Backrooms Review: Eerie Trip Down Memory Lane

Backrooms is at its best when it is purely atmospheric, and loses steam when it tries to explain itself and its characters.

A24, and it seems like all of Hollywood, are prompting Parsons to be the industry’s next genre auteur, with folks like Jason Blum and James Wan already behind his back. In a time where nothing is a sure bet, horror consistently pulls through with hits. The previously mentioned Iron Lung and Obsession are proof of that. Will Backrooms continue that streak?

Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor, of Eleanor the Great) is a deeply dissatisfied man who owns a furniture store. His dream of being an architect was halted by an ex-wife who made him carry all the baggage in their relationship, or so he claims. Trying to seek help, he turns to his therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve, of Sentimental Value), who constantly challenges him to channel the darkness that seems to be buried underneath. This darkness manifests one night when Clark discovers a secret pathway to a series of underground tunnels beneath his store, mirroring office spaces, living rooms, children’s playgrounds, and neighborhoods. He quickly obsesses over the mystery behind this place, ignoring all signs to turn away from the looming danger present.

The first hour of Backrooms plays out almost as Parsons perfecting what he’s been crafting with the YouTube series since its inception. Getting to see his vision fully realized in live action, with most of it previously being CG, is nothing short of impressive. For someone in their early twenties, Parsons emits such confidence in his direction. You’ll have your occasional jump scares, but most of the thrills come from how he uses the space and captures it to build tension.

Danny Vermette’s production design is as massive as you can get with a film like this, while also retaining a sense of claustrophobia. One could criticize the horror genre for having it easy when it comes to creating terror. Most movies are darkly lit, operating in the shadows to pull tricks on the audience, whether or not something is hiding in the dark. The eerie atmosphere in the backrooms that Clark runs into is the complete opposite. Like in the series, the liminal spaces that our characters find themselves in are brightly lit. The tension comes just as much from Vermette’s sets, which sell the idea of a maze with nowhere to run, as it does from Eugenio Battaglia’s haunting sound design.

You could hear a pin drop whenever we spend time in the backrooms. So, when a screech or a footstep can be heard in the distance, it is far scarier knowing it is coming from something or someone who doesn’t need to hide in the shadows; it can make itself present when it feels like it. Battaglia and Vermette’s work is strong on its own, only elevated by Jeremy Cox’s cinematography. Switching back and forth between traditional photography and found footage, mimicking Parsons’ low-budget style for the series, you’re thrown right into the backrooms alongside our cast.

You feel the fear of turning around a corner, yet are unable to look away because, unconsciously or consciously, you become as ingrained in the mystery as Clark. What’s best is that the film’s found-footage sections don’t feel like a gimmick. They feel like an extension of Clark’s desperation to prove he hasn’t gone mad, no matter how unhinged he sounds. It’s all of these elements working together that ultimately make Parsons the star of Backrooms.

The first hour of the movie is legitimately fantastic. It’s simple, has fantastic technical achievements, carried by a great cast who seem as invested in the material as its director and crew. Then, the third act comes along, and the film becomes a tad too convoluted and rushed for its own good. It remains engaging due to Ejiofor and Reinsve’s strong performances. However, any momentum the first two-thirds were working towards falls flat as the movie quite literally stops to explain its themes to the audience.

Thematically, Backrooms is doing fascinating stuff. By following somebody such as Clark, with behavioral and confidence issues, into a void of nothingness and oddities, an opportunity presents itself for his worst instincts to reveal themselves back to him. That’s precisely what happens in the film’s first two acts. It’s implied that whatever is taking place in the backrooms is merely a reflection of the psyche of the person exploring the setting, almost as if it were trying to copy misremembered memories. At least this is one way of reading it. Not only is this rich in what you can do in a horror set piece, but on a character level too.

Unfortunately, what could have been an interesting arc is cut short. Clark’s personal journey and his relations with others, like Mary, are suddenly rushed. For instance, if the relationship between these two, as therapist and patient, was occasionally intense due to the exercises they did together, their reactions to each other never came from a bad place. Yes, the hints of hostility were there. A time jump interrupts the flow of Backrooms, which takes us into the movie’s climax. If Clark’s state of mind was at a solid seven, when we see him again, it is dialed all the way to eleven.

As a result, rather than being invested in the development of our protagonist, we’re met with an endpoint but not with how we got there. It doesn’t help that, for a full hour, we’re on Clark’s perspective, only to shift to Mary’s for the remainder of the runtime. By no means is she a bad character. Parsons introduces a backstory with her troubled mom, scared of the outside world, and forcing a young Mary to live in total isolation. A sense of PTSD arises when she finds herself in the backrooms with a paranoid Clark.

The problem here is that it feels disconnected from everything else. We spend so much time with Clark that when the shift happens, it feels like we’re restarting the movie. This is not enough to completely undo what Parsons was working towards. It’s simply frustrating, especially when the film’s ideas and themes go from being subtle to surface-level.

Halfway through the movie, all I could think about was the ridiculous amount of money it’s going to make this summer. Backroom is exactly the kind of horror people will want to keep coming back to and force their friends to watch again with them. Eerie, thought-provoking, with the right doses of humor to break the tension. You might find the directions it takes to be disappointing, though I can’t take away from the craft behind it. The future of the genre is in safe hands if people like Kane Parsons continue to thrill us with their imaginations.

Backrooms will be released in US theatres, in UK & Irish cinemas, and globally in theaters on May 29, 2026.