In May 2019, out of 4chan’s murky depths rose a short creepypasta penned by an anonymous user detailing the lucid and dreamlike imagery of the Backrooms—an infinitesimal maze with old, yellowing wallpaper and the eternal humdrum of fluorescent lights. There’s something wrong with this place. It feels human but isn’t quite so. Around every corner lies office spaces with not a soul around, doors lead to other doors, furniture seeping into the walls themselves. You’re not supposed to be here, or rather, this place was not supposed to exist. It’s not certain if you are alone, but you’re very sure whatever resides here isn’t human—far from it. Following the creepypasta came an entire horror subgenre dedicated to the mammalian fear and fascination with liminal spaces. Various internet users put their own spins involving hostile entities in different levels of the world. Kane Parsons adapts the traditional mythos of The Backrooms and sculpts it with a unique vision; the fruition of his efforts is Backrooms (2026): a stellar debut filled with ambitious scares and a promising directorial future.

This is not Parsons’ first foray into the Backrooms, as he caught the attention of both A24 and the internet with his viral YouTube web series back in 2023. Despite the anthological series and the feature-length film sharing the same continuity, what differentiates them is ambition and resources. Then-16-year-old Parsons was equipped with an idea and 3D software, Blender. Now, he has $10 million dollars in funding and a seal of approval from Longlegs director, Osgood Perkins, who produced the film.

Backrooms follows Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the owner of a failing furniture store as he discovers the Backrooms in the store’s basement through a wall his hand phases right through—a portal right to the Backrooms. After he goes missing, his therapist Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), enters the store and ventures into the Backrooms herself. What follows is a phantasmagorical journey that can’t be defined through logic or rationality, and one of the most visually compelling horror films this decade. Ejiofor delivers a brilliant performance ripe with desperation as he borders between snapping into insanity at any given moment and desperately trying to make sense of his own mind and the Backrooms. Reinsve, who doesn’t get to shine until the second half of the film, is equally as terrific. She maintains a cooler head than Clark given her profession, but Reinsve’s performance instills a remarkable degree of apprehension in the character of Mary that echoes that of Michael Johnston in this year’s Obsession.

Visually speaking, the film is phenomenally eerie. Beyond the endless confines of the Backrooms, the diegetic world is marionetted with the same uncanny strings of liminal loneliness. Outside the store, it’s pastel and quiet, like a town completely styled as one massive mannequin display. The day is painfully bright, with clear blue skies illuminating large empty parking lots. Rows of suburban homes sit next to each other like uncanny Russian Dolls. Clark’s furniture store, Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire, possesses the same feeling of vast nothingness. There’s an echo of royalty-free elevator music playing as Mary enters the store, with tall ceilings looming over furniture sets. 

In the Backrooms themselves, each scene builds up dread when Clark documents his findings with a camera as proof of its existence. The audience is put in his shoes, and it makes the traversal through the Backrooms up close and personal. You hear Clark’s heavy breathing; the camera twists and turns when he’s chased by blurry entities—it’s a signature style from Parsons’ web series and a perfect execution of suspense and scares.

Though Backrooms clearly excels at capturing the atmosphere and mindless structure of its titular space, it unfortunately falls short in its pacing and writing. Clark’s mental downfall feels sudden and unearned, and Mary takes centre stage right when the film nears its end. It’s a little unsatisfying given how the film spends too long setting up its exposition, resulting in a final act that feels like it concludes just as it was getting intriguing. The film also teases at different environments and locations, but never fully explores them. These minor imperfections could be fixed with a longer runtime, giving its situations and characters space to breathe. However, what Parsons lacks in filmmaking experience and character development, he makes up for through his extraordinarily distinctive cinematography. 

Backrooms, as a final product, is a polished and well-done attempt at putting the creepypasta onto the big screen. It’s spine-chilling, the sets are beautifully crafted, and it understands the allure the Backrooms provides for many Gen Z viewers following its catapult into virality through TikTok edits and Roblox games. There has been much yawn-inducing discourse surrounding Parsons’s age given that he is only 20 years old, but to his credit, Sam Raimi was only 21 when he made The Evil Dead (1981). It’s not a perfect film by a long shot, but it’s one that is packed with a love for the liminal space genre by a young filmmaker with the future of 2020s horror cusped in his palms.