Backrooms delivers an intense and creepy film that can best be described as an M.C. Escher painting merged with a sterile office environment turned into a horror movie.
What Is It?
This horror film with traces of sci-fi follows a struggling furniture store owner who discovers a mysterious doorway leading to an endless labyrinth of eerie, fluorescent-lit rooms that defy the laws of reality. As he becomes increasingly obsessed with the bizarre dimension known as the Backrooms, his therapist is drawn into the mystery, uncovering a terrifying world where disorienting architecture, hidden forces, and psychological dread blur the line between reality and nightmare.
Release: May 29, 2026, In Theaters
Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell
Crew: Kane Parsons (Director/Music), Will Soodik (Writer), James Wan (Producer), Edo Van Breemen (Music)
Johnny Jay’s Thoughts:
Backrooms is a horror film with sci-fi elements that was made for a very economical price tag of five million dollars, and it is currently kicking butt on the mega-budget blockbusters in theaters this Summer. This is the type of movie that I love because it does not rely on high production costs or CGI overload but instead on good storytelling and filmcraft as well as a strong cast to carry it. It is based on a web series created by director Kane Parsons, which was inspired by a picture of a liminal space that had gone viral online. The series has since proven quite popular, and that led to several studios approaching him about a movie version.
The Backrooms film starts off with a creepy found-footage scene of someone exploring a space that looks like an endless series of sterile, fluorescent-lit rooms and corridors that have some rather odd and random objects throughout them. It then switches to focus on furniture store owner Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is struggling to bring people into his store and who is seeing a therapist (Dr. Mary Kline, played by Renate Reinsve) as he deals with the emotional trauma of his failed marriage. Clark is sleeping in the store at night, and frequent power outages lead him to search the basement area for the cause, resulting in him finding what appears to be an interdimensional doorway that leads to the “backrooms”. This is where the film really starts to pick up.
Clark spends some time exploring this area, but then he is chased by a mysterious entity and returns to the store. This leads to a series of excursions into the backrooms, and he enlists the support of two of his employees so that they can film the area. That ends badly, though, and his therapist later receives a call from him saying that he will not be returning from the backrooms (which he had previously told her about). Concerned, she goes to the store and finds herself caught in this eerie, liminal world as well.
This movie starts out very intense, but then kind of goes into a lull as we are introduced to Clark and his situation. But that gives us the appropriate background and establishes that this struggling furniture store owner might have a reason to get lost in this bizarre alternate world he has discovered. And once he enters that area, the intensity and creepiness ramp back up again and take the viewer on a roller coaster ride through the rest of the film.
The environment of the backrooms is certainly key to this film, establishing a sense of familiarity because it resembles the typical office space, yet verging into the disorienting because of its odd twists and turns, dead ends, and disordered layout. At times it heads into the surreal, as if a sterile office environment has been merged with an M.C. Escher painting, and there are plenty of creepy things lurking in the corners. But the movie does not make large use of jump scares, instead relying on the audience’s immersion in this world and its disorienting nature to maintain the intensity and unnerving atmosphere.
Chiwetel Ejiofor does an excellent job in the lead role, drawing some sympathy from the audience (at least at first) as he struggles on the brink of mania (and this is a very different performance than the more somber character he played in the excellent series The Man Who Fell to Earth; more on that one at this link). Renate Reinsve, as the therapist, provides a calming presence, but she struggles with her own demons, and as she enters the backrooms, that gets even worse. Those two receive most of the screen time, and they are definitely up to carrying the film. But the few other actors who show up do manage to shine in their small roles as well, not fading into the background.
The movie will leave you with a lot of questions, though it does provide a few answers and at least some sense of resolution. But its rather ambiguous ending fits with its unsettling nature and certainly suggests that there is more to discover in these backrooms. This is definitely not your typical summer popcorn movie experience, but it does delivers an intense and haunting film that proves almost exhausting by the time you get to the end. This one may not be for everybody, but I certainly recommend taking a trip into the backrooms.
What’s Next?
While this movie is a far cry from the typical Summer Blockbuster, it certainly has struck a nerve with audiences and has pulled in over $330 million in global receipts as of this writing. Parsons definitely wants to explore the backrooms further, and he has suggested that a sequel could be in the works. He also plans to produce more episodes of the web series and has an interest in developing a television series based on the concept as well. So you can certainly expect more from this property, especially considering that it counts as one of the biggest hits of the Summer.
Did you venture into the Backrooms and did you feel like it delivered a good movie experience, or did it fall short next to the big dollar films in the theaters? Chime in with your thoughts in the comments section below.
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