Backrooms

Released 2026. Director: Kane Parsons

BACKROOMS HAS A LOT TO DO WITH EMPTINESS. Hallways, corridors, void spaces that don't serve any functional purpose other than being part of a larger architecture. Clearly these are not just empty spaces for Kane Parsons, who has turned them into the setting for a new kind of horror onscreen. Parsons has extracted a primal and existential apprehension out of, well, nothing. These empty spaces are imbued with an air of unease and a creeping sense of slow dread of what might lurk around the corner or emerge at the end of a long hallway. Liminal spaces have become something fearful.

In this puzzling spine-chiller, Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Clark, who runs a furniture store in one of those ubiquitous big-box type shopping malls which never seem to have any customers. He spends his after-hours alone in in the store because he's now homeless after his wife kicked him out. Some days he sees his therapist Mary, played by Renate Reinsve, but he remains frustrated and resentful of his situation. Mary, as composed and rational as she appears professionally, is privately haunted by childhood trauma of her own involving her mentally ill mother.

Almost by accident, one night Clark discovers there's a secret space behind a basement wall which he can simply walk through. Cavernous and endless, this maze of hallways and rooms appear to extend in all directions without an end. The sea of mustard-yellow walls gives off a confining, almost prison vibe and the overhead white fluorescent buzz and hum is skin-prickling. There's a scattering of furniture that are identical to Clark's display, stacked for an unknown purpose at one spot, or simply strewn about elsewhere. Some rooms have a small opening that leads to more of the same bland but increasingly curious spaces.

Clark would return to continue exploring this perplexing floor plan, even roping in two of his employees with a camera to record the bizarre reality. They find piles of unwashed laundry and perhaps signs of occupancy, before something grim snatches them and the two are never seen again.

Parsons succeeds in creating and more impressively, sustaining an atmosphere of horror not with blood and gore but an overwhelming sense of being lost in a recognisable and innocuous indoor space. The minimalist, ascetic design pares the horror down to its bare bones, so the smallest detail out of the ordinary, like the glimpse of a shadow or a stain on the floor, trigger an immediate sense of alarm.

When Mary comes searching for Clark and finds herself trapped in this oppressive interior, the ambiguities of the backrooms deepen with the encounters with a few entities of abstract physiognomy. One of them is Clark's wife, who has more eyes and mouths on her face than normal and the sight is disconcerting though she's just standing still.

Not only does Mary find Clark but also Captain Clark, his alter ego for store promotions dressed like a seafaring captain with a peg leg. Captain Clark is a distorted version of the real person and he's more in touch with his primal instincts to strike out, a villain who terrorises anyone who ventures into his private domain. There's genuine suspense in Mary's frantic attempt to escape and Captain Clark's relentless pursuit.

At this point I figured that Backrooms is the manifestation of personal trauma. Clark sells stuff that fill people's homes while he's been banished from his own. Mary's recurring nightmare is the result of losing her home as a child. They are both in search of a personal safe space but their wounded psyche throws up a fear of the unknown.

Then Mark Duplass shows up as a past employee of Async, a bio-tech company that was the first to discover the backrooms. Real humans in hazmat suits arrive on the scene and take over. Are we still inside someone's subjective subliminal mind? Now I think I was mistaken and the movie is not about psychological horror but an inter-dimensional portal to parallel lives. Or perhaps it's something else entirely.

However you interpret what you see, Backrooms is an extension of the haunted-house setup, a breed of horror borne out of a simple, elegant idea with the capacity to branch out in any direction to arrive at all sorts of meanings. This ambiguity will annoy if you prefer a cryptic movie to close with a neat ending with everything explained.

Backrooms may be restrictive in plot and limited in aesthetics, but it doesn't feel flimsy or repetitive. The movie has become an unlikely success story of 2026, not just for the insane amount of money it's made globally out of a small budget, more so for spotlighting its creator, who's barely 20 years old when the movie was released.

Kane Parsons was only 14 when he started on his Backrooms web series on YouTube. Within a few short years he's turned his idea into an original, intriguing and satisfyingly anxious experience on the big screen. He's not even old enough to drink, yet he already has a firm grasp of visual language, mood setting and tonal consistency in his first movie. I felt unsettled the whole way through and I can't wait to be rattled by what he'll do next.

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