Backrooms (2026)

Score: 4 / 5

Even if you aren't online enough to know about creepypasta and our growing cultural consternation over liminal spaces, you've probably seen the iconic image. Dingy, yellowed wallpaper wraps around walls in a dull, asymmetrical series of office-like rooms, lit from above by a row of fluorescent lights, padded underfoot by ghastly carpet of the same jaundiced hue. It feels like something you've seen, back in the '90s, and chose not to remember because it was so mundane yet eerie. Launched in 2014 or so, the "Backrooms" online myth grew quickly, first visualizing and then imagining a space that expands endlessly in increasingly nonsensical ways. Internet writers have added to the myth -- the portmanteau of creepypasta indicating a series of creepy copypasta, or stories that get circulated on the internet with varying levels of evolution, much like the "telephone" kid game -- but the Backrooms has had a stronger life than many of its ilk. 

Whereas well-known characters like the Slender Man seem to have finite interest for the public who care about such things, the Backrooms manages to tap into greater anxieties about human suffering in late-stage capitalism, empty office buildings due to increased remote work, and the uncanny horrors of younger generations forced to live their lives online. When everything is virtual, what could be worse than being trapped in a rat's maze of unmappable rooms all alone? Worse -- what if something else is in there with you?

Kane Parsons' directorial debut builds on his extraordinary work on the Backrooms web series on YouTube. Consisting of 25 episodes, the series takes the form of pseudo-scientific mockumentaries attempting to make sense of the bizarre liminal space the characters (working from a research agency of dubious ethos) have stumbled upon. The film, however, is more concerned with its human characters who discover a breach in a furniture store and enter the Backrooms on their own terms. In some ways, this feels more relatable if less unnerving; this is no Blair Witch-inspired documentary, but rather a character study of how ordinary people can be driven to madness and horror when trapped in a life they can't reconcile with their best intentions.

Aesthetically fitting somewhere between Severance and Twin Peaks with a dash of Kubrick's The Shining thrown in, this film manages to follow similar tonal moves as these films. After a chilling opening that feels ripped from one of Parsons' web videos, the story proper opens in the 1990s with furniture store manager Clark (a brilliantly world-weary Chiwetel Ejiofor) in a terrible rut. His store never seems to have customers despite his efforts in marketing -- their mascot, which Clark embodies in ads, is a larger-than-life peg-legged pirate -- and so Clark lives in the store by night, drinking heavily. In his rare outings, he complains to his therapist (Renate Reinsve, who matches Ejiofor frame for frame in her brilliant co-leading performance) about how everyone else is to blame for his doldrums. His favorite subject: his ex-wife. Dr. Kline role-plays with him, but Clark stubbornly refuses to take responsibility for his situation. 

Some malfunctioning lights creep Clark out one night, and as he messes with a messed-up fuse box -- the first indication that the Backrooms are bleeding out of their dimension into our own -- he discovers a portal in the store basement to a vast network of impossible rooms. Not only do they expand far beyond the store's foundations, but even architecturally they simply don't work. Doors halfway up walls, stairs to nowhere, even a pool filled with inexplicable water. He brings his marketing team (if we can call the teens with a camcorder that) into the Backrooms to document it, but soon enough horror strikes. Then after Clark sends a cryptic message to Dr. Kline, she, too, comes to experience the Backrooms.

To say more will spoil the plot, which there isn't much of. Thankfully, Parsons and writer Will Soodik (Westworld, Homeland) don't bog us down with unnecessary plot contrivances. A lesser film would have involved extended chase scenes, escape puzzles, or a creature feature survival sequence. It would have been easy, too, for this to have relied on jump-scares around every corner. With cinematographer Jeremy Cox, the team provides scares, to be sure, but they're calculated and always a little off-kilter. One of the first is of a dark silhouette, stationary, halfway down a dimly lit hallway; the immediate shock is nowhere near as creepy for us (or for Clark) as we slowly move toward it. Later, there's a classic bird scare with a nasty twist. One of the most upsetting scenes -- the dinner scene, for you who already know -- feels ripped straight from Texas Chain Saw Massacre -- and just like in that film, it's not the (lack of) gore that's upsetting. The score, co-written by Parsons, and sound design, too, lure us in with aural foreboding, and more than once I even thought of Skinamarink in their chilling use of silence while characters explore the space.

It seems impossible, given the film's success this year, that Backrooms will be back. Parsons arguably played it safe with his first theatrical feature, but there are clearly more stories to tell in this world, even apart from his web series. I doubt they'll all be psychological thrillers; some may be more horrific, some more adventurous, some hopefully more surreal. Most should be faster paced, because now that the world has been established, languid reintroductions will sap any sequel's energy. But its commentary on our identities in these in-between places can only improve, and I'm eager to hear more philosophical discussions on par with what Soodik wrote here.