The innovative studio A24 has not disappointed again. Kane Parsons’ Backrooms (2026) might be one of the most unique horror films we have seen lately. Based on a 2019 creepypasta (horror Internet myth), it frightens viewers not with jump scares but with a continuous eerie liminal atmosphere, where something deeply unsettling might wait around every corner.
The movie follows two main characters: Clark, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, a middle-aged failed architect and alcoholic, and his therapist, Mary Kline, played by Renate Reinsve, who tries to help him with his crumbling marriage while also dealing with her own childhood trauma.
Clark owns an unprofitable furniture store, which is also his temporary home. One night, during a power outage, he accidentally finds a portal in the wall of his store to a strange place. It looks like an endless maze with luminescent lights, yellow wallpaper and wet carpeting.
Everything looks out of place. Copies of his furniture appear in strange positions, walls grow out of nowhere, and common objects, like a stop sign, appear in the unfamiliar environment.
The best way to describe how this space was built is to quote Clark in the movie: ‘It’s like describing a dog to someone who’s never seen one, then asking them to draw one.’
Of course, as in all good horror classics, Clark ventures deeper and deeper to explore an endless maze; then he drags two of his young employees along to explore with him. Later, his therapist tries to find Clark and also enters the Backrooms, only to later find all the horrors that have been prepared for her.
I have to admit that I get scared easily. But looking at other people in the cinema, I was not the only one. People were covering their ears and eyes, gasping and hiding their faces. Not because of jump scares, but because of the unsettling feeling we experienced from the very beginning until the end of the movie.
Even for scenes set in the real world, the production team chose liminal-looking filming locations. Throughout the entire film, there is no sense of rest. There will always be open space behind the character, where something surreal might wait, always an open door, and always a dark background behind the brightly lit foreground.
‘Liminal space, that whole world, is very much connecting with people on the level that it’s referencing uncurated little fragments of memories that are lacking context,’ Parsons said in an interview with Variety.
‘Moments in your life where the primate mind has learned its environment, and has a specific relationship with the way it memorises its environment.’
Besides doing a great job of being a horror movie, Backrooms amazes with its careful attention to detail and scene settings.
Parsons, a filmmaker, composer and YouTuber known as Kane Pixels, became the youngest director to top the box office with a $213-million global opening at the age of 20. Also the youngest A24 director, he first gained popularity in 2022, when he started making animated YouTube web series based on the Backrooms creepypasta.
For those who are unfamiliar with the Backrooms concept, it is an Internet legend that started in 2019 with a picture of a strange, empty office interior with luminescent light and yellow wallpaper, posted on the edgy and controversial meme site 4chan.
The legend says that if you accidentally exit the real world, you will end up in a liminal space, a place that exists outside of normal reality.
Internet users subsequently expanded the Backrooms creepypasta, creating numerous levels and entities. Levels are usually based on childhood nostalgia and the feeling of disassociation. Even though places might appear normal at first, like long empty corridors or waterparks after closing time, they emit a strange, uncanny feeling.
Fan-made websites explain dos and don’ts according to every level, and rules for communication with entities living in the Backrooms, followed by many game releases.
Portrayal of Backrooms in the movie
The movie concept, however, is different. Parsons’ Backrooms is not just a liminal space with Internet myth entities; it is a living, breathing thing that ‘scans’ the space around it and enters visitors’ thoughts.
It creates deformed memories of people who enter the Backrooms. One creature, for example, is believed to be Clark’s ex-wife. The traffic stop sign in one of the corridors is the same one that Clark sees near his previous house. The same logic follows the furniture from Clark’s store.
This concept reminded me of the 2018 sci-fi horror film Annihilation. The plot features four female scientists who enter a shimmering bubble that appeared on the site of a meteor crash to investigate mutations. The so-called ‘shimmer’ works as a crooked mirror, deforming people, technologies and the energy itself. Then it makes eerie copies of everything, just like in the Backrooms movie.
People who once entered Backrooms, or were vividly remembered by those who entered, now have misshaped clones that Backrooms created of them.
Changing the narrative of established Backrooms lore was one of the main concerns of the fans. Many social media users expected to see the ‘levels’ they had come to know, such as in the video game Escape the Backrooms (2022).
One TikTok user even AI-generated a new movie scene where Reinsve’s character exits one of the many doors and runs into an eerie, endless field with a few distant houses under the bright sun, one of the beloved Backrooms locations.
Some fans shared their disappointment with how few Backrooms locations the movie explored and said that it was unnecessarily rushed.
However, the movie has a lot more good things to say about it.
I have to mark the incredible acting of Renate Reinsve, a Norwegian who has already proven her mastery in last year’s Sentimental Value. This time, she showed how easily she can shift between the stoic face of the psychotherapist and pure horror.
However, I cannot say the same about Chiwetel Ejiofor. He is an amazing actor with many good roles, like in 12 Years a Slave. In Backrooms, unfortunately, he sometimes seemed to overact. But besides a few scenes, his acting was trustworthy.
Two of his young employees, Kat (Lukita Maxwell), and Bobby (Finn Bennett), seemed to me like they were added just to be liked by a Gen-Z audience. Which is strange because the director is Gen-Z himself. But I have to admit that TikTok users liked Bobby indeed.
Production
The production team deserves the biggest round of applause.
First, Parsons designed liminal space environments using the 3D software Blender. Then, production designer Danny Vermette adapted his digital designs for physical construction: more than 2,800 square metres of an endless yellow maze. Almost everything was made practically, with minimal compoter generated graphics (CGI) and no AI. Backroom creatures were played by real actors with prosthetics.
Due to the highly convincing physical representation of the Backrooms, when Renate Reinsve first entered the set, she admitted in a GamesRadar+ interview that she was a little concerned that she would actually go insane.
The score, composed by Edo Van Breemen and Parsons, mimics sounds associated with Backrooms videos on social media over the years, adding depth to the already surreal environment.
They also treated fans with Ulterior Motives, a song that gained popularity in 2021. It was considered a lostwave song (a song that is partly lost, or whose origins are lost) until Reddit users identified the song’s origins in 2024. It was one of the greatest musical mysteries on the internet.
Eerie voices that were coming from the caveman cardboard figure, which really scared two of my neighbouring spectators in the cinema, are from NASA’s Golden Record, which features spoken greetings in 55 languages. This record was sent into interstellar space in 1977 as a time capsule and a source for communication with possible life out there.
Was the use of the Golden Record intended to tell us that that someone might have tried to communicate with the Backrooms?
These, and many other small easter eggs, as one TikTok user jokingly said, can be noticed only by those who are ‘chronically online’. And it fits the theme well because Backrooms started on the internet, and continued to evolve thanks to internet nerds.
Fans of the Backrooms movie can already prepare for the franchise. In the interview with Variety, Parsons said he is not done. He said he had originally planned to make a series and hinted that the movie is just a foot in the door that would later lead to a true root, which the internet was building up for years.
Backrooms is not a film you forget when the lights come back on. It lingers, like a half-remembered place you are not sure you have actually been. And remember not to lean on any walls, otherwise you might fall into the Backrooms.
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