BACKROOMS (2026) MOVIE REVIEW WITH SPOILERS

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Hello, Amanda. I want to play a game.

[00:00:13]So, what happens when one of the internet most famous Kubby pastas gets turned into the A24 fulllength horror movie? Well, we finally got the answer with Back Rooms directed by Kane Parsons, the same creator behind the viral YouTube analog horror series of the same name completely took over the internet a few years ago. And honestly, I do have to say that this movie is both an immersive experience as a frustrating one. So, today we're diving into my review with spoilers of Back Rooms. But don't worry that a spoiler-free review is now available on my website. The link is down below.

[00:00:51]But before we get into the spoilers, if somehow you don't know what the back rooms are, just know that this concept originally came from a viral image posted online back in 2019. The idea is that you can accidentally no clip out of reality and end up trapped in this endless labyrinth of yellow hallways, empty office spaces, strange rooms, and entities hiding in the darkness. And over time, the internet has expanded this mitogy by adding different levels and creatures to the point that there's even a video game. Now, after watching this movie, I can confidently say that visually Kane Parsons understood the assignment. Since the atmosphere in this movie is incredible, the endless hallways, the fluorescent lighting, the empty silence, the weird geometry of the rooms, everything feels deeply wrong in the best way possible. There's this constant nightmare logic throughout the movie where spaces don't make sense and objects appear when they shouldn't. And it generally feels like being trapped inside a nightmare. And a lot of scenes are carried poorly by atmosphere and tension. And those moments work extremely well. And those first 30 minutes, they are fantastic. Since we're introduced to Clark, who owns this pirate themed furniture store called Camps Clark's Ottoman Empire and one night he discovers a mysterious doorway hidden in the basement of the store that leads directly into the back rooms. And watching Clark slowly become obsessed with this dimension was generally fascinating and you can tell that the back rooms are psychologically consuming him. We also got some found footage style that mixed perfectly with the analog horror aesthetic since this film is set in the 90s and there's a very unsettling scene that includes an entity in a sideways room and the movie slowly builds up this effective tension. But unfortunately everything that worked at the beginning for me suddenly goes to the trash since unfortunately as the movie progresses it starts to lose momentum. Now, after Clark employees Bobby and Cat die after entering the back rooms with him, the pacing becomes a major issue, the movie starts to become repetitive and slow. And while yes, I understand that the repetition and the longing is technically part of the background experience doesn't always translate into an engaging featurelength narrative. This movie, it's 1 hour and 50 minutes. It shouldn't have been that long. And honestly, my biggest issue with the movie is that the pacing sings.

[00:03:24]I truly believe that this concept of the backrooms works 10 times better as the short films that they made first and not as a fulllength movie. Now, performance-wise, Renet Reigns and Cheetah Age of Ford both did a really solid job. Rene especially carries a lot of the emotional weight during the second half of the movie once her character Mary enters the back rooms searching for Clark. And Clark himself becomes generally tragic by the end since by the time that Mary finds him in the back rooms, he's psychologically destroyed. He's paranoid, unstable, and he almost feels like he belongs to the dimension now and he wants to stay. And the final act is going to leave viewers with a lot of unanswered questions, especially with Asen capturing Mary for evaluation. And then we get the final scene that includes a disorded version of Mary inside of the back rooms. Now, the ambiguity of this ending leaves you guessing if Mary was set free or if she never made it out of the back rooms on the first place or if she was forced to return. And we will never know. Most likely, we will never know. The way that I saw it, since Clark explains at some point that the disorded versions that we see are memories of the people that once were in the back rooms, I want to believe that what we see at the ending is a memory of Mary and not that she wasn't able to leave or that she was forced to return. But for me, it's either she was able to leave or she never did. Like I don't see the third theory that it's that she was forced to return. Or maybe since we see that this company is doing the investigations in the first place and they are the ones that are doing the questioning. But part of me believes that she was able to get out because we got that explaining that they are memories. But if we didn't got that explanation, I would have 100% believe that she didn't make it out. But just because we got that explanation, I am going with the interpretation that she made it out. But of course, you can see it as she never did. Now, overall, Backrooms is a movie that I enjoyed, but not one that I fully love. I think that King Parsons proves here that he has a huge future in horror film making. The visual storytelling, the atmosphere, the tension building, and the understanding of analog core aesthetics are generally impressive, especially for such a young director making his feature debut. I would love to see more of him, but at the same time, this this script needed tighter pacing and probably a shorter run time. So, I really hope that for his next movie, he gets some help with the writing. So, if you love surreal horror, limited spaces, found footage, analog horror, or atmospheric psychological horror, this movie is absolutely worth watching in theaters for you. My rating of this movie is going to be a three out of five or a 7 out of 10. And with this, I end this video. Thank you so much for watching. I would love to hear the opinion of fans since I know what the backrooms are. I know about creepy pastas, but I am not the biggest fan of the back rooms. I did my research on the lore and everything about it, but still I am not a hardcore fan. So, there's a high chance that there were details about that that I miss and maybe not having that knowledge is not going to allow me to maybe understand everything.

[00:06:56]So, if you are a huge fan of this and you saw the movie and you think that I missed something, let me know down below since I would really like to hear the opinion of the fans since at the end of the day, that is why they make this movie. At the end, it's for the fans.

[00:07:11]So, let me know down below. But if you're into it, definitely go and watch this. If you're not into this type of movies, then don't go and do it. I have seen people that has compared it to Skinnar Rink, but at least Skinnamarink is shorter. I do definitely believe that this film could have been shorter or they needed to add more into the plot since we have so many moments that they are so long and we get into these endless hallways and the corners and it's very slow and I get it. That's part of the whole deal. But at the same time, if you're presenting some things in the plot and some details about these characters and their past lives, um you either give me more about that or don't present it at all since I felt that there were some things that they didn't matter in the end. I feel that to justify how long this film is, they needed to add more into the plot since at least when it comes to the mitogy of the back rooms, they didn't say much, but I think that that was the right thing to do since for me less is better when it comes to these things because if they started to explain everything going to lose its charm. So, the amount of details that we got about the back rooms was more than okay, but definitely they needed to add more into the plot if they wanted to make this movie engaging while also being almost 2 hours. But with this, I end. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you guys on my next video. Bye.