Backrooms (2026) [Movie Review]

A few years ago, Backrooms was a grainy YouTube video, a few minutes of a kid wandering through endless yellow office hallways that should not exist, posted by a teenager who taught himself animation in free software. Today it is the highest-grossing film in the history of A24, the feature directorial debut of 20-year-old Kane Parsons, and one of the genuine cultural phenomena of 2026. Backrooms took the liminal-space dread that has haunted the internet for years and dragged it into multiplexes, and the result is one of the most assured, unsettling, and commercially staggering horror debuts in recent memory. It is not a flawless film, but it is a remarkable one, and it announces a major new talent.

The Quick Take

The verdict: Backrooms is a startlingly confident feature debut from Kane Parsons, a hypnotic and genuinely frightening descent into liminal-space horror powered by strong work from Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve. The atmosphere and craft are extraordinary, especially one second-act sequence that ranks among the scariest things in theaters this year, even if the story itself is the weakest link.

Category	Score
Atmosphere and Dread	92 / 100
Direction and Craft	90 / 100
Cast	88 / 100
Story and Script	74 / 100
Overall	85 / 100

Bottom line: See it on the biggest screen with the best sound you can find. This is a mood-and-dread horror experience that demands a theater, even if the plot leaves some threads dangling. Best for: Horror fans, followers of the Backrooms web series and creepypasta, lovers of atmospheric liminal-space dread, and anyone curious about the most talked-about debut of the year. One caveat: Backrooms is more interested in mood, mystery, and disorientation than in tidy explanations, and viewers who have never encountered the lore may find it opaque. Format reviewed: Theatrical, in Dolby Atmos (A24) | 110 minutes | Rated R | Released May 29, 2026.

A Door in the Basement of the Furniture Store

Backrooms grounds its cosmic horror in something deliberately mundane, which is one of the smartest choices it makes. Set in 1990, the film follows Clark, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, the owner of a furniture showroom who discovers a strange doorway in the lower level of his store. At first the anomaly seems merely to be the cause of mysterious power outages, an electrical nuisance in an ordinary building. But the doorway is far more than that. It is a threshold into the Backrooms, the endless, yellow-tinted, fluorescent-lit dimension of empty office space and droning hum that fans of the source material know all too well, a place that should not exist and from which there may be no way out.

When Clark crosses over, or no-clips, to use the term the lore made famous, something in him shifts. His personality changes, and rather than fleeing in terror, he becomes obsessed, drawn back again and again to the impossible space behind the door, determined to understand it. The early stretch of Backrooms is a slow, creeping study of a man being pulled into something that is quietly consuming him, and Ejiofor plays that transformation with a controlled intensity that anchors the whole film. There is real dread in watching an ordinary man become a stranger to the people around him, and Backrooms understands that the scariest thing about the door is not just what is on the other side but what it does to the person who keeps walking through it.

When Clark eventually goes missing inside the Backrooms, the film pivots. His therapist, Dr. Mary Kline, played by Renate Reinsve, ventures into the dimension herself to find him, and from there Backrooms becomes a rescue mission through a reality that grows steadily less stable. As Kline goes deeper, her own grip on what is real begins to bend, and the film follows her into the unknown with mounting, hallucinatory unease. It is a clean, effective structure, a missing-person story that doubles as a descent into the abyss, and it gives Backrooms a human spine to hang its nightmares on.

No-Clipping Into the Endless Yellow

To understand why Backrooms connects the way it does, you have to understand the phenomenon it springs from, because few films have arrived with this particular kind of built-in mythology. The Backrooms began as an internet creepypasta, originating on 4chan and spreading across Reddit and TikTok, built around a simple, deeply unsettling idea: that if you glitch out of reality, you fall into the Backrooms, an infinite expanse of empty, identical, fluorescent-lit rooms that feel achingly familiar and profoundly wrong. The concept tapped into the eerie power of liminal spaces, those transitional, half-remembered environments like empty hallways and abandoned malls that trigger a primal unease, and it became one of the defining horror ideas of the internet age.

Kane Parsons did not invent the Backrooms, but his YouTube web series, launched in early 2022 under the name Kane Pixels, became the definitive vision of it, racking up enormous viewership and a fervent fanbase that scoured every frame for clues. The film Backrooms is the culmination of that work, and Parsons makes the bold choice to frame the movie as a companion piece to his existing lore rather than a simple retelling of it. The threats he conjures for the feature are different from the entities of his online series, and the film assumes a certain comfort with ambiguity, with not having everything spelled out. For longtime fans of the Backrooms, that approach is a feature. For newcomers, it can be a barrier, and we will come back to that. But what is undeniable is that Backrooms captures the specific, skin-crawling atmosphere that made the concept a sensation, the sense of a space that is endless, indifferent, and quietly hostile to human life.

Why Empty Rooms Are So Terrifying

It is worth pausing on why Backrooms works on a primal level, because the film is built on one of the more sophisticated horror ideas to reach the mainstream in years. Liminal spaces are transitional places, environments designed to be passed through rather than occupied, and the dread they produce comes from encountering them empty, still, and wrong. An empty mall at midnight, a vacant office floor under humming fluorescent light, a hotel corridor that seems to repeat forever: these spaces unsettle us because our brains expect them to be full of people and purpose, and their emptiness reads as a kind of violation. Backrooms understands this instinct and weaponizes it for nearly two hours, building an entire feature out of the feeling that you have wandered somewhere you were never meant to be.

Parsons has been open about the wide range of influences he drew on, and they explain a lot about the texture of Backrooms. He has cited the Portal video game franchise for its sterile, test-chamber architecture, the paranoid television series Mr. Robot, the unsettling docufiction of 1971’s Punishment Park, the creeping suburban menace of One Hour Photo, and the surreal anime Paranoia Agent. That is an unusually thoughtful and eclectic set of reference points for a 20-year-old’s debut, and it shows in how Backrooms blends video-game spatial logic, psychological paranoia, and analog dread into something that feels new even as it nods to its inspirations. The film is not just a jump-scare delivery system. It is an attempt to bottle a very specific, very modern strain of unease, the sense that reality is a thin membrane and that something vast and empty waits just behind it. That ambition is a big part of why Backrooms has resonated so deeply with the generation that grew up steeped in this imagery.

From a YouTube Channel to the Number One Movie in America

The story behind Backrooms is almost as remarkable as the film itself, and it represents a genuine shift in how Hollywood finds talent. Kane Parsons was a teenager, around 16, when studios first came calling about adapting his web series, and he was understandably wary, having grown up watching beloved internet properties get butchered by studio interference. He proceeded carefully, assembled a team, and eventually struck a deal with A24 alongside heavyweight producers including James Wan, Shawn Levy, and Osgood Perkins. Backrooms became his feature directorial debut at the age of 20, and the film made him the youngest filmmaker ever to land the number one movie at the United States box office, breaking a record that had stood since Josh Trank and Chronicle in 2012.

Parsons is part of a larger wave that Backrooms has come to symbolize, the rise of the YouTuber-turned-filmmaker in horror. The genre has become a proving ground for creators who built audiences online, from the Philippou brothers behind Talk to Me to Markiplier’s Iron Lung to Curry Barker’s Obsession, and the staggering success of Backrooms has industry observers declaring that the next generation of horror talent is being incubated on platforms like YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok rather than in film schools. What makes Parsons special is not just that he came from the internet but that he brought its sensibility with him intact. Backrooms feels genuinely native to the culture that birthed it, and the most striking proof is technical. Parsons achieved the film’s occasional found-footage, VHS-camcorder look, fitting for a story set in 1990, not with real analog equipment but digitally in post-production using Blender, the same free open-source software he used to make his YouTube videos. That a major theatrical release leans on the exact toolkit of its director’s bedroom origins, and that the effect looks effortless and convincing on a giant screen, is a small revolution in itself.

Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve Get Lost

For all its conceptual and technical ambition, Backrooms works as well as it does in large part because it is anchored by two genuinely excellent performances, and the casting of serious dramatic actors in a viral-horror adaptation pays enormous dividends. Chiwetel Ejiofor, an Oscar nominee for 12 Years a Slave, brings real gravity and interiority to Clark, making the furniture store owner’s slide from curiosity into obsession feel grounded and frightening rather than schematic. Ejiofor is the kind of actor who can convey a man coming apart from the inside with the smallest adjustments, and his work gives Backrooms an emotional weight that elevates it well above its B-movie premise.

Opposite him, Renate Reinsve, the Norwegian star of The Worst Person in the World, is equally compelling as Dr. Mary Kline, the therapist who follows Clark into the void. Reinsve carries the back half of Backrooms as her character’s reality begins to fracture, and she plays the escalating disorientation with a controlled desperation that keeps you tethered to the film even as it spirals into the surreal. Critics have rightly singled out both performances as standouts, and they are the reason the human stakes of Backrooms register at all amid the abstraction. The supporting cast, including Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell, and Avan Jogia, fills out the world capably, but Backrooms belongs to Ejiofor and Reinsve, two actors fully committed to selling the unsellable, lending their considerable talent to a story about getting hopelessly, terrifyingly lost.

The Scariest Twenty Minutes in a Theater This Year

Where Backrooms truly distinguishes itself is in its craft, and specifically in its ability to generate sustained, overwhelming dread. Working with cinematographer Jeremy Cox, who shot Osgood Perkins’ Keeper and served as second unit director of photography on Longlegs and The Monkey, Parsons has made a film that understands liminal-space horror on a bone-deep level. The Backrooms themselves are rendered with an uncanny precision, the buzzing fluorescent light, the damp carpet, the wallpaper that goes on forever, all of it photographed to feel both numbingly familiar and profoundly threatening. This is horror built from absence rather than excess, from the terror of empty space and the certainty that something is out there in it.

The film’s standout is a second-act sequence that, by broad critical agreement, ranks as one of the most bone-chilling things you will see in a theater all year. I will not describe it, both to preserve the experience and because its power depends on surprise, but it is the moment Backrooms fully justifies its existence on the big screen, a masterclass in tension and dread that no streaming viewing could replicate. Parsons demonstrates a command of suspense and atmosphere that filmmakers twice his age struggle to achieve, and the sequence alone is worth the price of admission. The Dolby Atmos sound design is essential to all of this, with the film’s droning, oppressive soundscape and a haunting score by Parsons and Edo Van Breemen wrapping around you until the silence itself becomes unbearable. Backrooms is, above all, an exercise in mood, and on that level it is a triumph.

The decision to set Backrooms in 1990 is more than a stylistic affectation, and it deepens the film’s grip. The pre-internet, pre-cellphone period strips the characters of the easy lifelines a contemporary setting would provide, no GPS, no instant calls for help, no way to document and share what is happening to them, which heightens their isolation inside the impossible space. It also licenses the film’s occasional shift into a degraded, VHS-camcorder aesthetic, a look Parsons associates with the found-footage roots of his web series and one that taps directly into the analog nostalgia that fuels so much liminal-space horror. The period detail of the furniture showroom and the muted, lived-in palette of the real world make the sudden, clinical wrongness of the Backrooms hit even harder by contrast. Cox’s camera lingers and drifts through both worlds with a patience that builds unease rather than releasing it, and the cumulative effect is a film that feels less like it is showing you a nightmare than trapping you inside one.

Mesmerizing Mood, Murky Story

Now for the honest reservation, because Backrooms is not without a significant flaw, and a fair review has to name it. For all the film’s atmospheric mastery, its narrative is the weakest element, and that is the consistent thread running through even its positive reviews. Backrooms is far more interested in mood, mystery, and disorientation than in plot mechanics or clear resolution, and while that approach suits the inherently unknowable nature of the source material, it means the story supporting all that incredible craft can feel thin and elusive. The film commits to never fully explaining itself, which is thematically defensible but dramatically frustrating, and some viewers will leave the theater more impressed than satisfied.

The bigger issue is accessibility. Backrooms was made, to a meaningful degree, as a companion piece for an audience that already knows the lore, and viewers walking in cold, with no exposure to the web series or the creepypasta, have reported finding it genuinely hard to follow. There is a real divide in the response to Backrooms between fans who appreciate how it builds on and abstracts the mythology they love and newcomers who find it baffling. That is a meaningful limitation for a film that has now reached a mass audience, and it is the main thing keeping Backrooms from being a complete success rather than a wildly promising one. My honest guidance is this: Backrooms is a phenomenal sensory and atmospheric experience and a stunning calling card for a young director, but if you want a horror film that ties its mysteries up neatly, this is not that movie. Go in for the dread and the craft, not for the answers, and you will get exactly what makes Backrooms special. The film trusts you to sit in your own confusion and let the unease do the work, and for the right viewer, that is the whole point.

A Record-Smashing Debut for A24

It is impossible to discuss Backrooms without marveling at its commercial performance, because the numbers genuinely rewrote the record books. Made for under $10 million, co-financed by A24 and Chernin Entertainment, Backrooms opened to a staggering $81 million domestically and $118 million worldwide, the largest debut in A24’s history by a wide margin, more than tripling the previous record held by Alex Garland’s Civil War. It also delivered the biggest opening in history for an original horror film, a remarkable feat for a movie based on internet folklore rather than an established studio brand. As of mid-June 2026, Backrooms has grossed $272.7 million worldwide, making it A24’s highest-grossing film of all time, surpassing Marty Supreme, and the ninth-highest-grossing film of the entire year.

That success has sent a shockwave through the industry, and it has come to mean something larger than one hit. Backrooms has been held up as definitive proof that creator-driven, internet-born horror can compete with the biggest studio tentpoles, and that the enormous, devoted fanbases built on platforms like YouTube and Reddit will follow their favorite creators into theaters. Studios are now actively mining online communities for the next Backrooms, scouting Reddit threads and viral phenomena for intellectual property and talent. Producer Jason Blum, whose Atomic Monster was part of the film, has called YouTube a new place to look for the next generation of groundbreaking talent, and Backrooms is exhibit A. It also arrives as part of the broader theatrical comeback of 2026, a reminder that a sharp, unsettling original idea can still cut through a marketplace dominated by sequels and franchises. For all the doom about the death of original cinema, Backrooms is a genuinely heartening success story, and Parsons has already hinted that he is not finished with this world.

There is a deeper lesson in the Backrooms phenomenon that the industry would be wise to absorb. What made Parsons’ web series spread was not a marketing budget but a genuine, organically built relationship with an audience that felt ownership over the material, and the film succeeded precisely because A24 trusted that relationship rather than trying to sand the concept down for the widest possible crowd. The studio kept the budget lean, kept the director in creative control, and let Backrooms be the strange, uncompromising thing its fans wanted, and that faith was rewarded with the biggest opening in the company’s history. In an era when so much horror is focus-grouped into blandness, Backrooms is a reminder that specificity and authorial vision are commercial assets, not liabilities. The film’s triumph is not just Parsons’ triumph. It is a case study in what happens when a studio bets on a singular voice instead of betting against one, and its ripple effects on how horror gets made and discovered will likely be felt for years.

Film Specifications

Detail	Information
Film Title	Backrooms
Year	2026
Director	Kane Parsons
Screenplay	Will Soodik
Based on	The Backrooms web series by Kane Parsons and the internet creepypasta
Studio / Distributor	A24
Cast	Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell, Avan Jogia
Cinematography	Jeremy Cox
Music	Kane Parsons, Edo Van Breemen
Editing	Greg Ng
Production Companies	A24, Chernin Entertainment, 21 Laps Entertainment, Atomic Monster
Setting	1990
Runtime	110 minutes
Rating	R (some violent content, language, and bloody images)
Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
Sound	Dolby Atmos
Budget	Under $10 million
World Premiere	May 7, 2026 (Aero Theatre, Santa Monica)
US Release Date	May 29, 2026

Should You Step Into the Backrooms? The Final Word

Backrooms is one of the most exciting genre debuts in years, a film that takes a piece of internet folklore and a director almost nobody outside YouTube had heard of and turns them into a record-breaking, genuinely frightening theatrical event. Kane Parsons has announced himself as a major filmmaking talent with an instinctive command of atmosphere, dread, and the particular horror of empty space, and the craft on display in Backrooms, from its uncanny liminal environments to its self-made VHS effects to that unforgettable second-act sequence, marks him as someone to watch for decades to come. Anchored by superb performances from Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve and wrapped in an oppressive, immersive Dolby Atmos soundscape, this is horror filmmaking of real ambition and skill.

It is not perfect. The story is the film’s weak point, elusive where it might have been gripping, and Backrooms can be genuinely opaque to anyone who has not absorbed the lore that birthed it. If you need your horror to explain itself, you will leave frustrated. But if you are willing to surrender to a pure, sustained, masterfully constructed experience of dread, Backrooms delivers something few films this year can match, and it absolutely demands the big screen and the big sound to work its spell. The record-shattering box office and the strong reviews are well earned, and whatever its flaws, Backrooms is a landmark, both for its young director and for a new era of horror bubbling up from the internet. It is playing in theaters now. Step through the door, but do not expect to find your way out easily.

Backrooms (A24) | R | 110 minutes | Released May 29, 2026