What if there were backrooms that just didn’t quite make sense? That’s the horror concept that has now led to a full-length feature, aptly titled Backrooms, from A24 and YouTube sensation Kane Parsons. It’s highly impressive that one image on the internet long ago has come this far, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it makes for a good movie. Fortunately, in this case, it does.

Backrooms Review

The backrooms has always been a fantastic concept. There’s just something off with those first images, and that exploded, leading to video games and short films. But it’s a relatively simple premise. There’s a labyrinth of slightly off rooms that you can easily get lost in. There might be something else in there with you. How far can that really go? As it turns out, fairly far.

The expansion of this idea to the big screen is not without its drawbacks. There are some moments where it feels stretched thin. The beginning of the third act is essentially a rehashing of the first act, this time with a new character discovering the hidden rooms.

That can feel kind of repetitive, but fortunately, we breeze past the initial novelty for Mary, portrayed by Renata Reinsve, and get back into the actual plot. The pacing also slows down at key moments. This is done for two reasons. First, it’s to try to drive up the suspension as the audience waits for something to go wrong or something to be out of place.

Second, it’s done to take a little time off the clock, so to speak. There’s an hour and 45 minutes to fill, and in order to get there, some of the exploration of the backrooms has to be almost painstakingly slow. When it works and adds to the suspense, it’s brilliant, but in other instances, it’s grating.

But ultimately, taking this horror concept to its most outsized works pretty well. There’s a narrative cyclical nature not unlike the rooms themselves. This thematic concept is not subtle, but it works really well. Both Mary and Clark, portrayed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, are mindlessly going in circles due to their own unwillingness to even try breaking the monotonous pattern.

And when they find themselves stuck in this limitless liminal space, there’s an inability to forge new paths past a certain point. The difference for our two co-protagonists is in their response to finding themselves truly stuck with no way out.

Mary decides to give up her lifelong need to save others because no one saved her. Clark refuses to change, saying he doesn’t want to stop being angry, drunk, and deflecting. While the ending of the movie is a little ambiguous, it’s clear that Mary ends up in at least a temporarily better situation than Clark.

The ambiguous ending leaves things open for a sequel, and there’s plenty of room for this to become a full-blown franchise. At the end, Mark Duplass’ Phil tells Mary their goal is to learn even a tiny bit about this phenomenon. Metatextually, this is where sequels make the most sense.

Writer/director Kane Parsons sprinkled in lore drops and exposition about the rooms themselves throughout the runtime, but audiences will still walk away with plenty of questions. We’ve learned a tiny bit in Backrooms, but there’s still so much we don’t know, and that’s where other characters in sequels could help.

Parsons clearly knows this concept well. It’s his baby, essentially, as he’s now taken it from a horror creepypasta on Reddit and 4chan to short films to Hollywood blockbusters. The original short film is well-done, and there’s competence in the writing and directing of Backrooms that makes it clear Parsons has the juice. Can he pivot and do other things?

That remains to be seen, but it wouldn’t be terribly disappointing if he dedicated his early film career simply to expanding the lore and turning this into a blockbuster horror franchise. That’s more or less how his YouTube channel went following the outrageous success of the found footage short in 2022. More episodes followed, so more movies certainly could.

His camerawork is solid. The found footage sections are brilliant, and that’s coming from someone who isn’t the biggest fan of that filmmaking method. Parsons uses the technique sparingly to devastating effect. The two most frightening sequences of the movie are the opening found footage sequence and when Clark convinces his employees to follow him into the backrooms to record evidence.

Both lead actors are excellent. Ejiofor perfectly balances the rage stewing beneath Clark’s well-meaning persona, bringing it out in two really fantastic scenes alongside Reinsve. She’s also fantastic, leaving Mary calculating and extremely reserved due to childhood trauma. Everyone else plays minor roles, but they each do it well.

The atmosphere is often suffocating, with the score (or sometimes lack thereof) providing a boost that ratchets up the tension at times. Backrooms has incredible practical effects, starting with the rooms themselves. They are outstandingly realized. The physical sets perfectly capture the essence of what made this idea so unnerving all those years ago when it surfaced online.

The second half gets ridiculously weird, and that’s kind of a compliment. You will not be able to guess where it’s going. It feels a little disjointed and chaotic compared to the assured first half, but it’s not enough to totally lose steam. The characters are also slightly underdeveloped, as they can almost be reduced to their initial character traits.

Mary is a helper because of her own trauma, and Clark is angry at the world for how his life has turned out. It’s Mary who, as mentioned, has some growth at the climax of the film, and Clark remains static. This was probably an intentional choice to hammer home the growth and breaking patterns theme, but it still leaves Clark particularly half-baked as a character. It’s a little harder to empathize with him because we don’t know much about him or see the full story to perhaps provide more depth and understanding.

Nevertheless, there’s real craft on display here. Parsons is, as has been mentioned time and again, just 20 years old, but Backrooms is made as if there were a 20-year veteran on the pen and behind the camera. Whatever he does next, which hopefully is a sequel so we can learn a tiny bit more, we should all be paying attention.

Conclusion

Backrooms succeeds in taking a niche internet horror concept to its very limits, pushing the limits of reality in the process. Not everything works, and it can be a little rough around the edges, but it brings a new wrinkle to the horror genre and marks Kane Parsons as a young and exciting filmmaker to keep an eye on.

Score: 3.75/5