on what exactly this is all supposed to be. Much like the series on YouTube preceding, little is explained through dialogue in these segments, we’re meant to observe and intake each VHS-filtered image and hold on tight. What do these bits have to do with Clark and Mary? You’ll just have to tune in to find out.
The performances here are key to bringing the whole odd menagerie together, Reinsve and Ejiofor play off of each other well as people in crisis. Their hurt is sourced differently but they have more in common than either seems to be aware of due to the nature of their clinical relationship it is hard for them to cross this much needed boundary, until the mysteriously porous wall in the basement of Clark’s store provides them the link they need to finally connect the dots. There is no absolution or resolve, only retreat, by sheer force of will and circumstance.
The Twilight Zone parallels are off the charts here in how Parsons and Soodik have warped emotion and the uncanny into a beautiful, earnestly poetic piece that elevate each portion beyond the sum of its parts. That’s not to say this isn’t a movie filled with uneasy imagery and what one comes to expect from a night in the darkness of the theater. While jump scares are almost non-existent, there is a growing sense of wrongness that pervades the screen at every possible instance. Even the bright open skies somehow seem false and cloying here. A reflection of a reflection, a memory of a memory, dropped down a long tilted room into yet another confounding corridor that is familiar but not quite right. There is something lurking as well, but it remains just out of reach, around another corner, up another hallway, off in some damp alcove yet unexplored.
The true feat behind the whole operation, Parsons himself, at just twenty years old, after working for years in Blender constructing his interpretation of an image that was meant to just be a chilling one-off to stir the mind and shiver your spine a’la the once Creepypasta format. Something small, eerie, and just real enough to be believable. The gentle threat of one day stepping across the wrong street corner, or phasing through that blank space in your basement to find yourself trapped, perhaps forever, amid oppressive lighting, drab decoration and the consistent wet smell of mildew overtaking your senses. As you try and find a way out, you hear something dragging in the distance, maybe even the odd bit of muzak you can’t quite place. Hour after hour in this place that uncannily reminds you of home and makes you more and more frantic until finally you think you can’t take it any longer. Maybe you find a way out, maybe you and your camcorder slam violently from a height back into the pavement not far from where you disappeared.
If for some reason you’re on the fence about giving Backrooms your time, I really have to stress that this isn’t one to sit out on. The theater experience will enhance your viewing like no other. The deep silences give way to terse conversation with a few surprises along the way. Prepare to squirm, think and maybe even cry a little – Backrooms is a winding liminal creation that does something interesting, it bears its beating heart and still leaves room for so much questioning and growth.
Fortunately, or unfortunately for some, Backrooms pulls no punches, as gentle as they may seem, there is a deep chasm of emotion sans empathy by way of scientific anomaly. With little to no explanation, Backrooms will remember you in time. It’s something like this: what a drawn picture of a dog might look like if the artist in question had never seen a dog, but was drawing on based on someone else’s description. They might get a few details correct, but ultimately, it becomes something else.
Director: Kane Parsons
Writer: Will Soodik
Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett
Studio: North Road Films, 21 Laps Entertainment, Atomic Monster, Oddfellows Pictures, Phobos
Distributor: A24
Language: English
Runtime: 110 minutes
Release Date: May 29, 2026 (USA)
Anthony Wetmore is an avid horror fan with a specific focus on the unsettling and eerie, keeping an eye out for things that confound and disturb rather than traditional scares. If it made you uneasy and confused, he probably loves it very much. Always passionate to write about anything and everything horror. His blog is online at ItsDreadful.blog.
