Backrooms: Movie Review

Kane Parsons, you have a bright future ahead of you.

Can you believe that the guy who made this is only twenty years old? Twenty years old!

Trying to describe this movie to someone is like trying to describe a dog to someone who’s never seen one before (if you know, you know).

For those who aren't familiar with all the lore behind this movie, here it goes: the first time the idea of Backrooms started floating online was in 2019, on the imageboard 4chan. The idea started with the interpretation of a photo showing a large, empty room with an unsettling vibe and a really yellow tinge to it. The original picture was taken all the way back in 2002, at the former site of a furniture store in Wisconsin. The online picture quickly turned into a popular internet creepypasta, which then inspired Kane Parsons to create the Backrooms web series.

Only sixteen years old at the time, Parsons posted the first part of the web series on Youtube in January 2022. The series went absolutely viral, receiving millions of views and great critical acclaim. The last episode was uploaded in February 2025, marking the end of a 24 episode run.

Kane Parsons was approached by several different studios to adapt his series into a film. Ultimately, it was A24 who went ahead with it, and it's fair to say they've hit the jackpot: the movie has already grossed over $200 million at the box office on a budget of only $10 million. It's also received critical acclaim from both the critics and the public, and Parsons has said that he's already in early talks of developing the next Backrooms movie.

I was itching to finally see this in cinemas. From the first teaser trailer that dropped, I had Backrooms at the top of my list of most anticipated movies of the year.

The first sixty - seventy minutes of the movie are pretty incredible and damn near perfect. Conceptually, the idea behind Backrooms is truly terrifying. Strange, empty, endless rooms where you can’t find your way out and, although it might seem like you’re completely alone, you know that you’re not. The movie does a great job of establishing its world, immersing us in Clark’s reality from both a spatial perspective (the furniture store) and a psychological one. It’s a chilling and horrifying reality, and despite taking place in such a vast, expansive space, the film manages to feel intensely claustrophobic.

There is one particular scene that might be one of the most chilling moments I’ve seen in a horror movie in the last few years, and if you’ve watched it, you’ll know exactly which one I’m talking about. Clark takes two of his employees down into the Backrooms to explore and document the experience through found footage, and it’s here that Kane Parsons’ brilliance truly peaks. We get to see so much of the Backrooms, yet at the same time we’re only given enough to leave us wanting more and keep us on our toes, never quite revealing enough to give the game away.

For me, the ending doesn’t quite stick the landing. As I mentioned above, part of the brilliance of the Backrooms, and what makes it so terrifying, is that we’re never given too much explanation. The more you try to explain it, and the more you choose to show or reveal about the Backrooms, the more that sense of fear begins to fade away. Ironically, the film's shortcomings are, in many ways, a result of Kane Parsons' brilliance. The world he created is so rich and compelling that there simply wasn't enough time in a two-hour movie to fully explore and unravel everything it had to offer. It definitely would have benefited from being significantly longer, allowing more time to properly explore the world and gradually peel back the layers of the story.

With that being said, Backrooms is an experience, and definitely one that you don't want to miss out on. Despite its flaws, it's one of the year's strongest horror films and undoubtedly one of the most memorable.

Run, don't walk, to watch this in cinemas.