It’s rare that a movie arises from an image and a couple of 4Chan posts. Backrooms and all of the content that has been made about it on YouTube, Twitter, and other social media are a phenomenon. So naturally, Hollywood would come sniffing around when there’s money to be made. This time around it was A24 that jumped onto the bandwagon and hired 19-year-old Kane Parsons to direct a feature film based on his shorts and the other work that people have done building out the lore of the Backrooms.
The film stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, and Lukita Maxwell. The story of the film is about as barebones as it gets, though. It features Clark (Ejiofor), who sees a therapist named Mary (Reinsve). Mary is fairly successful in her practice and offers self-help tapes that Clark listens to religiously. Clark also operates a furniture store that contains a portal to the Backrooms. He finds it one night, staying overnight in the store because he’s separated from his wife, who kept their house.
At first, Clark is bewildered by the Backrooms, but as it goes on, he eventually visits Mary with a map of the complex that he’s drawn. She doesn’t believe him, and he vows that he’ll be back with proof. He brings along his two employees to film the inside of the complex. Clark ends up getting lost, and Mary notices he’s missed some appointments and goes to find him. And that’s just to the middle of the film.
From there, Backrooms goes in a bunch of different directions but never really finds one solid throughline to really get the audience invested in.
What Really Works In Backrooms?
The two performances from Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve are smashing. They are the beating heart of the film and really carry the entire thing. Chiwetel verges on sympathetic, maniacal, evil, and somehow turns all the way back to sympathetic. Mary has her own problems outside of having to find Clark. Those problems are shown through vignettes of her as a young girl, but they leave too much interpretation up to the audience, and they’re few and far between in the film. These character details are all dropped like they’re easter eggs for people to find. This would be fine if they weren’t the main characters of the movie, but they are.
The sets for the film are also stunning. They go on forever and capture the essence of that original Backrooms image that started this all. As the film goes on, they get more intricate and complicated, but they always have that faint yellow glow and eerie fluorescent light hum. If you’re going into the movie for some creepy backrooms, you’ll get a kick out of it.
So, that sounds like a great movie, right?
Meandering, Plot-Lite, Pacing Problems, And More Sink Backrooms
Backrooms is an hour and fifty minutes long, and it feels like that. The pacing of the film doesn’t drive it along; it meanders through the very light amounts of story and ends up feeling more like a series of vignettes or shorts than anything else. What we’re left with is some great character work that doesn’t have an actual story or plot to follow. Especially as the film gets into its second half, it is just an excuse to show off more of the sets. While the sets are awesome looking, that does not make for an actual movie.
It is a whole lot of style without a lot of substance. Kane Parsons and his team should be applauded for the sets and their design, but outside of that, Ejiofor and Reinsve are doing a lot of good work with a subpar script, but there’s not much else that I liked about this movie. I was bored, which is really the cardinal sin.
The Scares And Bigger Issues With The Film
A good portion of the scares of the film come from the POV video scenes in the film. That tension somewhat melts away and then really goes away when the “monster” of the film is actually revealed. Now, it’s a personal thing to Clark, which makes sense. However, there’s no tension at all outside of those POV sequences.
A film needs a story that carries it through the entire film, not just to the midpoint or two-thirds of the way through the film. Backrooms follows that three-act structure that we all know and love, all the way until a certain point, and then goes off a cliff into experimental, vague territory.
Backrooms plays out more like a short that was extended into a film than anything else. There are moments where it works really well, but as a full feature-length movie, it shows off that set design and fantastic actors can carry a film to a place where it’s at least watchable, and that’s the best thing I can say about Backrooms.
Backrooms releases in theaters on May 29th, 2026.
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